'Good Omens' Cast Praises Writer Neil Gaiman: 'Very Little Ad-Libbing' (Exclusive)

Good Omens Season 2 is just 11 days away, and the cast says you don't need to worry at all about the quality of the writing. In a press junket recorded before the SAG strike began, several main cast members from the series praised author and executive producer Neil Gaiman. They think long-time fans will love this story, even if it hasn't been printed in a book.

Gaiman is the showrunner on Good Omens, a series adaptation of the acclaimed 1990 novel he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett. Many fans were shocked to hear that the show would be getting a second season since there was no second book, but Gaiman has explained that he and Pratchett did write an extensive outline for a sequel that they never got around to writing. This season starts to tell that story, and the cast said that it was written as carefully and completely as anything Gaiman has ever worked on. When I asked if there was a more "creative" or "exploratory vibe" on set this season, actress Maggie Service said that things didn't feel all that different.

"Neil and Terry did discuss a sequel idea, right?" Service said. "So it's not just Neil flying solo on this. They had an idea, I think Season 2 is kind of a bridge into a possible telling of that story – I believe. [Gaiman] is incredibly clear. He's very, very careful – I mean full of care with the way that he works and the way that he writes. The scripts with him and John Finnemore were a delight to get, and actually hardly anything changed. Once we got the script, that was what we shot with. So, the vision was really clear. We could kind of be playful within the scenes, but absolutely, the structure and the framework and the words were all there."

"It was very well-crafted, you know," added actress Nina Sosanya. Meanwhile, in a separate interview, I asked stars Quelin Sepulveda, Liz Carr and Shelley Conn about the process of authentically embodying characters that are literal angels and demons – and doing so without disrespecting the biblical source material. Once again, they came around to praising Gaiman for setting the groundwork for their performances.

"Actually, I think we adhere to the script. The whole [thing is] on the page, pretty much," said Sepulveda. "Yeah, it's all present from the get-go, actually, in the script."

"It's so well-written!" agreed Carr. "And that's the thing: You trust Neil Gaiman, who's really thought about the issues, and thought about how to tell those stories in relevant ways that don't exclude if you are from a secular perspective. You know, he knows how to do that. There wasn't a lot – from my experience – there wasn't a lot of ad-libbing, because you didn't need to. It already went there."

"It's kind of a testament to his knowledge of the Bible that he can pick out the stories and see a different perspective on them, play with them," added Conn.

As Gaiman has explained publicly a few times now, he and Pratchett shared a hotel room in Seattle at the World Fantasy Convention in 1991, but both were too jet-lagged to get much sleep. Instead, they used the time to entertain ideas for a sequel to their recent novel Good Omens, and before long they had plotted the story out. After that, Gaiman moved to the U.S. and took on many other projects, so the sequel novel never materialized. Pratchett passed away in 2015, and Gaiman has been adamant about honoring Pratchett's memory at every step of the adaptation process.

Good Omens Season 1 is streaming now on Prime Video. Season 2 premieres on Friday, July 28.