I've been thinking about how Neil Gaiman wrote the GO script with Michael Sheen in mind (and sent bits of it to him to look at in progress) and decided during writing that he wanted Michael Sheen to be Aziraphale and only got David Tennant after it was all finished and they sent it off to him (a newcomer to the book drawn in by the chance to work opposite his friend, Sheen, for the first time).
It's interesting because when you read the book, it's one of those cases where the point of view or access character, Crowley, is incredibly vivid and relatable and you know a lot about him, but Aziraphale is slightly more of a cypher. You get this a lot when reading romances - I don't mean the romance genre, here; fanfiction qualifies, or other love stories - but it's usually because the point of view character's so in love or otherwise obsessed that you get little idea of the internal life of their love interest, and an unobservant reader could sometimes entirely miss the fact that the other character loves them back (though in GO it's more because they're focused more on the apocalypse).
But Good Omens, the book, hinges on Crowley as the character the reader can identify with easily. He provides a window to the whole story. His personality and his approach to his job are relatable and recognizable in funny ways, while there isn't really a corresponding half of the joke for Aziraphale - random acts of whimsical or extremely minor kindness, for example, aren't as funny as the kinds of mischief-making Crowley gets up to (the most funny and relatable bits about Aziraphale are those most contradictory to the angelic archetype, like hedonism and pettiness). Crowley's framing is key to the book and how it works, and we see and understand more of him, which is perhaps exactly why, in translating the book to film, it became Aziraphale that was fundamentally key to the whole thing.
Going from the book alone, there was more room for interpretation in Aziraphale than in Crowley, but getting him right was essential. He was like a very large missing part of a picture, leaving more to fix and requiring more skill and originality to fill in the gaps. There was additional creation of Aziraphale's character that went into in fleshing the book out into a script first, of course. But ultimately it came down to Sheen and his vision of the character that had to embody angelicness in a way that was believable and relatable while being so charismatically and self-evidently enchanting that it's obvious why Crowley is devoted to him. (And make it funny.)
This is why Michael Sheen Is Fandom's New Boyfriend | The Mary Sue & why this:
source
It's not that David Tennant didn't do an amazing job as Crowley, but more that Sheen's part gave him an even bigger opportunity to shine, combined with the fact that a lot more people are discovering how amazing he is for the first time now.
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princessofgeeks' answering comments here on why the angelic is harder than the demonic (both to write at all and to write funny, I'd argue) and how Good Omens, the film in particular, and Sheen especially solve it
It's interesting because when you read the book, it's one of those cases where the point of view or access character, Crowley, is incredibly vivid and relatable and you know a lot about him, but Aziraphale is slightly more of a cypher. You get this a lot when reading romances - I don't mean the romance genre, here; fanfiction qualifies, or other love stories - but it's usually because the point of view character's so in love or otherwise obsessed that you get little idea of the internal life of their love interest, and an unobservant reader could sometimes entirely miss the fact that the other character loves them back (though in GO it's more because they're focused more on the apocalypse).
But Good Omens, the book, hinges on Crowley as the character the reader can identify with easily. He provides a window to the whole story. His personality and his approach to his job are relatable and recognizable in funny ways, while there isn't really a corresponding half of the joke for Aziraphale - random acts of whimsical or extremely minor kindness, for example, aren't as funny as the kinds of mischief-making Crowley gets up to (the most funny and relatable bits about Aziraphale are those most contradictory to the angelic archetype, like hedonism and pettiness). Crowley's framing is key to the book and how it works, and we see and understand more of him, which is perhaps exactly why, in translating the book to film, it became Aziraphale that was fundamentally key to the whole thing.
Going from the book alone, there was more room for interpretation in Aziraphale than in Crowley, but getting him right was essential. He was like a very large missing part of a picture, leaving more to fix and requiring more skill and originality to fill in the gaps. There was additional creation of Aziraphale's character that went into in fleshing the book out into a script first, of course. But ultimately it came down to Sheen and his vision of the character that had to embody angelicness in a way that was believable and relatable while being so charismatically and self-evidently enchanting that it's obvious why Crowley is devoted to him. (And make it funny.)
This is why Michael Sheen Is Fandom's New Boyfriend | The Mary Sue & why this:
source
It's not that David Tennant didn't do an amazing job as Crowley, but more that Sheen's part gave him an even bigger opportunity to shine, combined with the fact that a lot more people are discovering how amazing he is for the first time now.
eta: see
princessofgeeks' answering comments here on why the angelic is harder than the demonic (both to write at all and to write funny, I'd argue) and how Good Omens, the film in particular, and Sheen especially solve it
