Recently, Netflix released season one of the highly-anticipated series of The Sandman based on the comics written by Neil Gaiman. To promote the release, television series creators Gaiman and Allan Heinberg, both of whom also serve as executive producers and writers on the show, took part in a round table with the press.

During the interview, the two talked to SciFi Vision about how they decided what to pull versus what to leave out when creating the show. Gaiman was quick to say that he didn’t feel anything was missing from the television series. “I think what fascinates me is there's nothing in those first ten episodes that I miss. There isn't anything where I go, ‘I just wish we got to shoot that little bit that we had to leave out,’ because we were talking all of the time; I was reading the scripts. I was giving notes. There were at least a couple of times when it was even quicker just to say, ‘What if they had this dialog’ and just shunt that over to Allan than it was to try and get Allan to get somebody else to write it and whatever. So, I don't regard it as a thing of, ‘I just wish we had that scene; I wish we shot that scene.’ It's much more a thing of going, ‘I think we've made the television version.’ Sometimes we expand; sometimes we condense.”

Some of those changes, he added, were because of the lack of a narrator in the television series. “We can't stop the action while I talk to you, which I can do in comics,” explained Gaiman, citing Episode Five, “24/7,” as an example. “We take a different path through that story to the one we take in the comic,” he continued, “because we don't have somebody telling you what's going on inside everybody's head, and because we don't have that, then we're doing this with drama, and we're interacting, making it essentially a stage play. So, if we have the stage play version of that, how would you do that?”

“You have to keep the audience leaning forward, so anything we’ve left out, I think the spirit of whatever we've left out, I hope we've retained that at least,” added Heinberg. “For the most part, I discovered that what we were really doing was expanding and building on the books and writing scenes for characters that didn't exist in the books, that Neil didn't have the real estate for in the comics. So, I tend to think of the series as less of a condensation of the material than an expansion, because we get to know so much more about the characters. We get to explore their inner lives and their backstories in ways that Neil couldn't do when he had twenty-four pages an [issue].”

Heinberg also said that they knew the season would primarily be Dream (Tom Sturridge)’s story. “[E]specially season one was going to be following him and his emotional evolution,” he explained. “So, when you approach something like ‘The Doll's House,’ in which Dream has a much smaller part in the comics, we have the real estate to say, ‘Well, while Rose (Vanesu Samunyai) is on her adventure, what are Dream and Lucienne (Vivenne Acheampong) doing at the palace? What's happening to them?’ Once Dream gets home after having been gone for so long, there's obviously a power dynamic that has shifted. Lucienne has been in charge for 125 years, and now he's back, and that's got to be awkward, for them to just go back to the way that they suddenly were. Now, we're able to tell this very emotional Dream and Lucienne story that to me sort of brings the whole season full circle with the two of them, and that was an opportunity that doing the TV show gave us that Neil didn't have in the comics.”

Out of the episodes, Gaiman told the press that the biggest payoff for him was Episode Six, because it made him cry. “[I]t made me cry not once, but twice: once during the Death scene when we meet Harry (Jon Romney) and once right at the end of ‘Men of Good Fortune’ when Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) and Hob (Ferdinand Kingsley) get together in the pub, and that took me by surprise each time. I'm sitting there thinking, ‘I wrote these words.’ I plotted this out in 1988. This has been part of my life, these stories, ever since. I've read and reread them every time we reprinted them, or I was checking the color or anything like that. I know them like the back of my hand. Yet, watching this thing that we've shot is bypassing all the thinking bits of my brain and is going straight into the emotion bits, and I can't believe that's happening.”

Assuming Netflix releases a second season, Gaiman said that he’s most looking forward to “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” because they can’t take any shortcuts, whereas for Heinberg, it was “Brief Lives.”

For more from the writers, including why they made the decision to go with Johanna Constantine (Jenna Coleman) instead of John Constantine, how they made “24/7” work, and more, watch our interview, and read the full transcript below, and be sure to also watch The Sandman, now available to stream on Netflix.


QUESTION:   Neil, I'm sure Allan has something to say here as well; is there a moment that has the biggest payoff for you from when putting it down in the script to seeing it in finalized form?

