Neil Gaiman Added A Nice Angel To Good Omens Season 2 Because Most Angels Are 'Bastards' [NYCC]
In 2019, "Good Omens" proved to us that there's such a thing as an angel and demon pair made in heaven as long — as they're played by Michael Sheen and David Tennant, respectively. The Prime Video/BBC TV show was written as a limited series since the 1990 source material, written by producer and showrunner Neil Gaiman ("The Sandman") and the late Terry Pratchett, was a stand-alone book.
The besties have saved the world from the Apocalypse and thwarted the Antichrist. But Gaiman decided there could be more adventures for the angel Aziraphale (Sheen) and demon Crowley (Tennant) after all. So at New York Comic Con, Gaiman, Douglas MacKinnon (executive producer, showrunner, director), Rob Wilkins (executive producer), actress Maggie Service, actress Nina Sosanya, and newcomer Quelin Sepulveda gathered to tease "Good Omens" season 2.
"It would be about six episodes," Gaiman revealed. "Each 45 minutes." And while the show already has one nice angel in Aziraphale, the second season will be introducing another.
The angel Muriel
"Good Omens" season 2 will introduce the angel Muriel, as played by Quelin Sepulveda. Gaiman noted that there was a distinct shortage of nice angels in the first season:
"One thing we didn't have in Heaven, apart from Aziraphale, were nice, well-meaning angels. All we had were bastards. Gabriel, he is the boss from Heaven but he's still a bastard. They're all awful. Let's have a nice one! We created Muriel. Muriel has spent about 6000 years or more in the same office in Heaven just filing and reading things and hoping that the day will get more interesting. Muriel is very well-meaning and always wanted to get out of it."
Sepulveda described her angel as "a 37th order scrivener, so she's bottom of the pile, bless her. This is her first time on Earth. It's so fun to figure out how does she figure [Earth] out." The actress added, "She's so gullible and curious and a bit chatty."
The clip preview demonstrated Muriel's adorably naive ideas about blending in on Earth, as she is shown donning a conspicuously shock-white constable outfit. In the footage, Muriel enters Aziraphale's SoHo bookshop with a blatant posture and demeanor that immediately exposes her ruse. When Aziraphale offers her tea, Muriel awkwardly balances a saucer and cup of tea between her open palms. She thinks a cup of tea is something nice to look at and doesn't know how to drink it. She tries to "act" like a human inspector. When Aziraphale points out that her uniform is that of a "constable," she amends her cover story to "constable inspector." When Crowley spies her, he takes great amusement in poking more holes in the shoddiness of her pretend game.
That time Michael Sheen almost played the demon
How would things be different if David Tennant and Michael Sheen switched roles, as they did in the last "Good Omens" finale so that the angel and demon can fool their respective spiritual domains? Neil Gaiman shared, "I might like to write a 'Good Omens' stage play so they might swap roles each year. I got David to do it once and Michael to do it once!"
Funnily enough, Sheen wasn't initially envisioned as the good-natured angel; he actually could have been the demon instead, according to Gaiman:
"Michael was meant to have played Crowley. Michael Sheen loves the book, Michael would do it. I called it. I said, 'Great, I have a Crowley.' I thought, 'At least I have my Crowley.' Around [writing] the middle of episode 3, I realized this Crowley doesn't feel a lot like Michael Sheen. I wrote a scene where Crowley comes down the center aisle of a church, hopping like a man on a beach on a hot day, because it's holy ground, and then I thought... David Tennant would be good at that." When it was all done, I realized I had to break it to Michael. I wanted him to be Aziraphale. We had this really awkward dinner. I was trying to pluck out the courage to break it out to him. And Michael was trying to break it to me that he wanted to play Aziraphale. It was an awful dinner until the end where we were "wait, you too?""
Gaiman was also ambushed with this question: Did he and Pratchett see themselves in the angel and demon they wrote?
He answered, "It's fair to say, in the creation of Crowley, Terry took the things I did that I thought were hilarious, like wearing sunglasses indoors when I didn't need to. He thought they were hilarious. He put a lot of me into Crowley." The audience laughed. He continued, "But we put a lot of ourselves in both of them. What was most important for Terry was that people would think he was the good one."
Cast carryover
"Good Omens" season 2 will see some swaps of old cast members into new roles. Nina Sosanya is returning, though not as Mary Loquacious but as Nina, the owner of the coffee shop Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death. Likewise, Maggie Service is no longer Sister Theresa Garrulous but now Maggie, a record shop owner. That's right: they're both playing characters who share their first names, just so Neil Gaiman can be clear that those actresses were meant for those roles.
Gaiman longed to bring back Miranda Richardson, but Madame Tracy's arc had ended. "So I just wrote a new part for Miranda Richardson. She's basically the demon sent to Earth to replace Crowley. Her name is Shax."
Unfortunately, they had to say farewell to Anna Martin as Beelzebub. "We also have one actor replacing another actor, which was done because [Martin] was in two shows and stage play when we needed her," Gaiman explained. He praised Shelley Conn as the replacement for Beelzebub, adding, "Our CGI people have been spending most of their time animating her flies."
Finally, Gaiman teased: "I will say there are some love stories in [season 2]. We will learn a lot about Jane Austen you didn't know about before."
"Good Omens" season 2 will premiere on Prime Video in Summer 2023.