The Sandman creator Neil Gaiman addresses all those controversial casting decisions and says folks who had problems with the gender swap of certain characters, their skin color, or even homosexuality, were not really fans of the work to begin with. In essence, call the Netflix show woke if you will, but at least know that the source material was even more flamboyantly progressive.
Recently chatting with Inverse following the renewal of The Sandman for a second season on Netflix — and amid fears of cancellation, no less — Gaiman revealed that the live-action adaptation’s most ferocious critics are basically upset that the show was too “woke” in their estimation. For instance, when it came to Gwendoline Christie’s Lucifer, the gender swap shouldn’t have been much of an issue when you consider the character from the comics.
“Lucifer looked kind of like an androgynous David Bowie and doesn’t have any genitalia because they’re an angel,” Gaiman explained.
As for why they didn’t cast Tom Ellis, who should’ve been the obvious choice, consider the stark contrast between Lucifer from The Sandman and the charismatic goofball you recognize from the Fox/Netflix show.
“Other grumpy people tended to be Tom Ellis fans, who were like, ‘I love Tom Ellis! Lucifer is based on him, why didn’t you cast him?’ And honestly, he’s not. He’s a lovable rogue. He’s a scab. He wouldn’t work in Sandman because we have to get someone that makes people scared.”
Gaiman is quite certain that these critics haven’t actually read The Sandman and just get on the hate bandwagon because of the times we live in.
“Oh, and occasionally, you get people shouting at us for having made up all of these gay characters who weren’t in the comics, and then we’d go ‘Have you read the comics?’ And they’d go ‘No.’ And we’d go, ‘They were gay in the comics.’ And they’d go ‘You’re just woke and nobody is going to watch your horrible show.’ And then we went No. 1 in the world for four weeks. And they went ‘It’s all bots! We hate you. You’re woke.'”
The best-selling novelist doesn’t think it’s much of a loss, not catering to that demographic. And he has also noticed a pattern, too.
“It’s a weird silliness,” he continued. “These complainers don’t like gay people, they don’t like Black people, and they don’t like women. And if you look at their profiles, they don’t like vaccines, they don’t like Democrats, and they’re not big on voting.”
You can catch all eight episodes of The Sandman, and the additional three surprise outings, on Netflix now.