Neil Gaiman explains why he’s done with TV for a while

Neil Gaiman is an author, the guy behind classics like Sandman, Stardust American Gods and Good Omens (with fellow fantasy titan Terry Pratchett). But just lately, he hasn’t been putting out a lot of written work, because he’s been knee-deep in the exciting world of television production.

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Suddenly, Gaiman has not one but two shows based on his properties on the block: Amazon is dropping a six-part Good Omens miniseries on May 31 and the second season of Starz’s American Gods premieres this Sunday. Gaiman was pretty heavily involved in both, as he told SyFy Wire:

"With Good Omens, what we didn’t have were really producers, or the showrunner, director, producer triangle. We were kind of producer-less for most of it. We would get short-term producers who would see us through, pass the baton to the next producer and go away, so there was no consistency. What it wound up meaning was that [executive producer/director Douglas Mackinnon] and I wound up essentially wearing the producer hat and doing the producer job. And that meant that I had a crash course in the [visual] effects, a crash course in sound mixing, a crash course in graphics, a crash course in what happens in the edit, a crash course in how to do breakdowns; all of this stuff that I, honestly, normally would expect diligent gnomes to take care of."

But as Gaiman discovered, there were no gnomes. “There was just me and Douglas, so we did everything,” he said. “When you consider that we wrapped major photography on Good Omens the first week of March of last year, basically, we spent 11 months sitting very near each other on a sofa in the same room. We were watching things and saying ‘yes’ and saying ‘no,’ and just making sure that only one of us ever was grumpy at the same time because it didn’t work if we were both grumpy.”

According to Gaiman, the biggest he learned was that every show is shot three times. “You make it when you write it, you make it when you shoot it, and then you make it in the edit.”

"And also, you make it, these days, in the effects. One thing that American Gods and Good Omens both have in common is they only come together right at the very end. That’s really hard for people to understand and it’s really hard for people even to give notes because…with the effects, you know, we have Satan coming up out of the ground, but you can’t see it. Everybody simply has to have faith. And that is really f***ing weird."

The experience on the second season of American Gods was a little different, in part because it’s gone through some very public growing pains, with original showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green leaving over budget and creative differences. Gaiman had to get involved with finding a new showrunner. He eventually settled on Jesse Alexander, who’s worked on shows like Lost, Heroes, and Hannibal. “We talked through what needed to happen in this season, and set him to work,” said Gaiman. “The idea was always that we would basically begin at The House on the Rock and end on the way to Lakeside. That was always the shape of Season 2, and what happened in there was kind of up to Jesse.”

First of all, when Gaiman says that season 2 ends on “the way to Lakeside,” I hope he means the bit towards the end of the book when Shadow returns to that sleepy town, because otherwise season 2 isn’t going to cover a lot of ground, which was already a problem in the first season.

It’s probably the first Lakeside visit…ah, well. In any case, Gaiman’s involvement was far from over. “ had never been to The House on the Rock and he had never written for any of these characters so it was one of these things where I said, ‘Look, would it be easier if I just do a rewrite of yours for dialogue and shape?'” He ended up writing the season 2 premiere, and got heavily involved in the seventh episode, which will revolve around the surprisingly tall Leprechaun Mad Sweeney (Pablo Schreiber).

So what has Gaiman learned from this experience? Mostly that he’s looking forward to getting back up to his old tricks. “I’m gonna be a retired showrunner,” he said. “And in my retirement, I’m thinking about taking up writing.”

"I woke up about four days ago and there was a short story in my head. And I thought that actually hasn’t happened for two years, just because all of my attention has been on budget, and the VFX, and the edit and the sound mix. So, it was like, ‘Great, apparently I can still do that. That’s nice.’ And I think, honestly, the most important thing about having been a real showrunner is, it’s gonna make me a lot harder to bulls*** from showrunners and others."

He also commented on why American Gods and Good Omens seem particularly relevant now, even though they were written decades ago. “When I wrote American Gods, the idea of depicting America as an immigrant nation, mostly inhabited by people who came here from other places over the last 20,000 years, and brought things with them, that didn’t seem contentious.”

"And in the same way, the narrative of Good Omens, [is saying] that it is infinitely superior to not fight a war than to win a war. Terry [Pratchett] and I did not think that was a strange thing to say. When we wrote the book, it was 1989, the Berlin Wall would come down, and Glasnost was happening. The world was sort of in this place where the idea of Armageddon seemed a bit weird. And now, in this time of global idiocy, Armageddon wasn’t meant to be something that we are checking our watches to make sure it doesn’t happen before the show gets launched."

When it rains it pours, and at the moment everything is coming down Gaiman.

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