Would Terry Pratchett Approve of ‘Good Omens’? Neil Gaiman Speaks

Writer Neil Gaiman remembers Terry Pratchett as their book ‘Good Omens’ releases as a web series.

Rob Wilkins and Neil Gaiman talk about Good Omens.

(Photo: The Quint)

Actors Michael Sheen and David Tennant feature as angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley respectively in Good Omens, which is currently streaming Amazon Prime Video. The series is an adaptation of the widely popular book Good Omens authored by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett in 1990. Here’s executive producers Neil Gaiman and Rob Wilkins talking about their show:

On Creating 'Good Omens’ Almost 30 Years After the Book

Neil Gaiman: I was talking last night to Terry Gilliam who came to our premiere, and Terry had been trying to make Good Omens into a feature film for a lot of that thirty years and failed. Also Terry Gilliam was the person who about eight years ago said to me, "You should be making it on television by this point." And he came up and he just said, "You did it proud. All the things that I had to leave out to make a feature film, you got to put in and it was special and magic." The reason it couldn't be made, I think, it was too big, too mad, too sprawling. The reason it could be made now is because two things have come together. We have online platforms. Places like, in our case, Amazon Prime Video which going to release it all around the world, which also comes with enough money to make it. And you have the advances in graphics and in CGI that allowed us to make it. Both the visible CGI of 'Good Omens' which is a little bit cartoony and which we had enormous amounts of fun with. You know the idea of a flying saucer coming down, it's a flying saucer that a 12-year-old would imagine, but in that, we've also got invisible CGI that allows us to have a busy SoHo street in which we had to film all sorts of things in all sorts of weather without having to close down SoHo in London.

Neil Gaiman with Terry Pratchett.

Would Terry Pratchett be Happy with the Way ‘Good Omens’ Turned Out?

Neil Gaiman: I think Terry would have loved what we have done. If he was still here and still alive, and I had done all this, he would be thrilled that I was the one getting up really early in the morning, getting to bed late at night and to think of nothing but Good Omens for years while he would have written another eight books.

Rob Wilkins: Terry would be so proud. He would have given us such a hard time during the entire process, I cant deny that. But he never asked me for anything, during the whole friendship. He asked for nothing except for this huge, massive request. This had taken 4 years of Neil's life. But what a request. Nobody would have loved Good Omens as much as Terry and Neil.

Would ‘Good Omens’ Be Different Had Terry Pratchett Also Worked On It?

Terry Pratchett with Neil Gaiman.

Neil Gaiman: If he had been around to work with me, I would have probably written the scripts and then hand them over to Terry and he would have given them back to me and I would have been 'Oh My God! That thing you did. Brilliant!" and he would say, "Yes! Grasshopper! It is now 17 percent funnier." And it would have been. I missed him all through the writing process particularly. When I got stuck, I would have called him and said, "Terry, what should I do ?" And whenever I did anything clever, I wanted to call him and say, "You like this?"

Rob Wilkins: I think Neil missing Terry, those telephone calls during Terry's lifetime. We all have them. I could be driving to London, having just said goodbye to Terry 15 minutes before and ideas entered his head and he wanted to share. And there were few of us, select few, that he would share the moments with. But of course with Neil, they created Good Omens together and they had that relationship. And it must have been difficult not having Terry. Can't imagine what it must have felt like for Neil.

Michael Sheen and David Tennant in Good Omens.

Neil Gaiman: It was so strange because Good Omens was ours, the idea. We didn't do anything even after Good Omens was done. We didn't do anything Good Omens related that we didn't do together. If you look before and afterwards, to the newest additions of Good Omens don't have any names on them. Because Terry wrote half of one and sent it over to me and I wrote half of other and sent it over to him and we both messed around with what each other had done and created the finished version. We did, back in 2006, Crowley and Aziraphale's New Year's Resolution and Terry wrote six of them and sent them over to me. I wrote eight and sent them back to him. He wrote another four and sent them back to me and the great thing about it is that even I couldn't remember who had written what until I went back into my email and forensically reconstructed it. I had enormous fun with anybody who ever tells me they know who wrote what in Good Omens, giving them the list and saying 'let me know'. And so far nobody has got them a hundred percent right.

Was the Idea to Make the Voice of God a Woman, a Deliberate One?

Neil Gaiman: It was absolutely deliberate. But it began in a way of just looking what I'd made in terms of what the scripts were and going, "Oh, it's pretty male!". We have some fantastic women in here. We have Anathema, we have Madam Tracy but overall it is very male and there are a lot of men in it all the time. I want a female voice, just for balance and it's all very very English so let's have an American voice for balance. So balance was the beginning thing. Honestly, I've enjoyed very very much discovering that the sort of people who would not like Good Omens anyway don't like Francis McDormand voicing God. So I think it's great that the first thing that happens on screen is Francis McDormand talks and we see Adam and Eve and they are black, because if anybody has problems then we are only four and a half minuted in and they can stop watching that.