00:00There are no small players in this.
00:03That's what's unbelievable about this production.
00:05Because it made me cry not once, but twice.
00:08It's the thing you least expect.
00:10You just feel honoured to be a part of.
00:12I know that sounds a bit cheesy.
00:14As soon as it was sent my way, it was like a complete no-brainer.
00:18And to be honest, just a joy.
00:21What are you doing here, Etty?
00:22He's coming, Inni.
00:25Yeah.
00:31I think there's a misconception about Morpheus as...
00:34He certainly is brooding and dark.
00:36But I think there's a misconception that his isolationism
00:41and his withdrawn contained qualities are because he doesn't feel.
00:49I think that he, in containing inside of him the unconsciousness of the universe,
00:56in containing inside of him all of our, every sentient being's dreams,
01:01he knows exactly how each and every one of us feels.
01:05And therefore, I think, is an extraordinary empathetic being.
01:10But the discipline required to hold that energy inside of him
01:15and avoid the catastrophe that miscontrolling it would cause
01:21means that he has to be rigorous and controlled.
01:27But I do think that inside him, there's this extraordinary vivacity and life.
01:35Yeah, I mean, so, so...
01:37I mean, similar to Doctor Who in terms of we explore many worlds, realms, states, travel.
01:42But, yeah, I mean, so, so distinctive.
01:47I mean, I was very...
01:49It's very...
01:50We're talking very much about how hard it is to describe Salman.
01:53It's so distinctive and so unique.
01:56And as soon as...
01:57And Neil Gaiman, I'm obviously such a fan of.
02:00So, as soon as it was sent my way, it was like a complete no-brainer.
02:04And to be honest, just a joy.
02:06Like, the character is so formed on the page, so complex.
02:10I like her.
02:11Like, she's hilarious.
02:13And she's unlike other characters that I've played before.
02:18And she's cynical and she's dry and she's...
02:20There's a lot of emotional complexity going on.
02:24She's a lone warrior in the world and tortured and wounded,
02:28but hilarious and pragmatic.
02:34And obviously getting to play Lady Joanna Constantine as well
02:37and kind of having the link between those two characters,
02:40but also being relatives,
02:43but Lady Joanna Constantine having a very different kind of cold,
02:47cunning calculation.
02:50And a very different relationship, I think, with Dream as well.
02:53It's...
02:54No, I think it's one of the real pleasures of the way television
02:59and film have developed in the last 20 years,
03:01is that you do get these really exciting projects
03:04that you just feel honoured to be a part of.
03:07I know that sounds a bit cheesy,
03:09but The Sandman is, for most people,
03:12one of the masterpieces in graphic novels of the past 30, 40 years.
03:17And I was... Because I've known Neil for some time,
03:19I know how much it means to him
03:22and how much it meant to get it right.
03:25You know, there was...
03:26It reminded me of how my friend Douglas Adams,
03:30with his Hitchhiker's Guide,
03:32if only he'd lived another 10 years,
03:34they really could have done it properly.
03:37The technology, but not just the technology,
03:39the budget and the will to make things properly
03:42and give them due care and attention,
03:45is at a high pitch at the moment.
03:47And so it's a kind of easy call, I found.
03:50The only reason we even exist is to serve them.
03:55I think I'd have to point to the whole of episode six
04:00because it made me cry.
04:03Because it made me cry not once, but twice.
04:06Once during the death scene when we meet Harry
04:10and once right at the end of Men of Good Fortune
04:13when Death and Hob get together in the pub.
04:16And that took me by surprise each time.
04:20I'm sitting there thinking, I wrote these words.
04:23I plotted this out in 1988.
04:25This has been part of my life, these stories, ever since.
04:30I read and reread them every time I had to...
04:34We reprinted them or I was checking the colour
04:37or anything like that.
04:38I know them like the back of my hand.
04:42And yet watching this thing that we've shot
04:47is bypassing all the thinking bits of my brain
04:50and is going straight into the emotion bits.
04:53And I can't believe that's happening.
04:56And there was so much pride in what Alan,
05:01in what the actors had done, in every part of that.
05:05I mean, you look at the pub every hundred years
05:10and look at production designers,
05:13costume designers and costume makers.
05:15Everybody came in to give us that
05:18for what, in the end of the day,
05:19is about half an hour of television.
05:23We shouldn't have been able to do that and we did.
05:26What Kirby Halbaptiste brings to Death
05:30in just making you go,
05:32oh yes, when I die, I hope you're there.
05:35You'll make things better.
