Why Good Omens is a Michael Sheen party now even though the book's got more Crowley

[cimorene]

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.

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

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

It really was an amazing achievement for the character, and it's also an amazing translation of the book. I find I have more thoughts and will post about them.

[cimorene]

I feel like I got distracted and failed to write the second half of what this post should have been and yours did a much better job of explaining what I was trying to talk about! I hadn't managed to even get to the point of putting into words how they made Aziraphale work and how that relates to the problems of being a) angelic, b) human/relatable, and c) funny. I was still at "they obviously did it because everyone loved him and he was funny", haha. Perfecto!

[princessofgeeks]

*bows*

[out_there]

Oooh, that's very clever. I loved both Aziraphale and Crowley in the book, but you're right: Crowley is that little bit more relateable. Crowley was the character that I thought would shine onscreen -- dramatic and stylish and doing his best to hold it all together and convince the boss that he's working harder than he is -- and I knew David Tennant could bring a great performance to the role. Yet Michael Sheen knocked it out of the park and made it incredibly obvious why Crowley is so fond of him, without relying too much on the hedonism or pettiness to make him relateable. It's a great example of a different media being used in such a strong way to make the story and characters better understood.

[cimorene]

Yes, I feel like his performance brought my mental image of Aziraphale into sharper focus, even if I read the book and imagine a different Aziraphale from him - like it's one that is more complete and logical now regardless, as sometimes a new take on a play can do!

[ithiliana]

Thank you--this is a lovely post.

Here via a link from princessofgeeks journal--and ooo! I love discussions of point of view, and adaptation, and all that lovely stuff, and this is just great.

I am linking from my journal because I've decided to assemble a list of GO meta, but let me know if you'd like me to take the link down.

I loved the book for years, and am surprised at how much I love the series: I have been a Sheen fan since he was the head werewolf in Underworld, but only vaguely aware of fandom's love for Tennant (not a Dr. Who fan, so...).

It's fascinating to hear Gaiman had Sheen in mind!

Now I must go back and re-read the book to see just what, if any, portions are from Arizaphale's pov.....there's a great piece of meta on the possible imbalance in the C/Z fanfic that you might find interesting, here!

[cimorene]

Ooh, thanks for the link! And go ahead, I'm happy to be linked to!

[ithiliana]

Lovely! I'll be getting that post up a bit later today. THere was a great article on the MarySue as well. And am also subscribing!

[phosfate]

If you can walk away with a show that's got A-game David Tennant in it, you have serious chops.

[cimorene]

Yeah, and it's actually pretty funny that although much of the form of new fannish enthusiasm for Sheen is the above rather lewd type, it's pretty much motivated by... just his fantastic show-stealing performance.

Possibly there's a slight bias in the range of the familiar fandom flailing vocab.

[rydra_wong]

I suspect it's also affected by people not having Sheen in anything before, Googling his other roles and/or seeing interviews, and going WHOA FUCK (for a variety of reasons).

As has been commented, he has strong Chaotic Weird energy.

https://upstartgeek.tumblr.com/post/185632910393/michael-sheens-a-great-fav-to-get-into-because-on

And also fandom's eternal and glorious polymorphous perversity, of course.

[cimorene]

Right, I mean, I did mention being surprised due to not really being acquainted with him before, but true... and fair... there is also the "what the FUCK?" element alongside the "wow, he's really good" one.

My kneejerk reaction might be that talent and skill would be more of a turn-on than just being a complete weirdo, but I realized that was silly as soon as I started to think it, of course. 'Have I MET fandom? OF COURSE being super weird is a huge draw!' etc.

[rydra_wong]

My kneejerk reaction might be that talent and skill would be more of a turn-on than just being a complete weirdo, but I realized that was silly as soon as I started to think it, of course. 'Have I MET fandom? OF COURSE being super weird is a huge draw!' etc.

Also: talent and skill PLUS being super weird and also very funny PLUS playing a bunch of explicitly queer roles PLUS being naked a lot PLUS eloquent political shoutiness PLUS being pro-fanfiction --> fandom goes weak at the knees.

[rydra_wong]

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.

I've been thinking about the structural issues of adapting a book like Good Omens, which is driven so much by this incredibly vivid and funny narrative voice. It can ramble off onto all sorts of loops, many of the characters can be pretty static, because the engine of the book is the voice.

For the show, even with a voiceover narrator filling some gaps, you need to dramatize, you need to have the same themes and issues being expressed through conflict between and within characters.

Which, among other things, means that show!Aziraphale is much more conflicted (or there's much more depiction/dramatization of his inner conflicts, at least) than book!Aziraphale.

And conflicted characters are compelling to watch.

There's an interesting bit here from a panel where Gaiman and Tennant talk about how Aziraphale's the one who goes on more of a journey in the show, because he starts out believing that he's on the right side, that Heaven is ultimately on the side of good, and has to lose that faith. Whereas Crowley has no loyalty to Hell; he already knows that, in Tennant's immortal phrase, he's "amongst wankers".

https://fuckyeahgoodomens.tumblr.com/post/183430573254/from-sxsw-panel-neil-crowley-actually-is-really

[cimorene]

Yes, I've seen them talking about Aziraphale's internal arc elsewhere I think! And there's an element of that journey in the book, of course, but the internal conflict isn't on the same scale there - and as a result you could say that the show's Aziraphale is pretty far behind the book's, even though they both aren't prepared to trust their intuitive pro-Crowley and anti-Heaven inclination.

In fact, because that internal conflict is about a choice between loyalty to Heaven and Crowley, it's directly linked to the relationship between the two of them, which is also much more solid/established-feeling in the book and has a whole angsty-pining-and-hesitating plot added to it in the show. ... To great and dramatic effect, obviously.