Prime Video’s New York Comic Con panel for the much-anticipated season two of Good Omens featured writer/executive producer Neil Gaiman, director Douglas Mackinnon, executive producer Rob Wilkins, Maggie Service (“Sister Theresa Garrulous”), Nina Sosanya (“Sister Mary Loquacious”), and Quelin Sepulveda (“Muriel”). Michael Sheen (“Aziraphale”), David Tennant (“Crowley”), and Jon Hamm (“Gabriel”) also very briefly joined the gathering via Zoom to discuss the upcoming season which will arrive on Prime Video in the summer of 2023.
Neil Gaiman, who confirmed the second season will consist of six episodes, first approached Amazon and BBC in August 2019 with the plot of season two. They loved it and that led to a conversation with writer John Finnemore in December 2019 in which Gaiman came up with the season two ending.
Prior to the NYCC panel not much had been known about the season two plot. During the panel, Gaiman dropped a few tidbits about what’s in store as well as details on new characters who are showing up in the new season.
“I will say that there are some love stories in it. I will say that you will learn about Jane Austen that you didn’t know before and that you will get a lot more Heaven. There’s a lot more Hell,” explained Gaiman. “I just didn’t want to lose people. We really were such a family I couldn’t imagine doing Good Omens season two without Maggie and Nina, for example. I also couldn’t imagine doing it without Miranda Richardson. Except, the Madame Tracy story had really ended. I couldn’t think of anything else to do with Madame Tracy. I felt like her story had ended so beautifully, so I just wrote a new part for Miranda. She’s basically the demon on Earth who came to replace Crowley after they sacked Crowley. Her name is Shacks.
And, of course, we also have one actor replacing another actor which was done because the original actor was in two shows and a stage play when we needed her. So, we had to say goodbye to Anna Maxwell Martin who we loved as Beelzebub, but then we got to hire Shelley Conn as Beelzebub. She killed it in auditions, and she is every bit as awful as Anna Maxwell Martin was a Beelzebub.”
Neil Gaiman started writing season two during the summer of 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic. “I remember getting out my notebook and writing in pencil the first scene which is exactly the first scene as it wound up. After all, writing Maggie and Nina was an absolute dream. I loved it.”
Douglas Mackinnon confirmed Maggie Service had the honor of being the first shot of season two.
During the panel, Gaiman revealed episode two will include a visit to biblical times. Episode three will involve a little body-snatching stint that takes place in Edinburgh in 1827.
Among the new characters in season two is an angel named Muriel, played by Quelin Sepulveda.
“When John Finnemore and I were talking about what we wanted in season two, we realized that one we didn’t have in Heaven apart from Aziraphale were any nice, well-meaning angels. All we had were bastards. Gabriel – he is the boss from Heaven but he’s still a bastard. They’re all awful. So, we thought, ‘Let’s have a nice one,’ so we created Muriel,” said Gaiman. “Muriel has spent about 6,000 years or more in the same office in Heaven not talking to anyone, just filing things, reading things, hoping that somebody will come in and the day will get more interesting but normally it doesn’t. But Muriel is very well-meaning and has always wanted to get out a bit.”
“I think because of that she’s just so gullible and curious. She’s a bit chatty. She crosses all the t’s and dots all the i’s but does them in reverse. Like, just wrong,” said Sepulveda. “She’s a 37th-order scrivener so she’s absolute bottom of the pile, bless her. This is her first time to Earth so it was just so fun trying to figure out how she would interact with all of this. There’s so many things that we take for granted that are just the way we communicate. Like saying hi – would she know [a wave]? I can’t wait for you to see her.”
Although Maggie Service and Nina Sosanya are back for season two, they won’t be playing Sister Theresa Garrulous or Sister Mary Loquacious. Instead, Neil Gaiman came up with brand new characters for them to take on.
“One of the things that I was very certain about before I started writing season two was that there were two characters in it, and I wanted them played by Maggie and Nina. So, in order to make it clear to everybody reading the script that they were going to be played by Maggie and Nina, I called the characters Maggie and Nina. That way nobody is going to argue with me. And so, then we were sort of heading toward the thing, and I check in with Maggie and Nina and was like, ‘Do you want me to change the names of the characters?’ And they quite liked being Maggie and Nina.”
Gaiman added: “They aren’t you guys because Nina’s so grumpy. She is quite possibly the grumpiest character I’ve ever written.”
Maggie Service cried when she heard the news, which is apparently a normal reaction from Service whenever she thinks about being a part of Good Omens. “To receive an email from Mr. Neil Gaiman saying not only was he writing Good Omens two but there was a part for me should I want it – and I did – it was like a gift of hope because the fact that he could imagine a world when it was all going to be possible again was beautiful. And then we actually got to do it.”
