Many fans of Lucifer were expecting to see Tom Ellis in The Sandman but Gwendoline Christie was chosen instead, for a key reason.
Netflix’s The Sandman, based on Neil Gaiman’s beloved comic of the same name, is currently trending on the streaming service. Many fans of the show Lucifer, which is a spinoff of The Sandman in which the Lord of Hell opens up a bar in Los Angeles, expected to see Tom Ellis, who played the titular role in Lucifer, in the same role in The Sandman.
However, this adaptation wanted to see the role of Lucifer in a different light and thought audiences would connect with Lucifer differently knowing how Ellis has already portrayed the character.
“It was their mission to make this and make it fresh, to really honor the source material and everything that people love about the comics, but to bring it to life in a new way,” Christie told ET Online. “It was also the added emphasis that Neil’s always said it’s over 20 years ago, so there are things that he might want to do differently now. He might want to present it in a different way. So I connected to that and I also thought about what my own views and opinions of the character were, how I would like to see it portrayed, how it was speaking to me, and how it relates to our modern world.”
“I think it’s always interesting when you’re dealing with material that people really love and they have an invested relationship, but that’s also what makes it enticing,” Christie said. “There’s already an audience there that really wants to see that story brought to life. But I find that I have to go back to the character. It isn’t helpful for me to think about that, otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to do it. But it’s heartwarming to know that there’s already a whole world of people that have a meaningful relationship with the material.”
Based on scenes such as ‘The Oldest Game’ fans won’t be disappointed in Christie’s performance. Watch the scene for yourself below:
Neil Gaiman also spoke on Ellis’ portrayal of the Lord of Hell in Lucifer and had nothing but high praise.
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“He is so lovable. He is so wonderful. You love him so much that I couldn’t sell the world on Tom’s Lucifer as being a genuine threat because you’d go, ‘Ah, he’d get them all wound up, and then they’d go for a drink,’” Gaiman said.
Neil recognized similar concerns when it came to reusing Ellis for The Sandman, “Actually, Tom’s Lucifer would just try and get Morpheus laid and loosen him up a bit or whatever, so you know that you can’t do that, so that allows us to go back to the original Lucifer and Sandman, to look at that David Bowie-inspired Lucifer, and with the fabulous wings, and to go, ‘OK, that’s Gwendoline Christie.’”
Gaiman also seems to be salivating at the possibilities of potential spinoffs and crossovers, “Obviously, I would like to see the spinoff show in which Gwendoline’s Lucifer and Tom’s Lucifer go on a road trip. We need to make that happen.” How about a Johanna Constantine spinoff project while we’re at it?