NEIL GAIMAN:   I think I'd have to point to the whole of Episode Six, because it made me cry. Because it made me cry not once, but twice: once during the Death scene when we meet Harry and once right at the end of “Men of Good Fortune” when Death and Hob get together in the pub, and that took me by surprise each time. I'm sitting there thinking, “I wrote these words.” I plotted this out in 1988. This has been part of my life, these stories, ever since. I've read and reread them every time we reprinted them, or I was checking the color or anything like that. I know them like the back of my hand. Yet, watching this thing that we've shot is bypassing all the thinking bits of my brain and is going straight into the emotion bits, and I can't believe that's happening. There was so much pride in what Allan and what the actors had done in every part of that. I mean, you look at the pub every hundred years and look at production designers, costume designers and costume makers. Everybody came in to give us that, for what in the end of the day is about half an hour of television. We shouldn't have been able to do that, and we did. What Kirby Howell-Baptiste brings to Death in just making you go, “Oh, yes. When I die, I hope you're there. You'll make things better. It'll be okay.” That thing. I don't care that it took us a thousand auditions to get to Kirby, because we got Kirby at the end, and it's like, that thing is the thing that we wanted, that feeling of speaking truth, that feeling of being the person at the end that you love and you care for, the person you would like to imagine was there for your child, for your parent, for your sibling, for your loved one at the end.

QUESTION:   What made you decide to go with Johanna Constantine instead of John Constantine, and if it was a DC crossover issue, if you will have to change some of the other characters in the future?

NEIL GAIMAN:   No, it was economy. It was the economy of filmmaking. We started Sandman going, anybody watching Sandman, we're going to go, “You are starting here. This is the first place; you are not expected to have brought any knowledge with you.” When I wrote “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” Sandman Three, I knew everybody knew John Constantine. He had his own comic, Hellblazer; I wanted to bring some of his readers into Sandman. Later on, I had an enormous amount of fun creating Johanna Constantine, his ancestor, and having her appear a couple of times, and it was really nice and solid.

When we looked at what we were going to do in this episode, in this whole series, we knew that we were going to have Lady Johanna Constantine meeting Dream in a pub, and if we're going to do that, and we want a really classy actress to portray her, then we're going to have to give the actress more to do than just meet him once in a pub. And given that there really weren't many women in the beginning, the idea that we could actually find one person and have them do both just seemed nice and straightforward.

Later on, I was told there were all sorts of restrictions about using Constantine and that JJ Abrams had bought these things, and people go “Oh, you must be doing that because of this.” I wish I could say, “Well, yes, we wanted John Constantine, but no,” but, actually, the truth was that was - I mean, we talked about that at the initial sitting and having dinner [with] Netflix and everybody. That was one of the things that just sort of seemed to make sense. It was big and obvious that we were going to do that. Also, Jenna is brilliant. I think, for the record, I would say that Jenna is the best, including Keanu Reeves, including Matt Ryan. I think Jenna is the best Constantine on screen so far, and weirdly, somehow the truest, because she both has the humor and the attractiveness and that sleazy, doomed quality. You know that if you fall in love with her, you are dead and demon fodder, and you also know that you can't help falling in love with her.

QUESTION:   How did the initial germ of the idea for the Sandman comics, how did that finally become realized in this series?

NEIL GAIMAN:   Well the initial germ of the idea for the Sandman comics was DC Comics saying to me, “We'd like you to do a monthly comic to try and raise your profile, because we've got this thing you've done called Black Orchid coming out, and nobody knows who you are.” So, when I was trying to come up with an idea for a comic back then, I wanted something that I could go anywhere with. I didn't know if I could write a monthly comic, but I thought, “I'll give myself the widest possible playing ground.” The idea of an immortal being who had been around since the beginning of time, who was in your dreams, gave me historical, gave me horror, gave me fantasy, gave me contemporary, even gave me science fiction if I wanted it. I think that sensibility of “we can go anywhere,” that sensibility that you do not know where the next episode is going to take you, you don't even know the genre of the next episode and whatever the next episode is, you're not prepared for it. I feel like that actually translated beautifully onto the screen.

SCIFI VISION:  Can you talk about the difficulties in deciding what to pull and what you had to leave out? Because obviously, you had to really, really condense it.

NEIL GAIMAN:   Let me throw that to you.