05:36It'll be okay.
05:39That thing, I don't care that it took us a thousand auditions
05:47to get to Kirby because we got Kirby at the end
05:51and it's like, okay, that thing is the thing that we wanted.
05:54That feeling of speaking truth,
05:56that feeling of being the person at the end
06:00that you love and you care for,
06:02the person you would like to imagine,
06:06was there for your child, for your parent,
06:09for your sibling, for your loved one at the end.
06:13I thought about giving up,
06:16but I have a job to do it and I do it.
06:19Well, what I think is beautiful about all of our episodes
06:24is whether you see a character for a single episode
06:27or for multiple, each of these episodes stands alone.
06:31They're almost like short films.
06:33So, you know, there are no small players in this.
06:39It's absolutely not about screen time in something like this.
06:43There is a magnitude and a weight
06:45to every single character that is in The Sandman
06:49and fans of The Sandman will know that.
06:50New fans, people who have figured out Sandman
06:54through this show will see that,
06:56that every single character,
06:58no matter how long you see them, has such weight.
07:01So to me, it is a case of absolute quality over quantity.
07:08And thinking about the representation of Lucifer,
07:15I mean, like Kirby's been saying about portraying death,
07:18it's a concept.
07:20You know, Lucifer is the epitome of evil.
07:23But for me, what the comics did so beautifully
07:25was that they presented a very human quality.
07:30So you believe that was a person.
07:32You could see it.
07:33You could see all the complexities and the conflicts,
07:36the internal conflicts,
07:37the wonderful thing that Neil does so well,
07:39which he just turns things on their head.
07:41It's the thing you least expect.
07:44And I wanted to be really, we all did,
07:47wanted to be really faithful to the comics.
07:49But at the same time,
07:50it was thrilling to be able to actually bring
07:54my interpretation, what the comics had given me,
07:58what had fired in my imagination through reading them,
08:01through talking to Neil,
08:02looking at Neil's original source material,
08:05and also looking at my own range of material.
08:08And Lucifer's a part I played before on stage years ago,
08:13and I'd always wanted to revisit it.
08:14So this was like a kind of glorious opportunity
08:18to explore something about evil,
08:21which is extremely relevant in our modern world.
08:24Tell us what power of dreams in hell.
08:29No, but it really was.
08:30That's what's unbelievable about this production,
08:33is that everything, I mean, beyond the impossible,
08:37was built.
08:39So the first thing that came to my head was hell.
08:42It was extraordinary to be inside Lucifer's lair.
08:46And, you know, that floor was stone.
08:49Those columns were marble.
08:50The murals were painted on the walls.
08:52The fire burnt your face.
08:54And, you know, it's such a difficult thing
08:57when you do a job like this,
08:58the kind of leaps of imagination that are required.
09:02And what was so special was that the production design team
09:07and everyone involved made those leaps so much smaller
09:11than they needed to be because they made it.
09:15And, yeah, I mean, the first thing that came into my head
09:19was hell.
09:21And there wasn't genuinely, I don't think,
09:25one piece of green screen in that sequence
09:29that I worked with,
09:32other than, like, maybe sitting outside a window or something.
09:35And that was just, it's just,
09:38it's incredibly easy to tell the truth
09:41when you can touch the truth.
09:43Yeah, it's a gift, isn't it?
09:45In my case, selfishly, because we went,
09:49we were down in Surrey, I think it was,
09:51in a sort of quarry for one of the final scenes
09:54of episode 10, where I get turned into something
09:58that is a spoiler alert.
10:00And it was in, it was on one of the hottest days
10:03we had that year.
10:04It was not the hottest day.
10:05And as you probably noticed,
10:06I wear an entirely green, thick tweed waistcoat,
10:11and cape, and hat, and moustache.
10:15And I, it was very hard to think of anything
10:18other than wanting to dive into an ice bath.
10:21So the secret is,
10:24oh, the agony, gentlemen, ladies,
10:27the agony of having to perform.
10:30Didn't you find that?
10:31But we coped, didn't we?
10:32Because we had very kind people giving us fans.
10:35But you, and you had some great locations
10:37to work in as well.
10:38Yeah.
10:40We, the first location that we filmed at,
10:45on my first day, which was the scene
10:49where we arrived in England to see Unity.
10:52And it was a gorgeous, gorgeous big building.
10:55And I think that was just,
10:57it was so nice to just like look at it.
10:59I love old buildings.
11:00So it was just a real treat.
11:04I just had the weirdest dream.
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