David Tennant on Good Omens

neil-gaiman:

You’re also a part of the Amazon TV series Good Omens, which I’m very excited about!

TENNANT: Good, I’m glad!

What was the attraction to that? Was it Neil Gaiman, specifically, or was it the story and character?

TENNANT: Obviously, a Neil Gaiman story, in itself, is appealing. The fact that Neil was so involved, as the showrunner and he’s written all the scripts, and I knew that Michael Sheen was involved, and Douglas Mackinnon, a director I knew of old, was directing, and just the sweep and scope of the story and the resources that we had to make the story with, just felt like this was a project that was going to be very exciting, and I wanted to be a part of it.

What did you enjoy about playing Crowley, and the relationship between your character and Michael Sheen’s character, Aziraphale?

TENNANT: Well, it’s a bit of a double act. They are yin and yang, really. I enjoyed playing almost every scene with Michael Sheen. He’s someone I’ve known for years. We never really acted together, but I knew him and I knew his work, and I knew that it was gonna be fun, and indeed it was. He’s great to bounce off. He’s never not engaged, in any moment of a scene, and it makes you better to have someone to play with who’s that present and skillful. Crowley is a great character. He’s a demon, and they’re averting the apocalypse. We get to see them throughout all of human history. There were so many things that were just gonna be fun to get involved with. Just to be a part of this story that people love so much and that means so much to people – this novel has such a following – it can be intimidating because you don’t want to break it, disappoint people, or let people down, but it felt like the team was robust enough to make it something worth doing.

How did you find Neil Gaiman, as a showrunner?

TENNANT: Oh, fantastic! He was very present and very involved, but also hugely creative. He’s lived with this novel for so many years. It was such a formative experience for him, as a writer, writing with Terry Pratchett. And with Terry Pratchett no longer being with us, Neil has become the caretaker for the memory of Terry. I think he would acknowledge that, himself. So, he’d be entirely forgiven for being rather proprietorial about the whole thing and about wanting things done in a very prescriptive way. And whilst he had a very clear, very strong, and very persuasive view of the material, which was fantastic to have access to, he was also interested in what people brought to it. He was genuinely interested in the collaborative art of making it from a novel into something else. He actually couldn’t have been better, from that point of view, just having his skills available to us, all the time, and to have a conversation about these characters and about the show, as it developed. The whole thing was a wonderful experience.

From http://collider.com/david-tennant-interview-bad-samaritan/#electric-entertainment