ALLAN HEINBERG:   I felt like we had to move the storytelling along at a clip. You have to keep the audience leaning forward, so anything we’ve left out, I think the spirit of whatever we've left out, I hope we've retained that at least. But for the most part, I discovered that what we were really doing was expanding and building on the books and writing scenes for characters that didn't exist in the books, that Neil didn't have the real estate for in the comics. So, I tend to think of the series as less of a condensation of the material than an expansion, because we get to know so much more about the characters. We get to explore their inner lives and their backstories in ways that Neil couldn't do when he had twenty-four pages an episode, an issue. But generally, we knew that this was primarily going to be Dream's story, that especially season one was going to be following him and his emotional evolution. So, when you approach something like “The Doll's House,” in which Dream has a much smaller part in the comics, we have the real estate to say, “Well, while Rose is on her adventure, what are Dream and Lucienne doing at the palace? What's happening to them?” Once Dream gets home after having been gone for so long, there's obviously a power dynamic that has shifted. Lucienne has been in charge for 125 years, and now he's back, and that's got to be awkward, for them to just go back to the way that they suddenly were. Now, we're able to tell this very emotional Dream and Lucienne story that to me sort of brings the whole season full circle with the two of them, and that was an opportunity that doing the TV show gave us that Neil didn't have in the comics.

SCIFI VISION:  Anything to add, Neil?

NEIL GAIMAN:   I think what fascinates me is there's nothing in those first ten episodes that I miss. There isn't anything where I go, “I just wish we got to shoot that little bit that we had to leave out,” because we were talking all of the time; I was reading the scripts. I was giving notes. There were at least a couple of times when it was even quicker just to say, “What if they had this dialog” and just shunt that over to Allan than it was to try and get Allan to get somebody else to write it and whatever. So, I don't regard it as a thing of, “I just wish we had that scene; I wish we shot that scene.” It's much more a thing of going, “I think we've made the television version.” Sometimes we expand; sometimes we condense. A lot of the time, when we're condensing, we're condensing because we don't have a narrator; we can't stop the action while I talk to you, which I can do in comics. So, like in [Episode] Five, the diner story, we take a different path through that story to the one we take in the comic, because we don't have somebody telling you what's going on inside everybody's head, and because we don't have that, then we're doing this with drama, and we're interacting, making it essentially a stage play. So, if we have the stage play version of that, how would you do that?

QUESTION:   At what point did you say, “This is where “24/7” should go?” And was there any hesitation in setting the episode there and handling it like that for viewers who may not be so used to esoteric storytelling?

ALLAN HEINBERG:   I feel like the only shift we made, we did everything sequentially; we told “A Hope in Hell” alongside “Passengers.” We combined those two issues and we cut back and forth between the two of them knowing that it would inevitably lead both of those strands to the diner in the next episode. Then, we combined “24 Hours” and “Sound and Fury” into “24/7,” seven being the number of “Sound and Fury.” So, that was the writers room feeling very pleased with itself. So, in terms of where it it landed, it sort of landed there, because it had to, inevitably, to bring John and Dream together at the end of that episode. It was mainly how to get there, how to build everything that came before it so that what happens at the diner and what happens directly after has the biggest emotional impact. So, all the stuff we invented for, you know, Ethel, that leads us to John; that leads us to Rosemary; that gets us to the diner. So, there's this terrible inevitability around once you get to the diner, and he's got the ruby. There's this dreadful sense of unease that just gets stronger and stronger as you move through it until Dream arrives to save the day. So, it was mainly about how to make it all work together and feel like one story.

QUESTION:   I wanted to know if Netflix is able to continue Sandman all the way to the end, what story are you most excited to see on the screen?

NEIL GAIMAN:   I'm really looking forward to seeing “Midsummer Night's Dream.” I think, if we do that, it's one we can't cheap on. We can't take other shortcuts; we actually just have to do it, and I can't wait to see what we'd actually make if we did that.

ALLAN HEINBERG:   The one I'm the most scared of is “Game of You,” which means it's going to become my favorite, because that's what happened this time around. But I also have been working on outlines for “Brief Lives” and I find “Brief Lives” so powerful and so moving in ways that now that I'm an older person, going back and rereading it, it just affects me profoundly. So, I'm looking forward to both of those.