'The Sandman' Stars Say It's Neil Gaiman's Best Yet & Tom Sturridge Is 'Perfect' As Dream
The Coraline author has been trying to make this happen for decades!
Mason Alexander Park as Desire in "Sandman." Right: Tom Sturridge as Dream and Kyo Ra as Rose Walker in "Sandman."
If you’ve watched a dark fantasy show or movie in the last two decades, you’ve probably seen Sandman author Neil Gaiman’s work on screen, whether you know it or not.
But while Gaiman has seen adaptations for everything from Stardust and Coraline to Good Omens and American Gods, it’s taken a few decades and a bit of help from Netflix for someone to finally get his Sandman comic “right.”
That’s according to John Cameron Mitchell, Gaiman’s friend who also plays drag queen Hal Carter in the new Netflix show.
“He’d been part of many (adaptations), but he didn’t always have control,” Mitchell recently told Narcity. “I feel like Sandman might be the apotheosis of his vision being adapted correctly.”
Gaiman wrote the Sandman graphic novels in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it took decades to bring it to screen. Work first began on it in 1997, and Joseph Gordon Levitt was later set to star in a movie in the late 2000s, but Sandman didn't really take off until Netflix got the rights and decided to make it a series in recent years.
Now, the show's stars say it might be the best Gaiman-related thing yet.
“Neil is one of the most prolific and important writers of my lifetime,” said Mason Alexander Park, who plays Desire in the show. “The fact that he is around and so heavily involved in the show was instrumental to the success, and to the tone, and to the heart.”
We recently chatted with Mitchell and Park about the show, and they were both thrilled to be a part of making it happen.
They also gave a ton of credit to leading man Tom Sturridge, who plays the god-like master of sleep called Dream, a.k.a. the Sandman himself.
“Tom is indisputably Dream,” Park said. “That is the person that I read about (in the comics…) so it made it super easy to work with him.”
"God, there's a lot going on there," Mitchell said of Sturridge. "You know, this person is an eternal person, one of the Endless -- and he plays that well, like someone who has a deep well of memory and regret."
The first season of Sandman is available now on Netflix.