Good Omens will release on May 31, and while there’s not been too much revealed, the first trailer at New York Comic Con looked fantastic. Of course, as with any adaptation, there are going to be some changes from page to screen - some of which have already been revealed with casting announcements, and some of which were revealed for the first time at NYCC.

As a whole, it seems that Good Omens is definitely going to satisfy fans of the novel (although Gaiman is well aware that not everyone will love the show), and we talked with the cast and creators about what kinds of changes (big and small) have been made for the small screen.

  • This Page: How Good Omens’ Cast & Characters Are Different Page 2: Smaller Changes Good Omens Has Made To The Book

Casting Unexpected Characters

Some of the biggest changes coming to the show are to do with the physical appearance of the characters - most of whom had already been revealed ahead of the con, meaning that Gaiman and MacKinnon were well aware of some of the less-than-positive reactions to changes. Multiple characters will not match the gender or race mentioned in the original books, while some didn’t have a description in the books, but have still surprised a few people with their on-screen appearance. Gaiman and MacKinnon are quick to point out, though, that these changes simply reflect how they saw the world:

Creating New Characters

As well as changing things up for some of the existing characters, the TV version of Good Omens is going to be bringing in some new characters - most notably, John Hamm as the Archangel Gabriel. Gabriel is only mentioned in the original novel, but will become a full-blown character in the series, and fans at NYCC were treated to a clip of Hamm in action as an angelic boss who hasn’t quite got the hang of being human. The scene (which was not released after the panel, so we can’t include it here) shows Gabriel and a lackey visiting Aziraphale in his bookshop, and their hilarious attempts to fit in on Earth just make them stand out all the more. Hamm and Sheen also spoke about how this character is going to be fleshed out on screen this year:

Gaiman: Well in terms of gender diversity, angels and demons, as stated in the book, have no gender… Archangel Uriel and Archangel Michael are both played by women, Sandalfon and Gabriel are both played by men. I love that one of those women is black, Gloria, who is just this amazing actress. And doing the same in Hell, we had male demons in Hastur, and I love the idea that Beelzebub would be Anna Maxwell Martin, Aegon would be Elizabeth Berrington, I think that it gave us a nice kind of balance.

MacKinnon: I think that the thing we were doing all the way through the casting process in these terms was to question the assumptions and see if there was a different answer that just felt right.

Gaiman: The one I received the most s**t for, was Pepper. Who is played by a fantastic young actress named Amma Ris, who is a person of color. Who is a small girl of color. And who also happened to be the best and the feistiest person who turned up at any of the auditions. What’s interesting is that there are almost no physical descriptions of anybody in the book, but Pepper is described as having red hair and a face that was basically one giant freckle, and so people are like ‘oh my god, that has to be white’, and… no she doesn’t.

MacKinnon: And you know, Adam and Eve being people of color, just feels completely honest and straightforward, you know, it’s the Garden of Eden, where was it? It was in Africa.

Gaiman: It is going to be respectful towards religion because Good Omens fundamentally is. But, if you’re the kind of person who is going to have a problem with a black Adam and Eve, please stop watching in the first minute or two, because it’s only going to get worse. If you have problems with that, it’s just going to get so much worse for you.

Page 2: Smaller Changes Good Omens Is making To the Book

John Hamm: Yeah, the good news is when you are creating something kind of out of whole cloth and you have the actual creator (or co creator) of the cloth there, then you can ask him anything. And we quickly settled on the idea that the archangel Gabriel… he’s that guy who’s that boss that you’ve probably worked for who’s just an a**hole. He’s got that combination of confidence and absolute misinformation that is toxic and weird, but it doesn’t prevent him from making decisions swiftly…. The idea that even in a place that’s Heaven, that’s meant to be all good, there is some not so good, was appealing.

Michael Sheen: Aziraphale gets really flustered by Gabriel, as his boss, because he’s so sort of perfect and annoying. And it was quite funny because obviously John has done Mad Men, and I did a series that was set in a similar time period and I always felt like, ‘oh, John is the real deal, and I’m just sort of messing around’, and so I got to bring that out. That is how Aziraphale feels about Gabriel, he always looks so good when he’s running through the park and I’m just wheezing along, so I was able to bring all those insecurities out with him which was kind of great.

The Smaller Details

In addition to major character changes, there are going to be a few minor ones throughout, as is to be expected when adapting a book for live action. Fans of the big seance scene with Madame Tracey (Miranda Richardson) will be interested to learn that some of the ‘spirits’ that come through will be different… and possibly relieved that the painful caricature of the ‘Native American Spirit Guide’ that Madame Tracey makes up to appeal to her small-town clientele will not be making an appearance in the show.

There will also be some Terry Pratchett Easter eggs to look out for, including his hat in the book shop, so eagle eyed fans will enjoy spotting those:

Richardson: No, the Native American didn’t make it in. No, there’s somebody’s dead husband, there’s a… little Irish girl, all the sort of things that you would expect, and uh, I don’t think that I can reveal who some of the voices are going to be, sadly, except of course, Michael Sheen as Aziraphale. That’s all I can say, but it was fun.

Finally, there will be some new scenes that aren’t in the book at all - including the favorite moment for both Tennant and Sheen (that they could talk about without spoilers, of course). The start of the third episode will include a montage of Crowley and Aziraphale’s history together, throughout the ages, and it sounds like it’s going to be a highlight of the show:

MacKinnon: There’s things like [Terry Pratchett’s] hat is always in the bookshop, you see it in the first frame, you see AZ, you see Terry’s hat, hanging there. You have to look a little bit to find it, but there’s Easter Eggs like that all the way through.

Next: Neil Gaiman Aware The Good Omens Will Offend Some People

Tennant: I think both of our favorite bit is the start of episode 3, which isn’t really in the book although bits of it are inspired by the book, that is sort of a kind of trawl through history. We see them, the two of them, and their relationship over the course of the history of mankind and they sort of pop up in all these different situations.

Sheen: And reading it in the script, was so enjoyable. It was such a satisfying experience to go scene by scene through history seeing the enjoyment of like ‘what are they going to be like at Noah’s Arc, what are they going to be like at Arthurian times’, and the enjoyment of that, and then the enjoyment of seeing how their relationship has developed.

Tennant: But also so clever to put that in episode 3, so you’ve already seen a lot about where they now are and who they are and then you get to understand what form that relationship takes.

Sheen: So it was as satisfying to do as it was to read, and now we just hope it’s as satisfying to watch for an audience as it was for us to do it.