“It was kind of strange because it was into the unknown. There was this whole thing that we knew and then suddenly it all opened up and all possibilities [opened], which I found quite scary,” explained Nina Sosanya. “And also, when we found out that we were going to be different characters it was a very odd feeling to sort of say goodbye to…”
“And then you discovered that you were going to have your own names,” interjected Mackinnon.
“And then I just became perpetually confused,” said Sosanya, laughing.
Maggie Service, careful not to reveal any spoilers, described Maggie (the character). “So, I play Maggie and she runs a record shop which is beside Aziraphale’s bookshop in Soho. So, he’s basically her landlord and it’s a shop that’s been passed through the generations. Thinking that her ancestors are Mr. Phale’s ancestors. […]My shop looks across at where Nina works.”
“Which is a coffee shop called Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death,” revealed Nina Sosanya. “Nina, who is a bit mintier than I am runs this coffee shop in Soho and so she’s quite good at dealing with the people who come into a coffee shop in Soho which is probably quite…everybody knows what that’s going to be like. You get all sorts. She’s not afraid of dealing with people.”
Neil Gaiman and Doug Mackinnon on Good Omens Stars Michael Sheen and David Tennant:
Asked how things would be different if David Tennant and Michael Sheen switched roles, Gaiman said, “They keep talking about that. They both come up to me independently and suggested at some point I might like to write a Good Omens stage play so they can swap roles each night. And it’s also true that both of them – I got David to do it once and I got Michael to do it once – where I had them read the drunk scene from season one alone and they get to play both parts and the narrator. You really get a lovely sense of Michael Sheen’s Crowley and of David Tennant’s Aziraphale.
But the truth is that Michael was meant to have played Crowley. That is where it all began was me going, ‘Who do I know who could be Crowley? Michael Sheen loves the book. Michael would do it.’ I called Michael. ‘Do you want to do it?’ He’s like, ‘Yes!’ I go, ‘Great, I have a Crowley.’
So, when I started writing the scripts, I was writing them knowing at least I have my Crowley – Michael Sheen. And around the middle of episode three, I was going, ‘This Crowley doesn’t really feel a lot like Michael Sheen.’ And then I wrote this scene where Crowley comes down the center aisle of a church hopping like man on a beach on a hot day because he’s walking on holy ground. And I thought, ‘David Tennant would be really good at that.’
And then when it was all done, I figured I had to break it to Michael that he wasn’t going to be Crowley. I wanted him to be Aziraphale. And he read the scripts and we had this really, really awkward dinner because I was trying to pluck up the courage to break it to Michael that I wanted him to play Aziraphale, and Michael was trying to find the way to break it to me that he did not want to play Crowley; he wanted to play Aziraphale having read the scripts.
So, it was an awful dinner until the end where it was like, ‘What? You too? Oh good!’”
Doug Mackinnon directed David Tennant in Doctor Who and Good Omens, and he believes he’s directed Tennant more than any other director has. “David might not be happy about that but it’s the truth. David is incredible and I’m not sure how much of his other work you see over here, but he inhabits characters in a way that no other actor that I know can do. And Michael’s amazing in his one way. They’re both so different and similar at the same time. They’re both geniuses at acting, but they have different ways into the characters. But David, who I think might be doing a little bit more Doctor Who just now, he just puts on that coat as Doctor Who and he becomes that incarnation. It’s the same with Good Omens.
The first day of season two, there they were. They were just back. And we just started doing ADR for Michael in the last few weeks, so the difference in the way they work is David is always running to the monitor having a look at what he’s done and Michael doesn’t watch himself at all. That’s not to do with confidence – it’s their techniques.
We watched Michael watching the show for the first time a few weeks ago doing the ADR. He goes, ‘Oh look, we’re back! We’re back! It’s really exciting!’ And he was just like a fan. He’s like, ‘Oh look, there’s Aziraphale!’ I’m going, ‘That’s you, Michael. That’s you.’”
Mackinnon added: “The pair of them inhabit those characters so much I can’t handle the idea of them swapping roles. It’s too much as it is.”
Neil Gaiman pointed out that they did briefly swap roles for the season one finale, and Mackinnon joked that he didn’t like those days of shooting. “Because they’re both taking the mickey out of each other. You saw what they did on screen,” said Mackinnon, laughing. “What they did off screen…”
Gaiman said that people forget that in addition to being an amazing actor, Michael Sheen is also an amazing mimic.
“During one of the very final scenes of Good Omens, I as a producer had the headphones on, and the guys were acting and we were sort of pulling away. They were sitting on a bench still talking and all of a sudden David Tennant started saying awful things about Michael Sheen. There’s Aziraphale and Crowley talking and Crowley is saying all this stuff about how Aziraphale is fat and Michael can’t act and all of this stuff. And I’m like, ‘What?!’ Now, David is the nicest man in the world. And then the penny dropped and it’s just Michael sitting there doing a pitch-perfect David Tennant as Crowley.”
