this cat was that cat

Somebody said ‘meow’ in a low voice, and looking down, I saw that the cat had strolled in, and if ever a cat chose the wrong moment for getting the party spirit and wanting to mix with the boys, this cat was that cat.

—PG Wodehouse, Aunts Aren't Gentlemen

Robert Sheehan (Umbrella Academy), cheeky bastards, & Pablo Schreiber as Mad Sweeney (American Gods)

Robert Sheehan is so cheeky. Wax put on a few videos of him and if anything he was even more ... him. Like imagine that he's playing himself in Umbrella Academy except he's having to tone it down.

If only because he's not drinking three beers first maybe.

Oh, and doing an American accent, that probably automatically reduces the perceived cheekiness value.

But we were comparing him to other notably cheeky people such as James McAvoy, scourge of press tours, who can keep up such an intense cheekiness that you can't even tell if he was fucking with you or not by the end of the interview, and who sucks people like Daniel Radcliffe into his orbit so they're just adding to the cheekiness as well. Domhnall Gleeson's another example of a cheeky Irishman (and Oscar Isaac has played the DanRad role when doing publicity with him).

And then there are people more like Ewan Mcgregor: palpably cheeky but not really up there in the stratosphere perhaps.

So obviously cheekiness isn't a universal celtic characteristic (there are non-cheeky Scottish and Irish people out there), nor is it unique to them (I'm sure everyone everywhere has had some cheeky bastard in their class or at their workplace who instantly springs to mind, plus there are other cultures that are known for it eg cockney), but it is a sort of salient cultural characteristic in that it's... presumably positively reinforced as part of the identity or something like that?

And this is what brings us back to leprechauns and American Gods on Starz, which we're enjoying even though it's not perfect. And the same should be said of the performance of the sublime Liev Schreiber's incredibly ripped little brother: he's doing a good job and we're enjoying it but it's not perfect. I'm not saying they needed to cast a person of celtic descent to play a leprechaun-slash-celtic-diety, just that cheekiness is, I would argue, a core characteristic of a leprechaun, and for whatever reason - it could be in the actor or higher up of course - he just doesn't seem very cheeky (in addition to his ginger hair never being remotely convincing, which is pretty odd in this era of wig and dye technology and I really have to wonder why they couldn't achieve a more realistic color at least on his head). He's thrumming with energy in a similar way, it's compelling and fun and all that jazz, but it's just... the frustrated and potentially violent and changeable elements of the trickster god are all there in the aura, but the cheeky quirk isn't. It's like if you take a cheeky smirk and remove the twinkle in the eye: it changes the whole mood from cheeky to ... ??? (smug? mocking? threatening???). It isn't necessarily changed for the better or for the worse, but it's definitely different.

IDK, maybe I'm assigning too much weight to the cheekiness of leprechauns.