Gwendoline Christie plays Lucifer in The Sandman: “It’s fun to be awful”

Game of Thrones fans will always remember Gwendoline Christie as Brienne of Tarth, the noble-hearted knight of the Seven Kingdoms who always tried to do what was right. Very soon we can watch her in The Sandman on Netflix, where she plays the devil.

It’s a pretty big swing, but Christie sounds like she’s relishing the opportunity to indulge her wicked side. “I was so thrilled [co-showrunner Allen Heinberg] asked me to play Lucifer, because it is a grandiose part,” Christie told Empire. “There are few castings that can supersede that – maybe God, whatever that is! Also, it’s fun to be awful.”

If I remember correctly, God doesn’t show up in The Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman, so I think Christie will have the spotlight to herself. I’m really looking forward to seeing her sink her teeth into this juicy role, and the way Heinberg talks, it’ll be worth the wait. “Lucifer is this Bowie-esque creature in the comic book and I thought, ‘Well who is a bigger fucking rock star than Gwendoline Christie?’” he asked.

Neil Gaiman defends color-blind casting in The Sandman

In The Sandman comics, Lucifer appears as a male…but the comics also confirm that Lucifer — like all angels — doesn’t have equipment of any kind down there, so traditional notions of gender don’t really apply. That kind of thing happens a lot in The Sandman. The main character is the eternal personification of dreams, for heaven’s sake; it’s hard to apply traditional notions of anything.

“Neil clarified that Lucifer is a fallen angel, and that an angel doesn’t have gender at all,” Christie explained. “And I can play androgynous. We know that from Game Of Thrones, due to the way I look. So I hope that has helped in the portrayal of the character.”

Naturally, some people on the internet are grumpy about the notion of gender or race-swapped characters, with Black actor Kirby Howell-Baptiste getting a particular large amount of grief after she was cast as Death, who is often depicted as a white woman in the comics. But again, the character of Death is a personification of a concept who has been around as long as the universe has existed; complaining about her race seems a little…small for the room.

And author Neil Gaiman is having none of it. “The thing that got me grumpiest was when people on Twitter would go, ‘This is not the gamine-esque, white, goth-y Death that I’ve had in my head for all these years, why are you betraying us?'” he told Total Film magazine.

"But watch 1,000 Death auditions. Hundreds of the actors we saw were gamine-esque, some white-skinned. It’s the Endless — we did colour-blind casting, because why wouldn’t you? The comics establish that the characters look like whatever we want them to look like. Anyway, Kirby’s amazing. And I think that people who have been grumbling that she doesn’t look like Death are going to not be grumbling [any more] once they see her be Death."

The Sandman premieres on Netflix on August 5.

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h/t CBR