They say opposites attract. They never said it would be easy.
Whether a better epitome for this adage is to be found in the expanses of the cosmos than David Tennant and Michael Sheen, as demon Crowley and angel Aziraphale, is very much up for debate.
For those who don’t know, this is Good Omens: a fantasy series whirling around the unlikely friendship of an angel and a demon. Sheen plays the intelligent, sensitive, and often bewildered angel Aziraphale. Tennant is the nonchalant, suave, erratic demon, Crowley. It’s a can’t-live-with-him, can’t-live-without-him type thing.
“They’re such an odd couple in many ways,” says Sheen.
“They’re sort of absolute opposites,” muses Tennant. “And yet, they’re very alike at the same time. They do complete each other. They’re a yin and yang in every way… I suppose an odd couple is always appealing, isn’t it?”
Sheen chuckles, and picks up the thread: “The characters as written and then as played by us seem to just sort of fit together weirdly. They fit together in their not-fitting-togetherness in a sort of entertaining way. Certainly entertaining to do… The fact that they butt up against each other so much, and yet, underneath, clearly feel very, very connected and close, I think that’s a very enjoyable dynamic both to play and to watch.”
Good Omens 2 is the second season of the Prime Video series based on the best-selling 1990 novel of the same name, written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The setting is the cosmos. The stage the End Times. Aziraphale was originally a guardian of the gates of Eden; Crowley, the serpent who tempted Eve.
On-screen and off-screen the pair’s chemistry sizzles. How they get into character is less an approach than an instantaneous inevitability as soon as they are together.
“Once I’ve got all the Aziraphale stuff on, that does a big part of it,” shares Sheen, 54. “But it’s only when we’re together. As soon as I’m with David as Crowley, then it just sort of happens.”
“Yes, they don’t really work in isolation, do they?” adds Tennant, 52. “It’s only when we’re together. And once we start doing the scenes you go, oh yeah, this is what it is.”
In season one, the duo were forced into each other’s arms to save earth from Armageddon. Season two sees their happily-ever-earthly-after abruptly cut short by a naked man, and once again they are pitted together to save something or other. They’re no longer emissaries of heaven and hell (having both been thrown out of the clubs due to the events of Good Omens 1) and are, more or less, free agents.
“They’ve been cut adrift,” says The Queen and Twilight star Sheen. “They are kind of isolated. And even though in the first season, you see them working together as a team, now they really are cut off from their respective HQs.”
“They’re more reliant on each other than they’ve ever been before,” adds Doctor Who’s Tennant. “Now they’ve only got each other. They don’t have backup. They’re neither human nor supernatural anymore. They’re sort of in this weird world that they can only really share with each other.”
There are peaks and troughs to their new earthly stations.
Aziraphale, on the one hand, owns a rare-book shop in Soho, a record store opposite, and is very much a local celebrity. Crowley, kicked out of the flashy flat that came with the job, is currently sleeping in his car.
The second season caught both actors by surprise.
“We fully expected it to be just a one-off thing, didn’t we?” Sheen says. “Although I knew there were ideas and there had been stuff talked about between Terry and Neil about what could happen in the future.”
“The idea of a second series slowly kind of evolved, didn’t it?” continues Tennant. “There was never a moment where it was suddenly happening… just the beginnings of an idea that we might come back and then it just sort of slowly grew and then suddenly it was a thing. I can’t remember there ever being a day when, ‘guess what guys, we’re doing series two’, it just sort of emerged in quite a Good Omens-y appropriate style.”
Season two expands beyond the pages of the book, yet remains faithful to its essence. Gaiman, 62, and the late Pratchett had bandied around ideas of how to continue the narrative, but never got round to writing a sequel.
“I don’t think Neil would ever have really wanted to go further with it had there not been these plans between him and Terry back in the past,” says Sheen.
“And Terry Pratchett’s estate are very much a part of the process as well,” adds Tennant. “I think that was important: to make sure that Terry’s voice is still there alongside Neil’s.”
Is there anything they’ve found surprising about being a part of Good Omens?
Tennant says the reaction to the first season was “overwhelming” and “hugely humbling”.
“Unlike Michael, I came to this not knowing this world, not knowing the book, not realising quite what a beloved, precious Ming vase of an IP (intellectual property) I was being handed here. And then slowly realising as we made series one how much this meant to people and how important these characters were to people. And for that to go out into the world, and for it to be received in the way that it has been, that’s been the great joy for me.”
“It sort of feels bad saying how much fun it is to do,” admits Sheen.
“It really is a Rolls Royce of a cast that we get to just sit back and welcome,” adds Tennant.
Actors including Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, Red Dwarf’s Maggie Service and Love Actually’s Nina Sosanya return to the cast, the latter two playing new characters this time round. Miranda Richardson and Doon Mackichan also re-join the line-up.
“I think one of the things that makes it so much fun to do is that every character is so fully realised and sort of has its own level of barmy,” says Tennant. “Every character is certainly unique and idiosyncratic and that’s, I think, what Neil and Terry do so brilliantly…”
Sheen agrees: “You never feel like a character has just been written to be a sort of vehicle for a certain bit of the scene, every character comes with a full world. And that’s what’s so intriguing about it.”
Good Omens 2 is available on Prime Video on Friday, July 28.
