Dream Casting, Sandman Casting Call Part 10: Beautiful Dreams and Nightmares.
September 27th, 2010 by SusieThe next three dreams, did not appear in Sandman as much as the others I’ve already featured, but they did make an impression.
Eve may be the biblical Eve, or she may not be, or both could be true. She lives in a cave, and seems to have great knowledge and power. She could have been the first woman. Or a goddess of prehistory. Or an old crotchety witch. Or any of a number of other female archetypes.
Her appearance changed with each time she appeared in the series. Sometimes she was an ancient crone, sometime a middle aged motherly type, and sometimes a beautiful voluptuous young maiden.
Since she always looked like the same woman, but at different ages, I would cast her with a single actress and put her in the appropriate aging makeup.
My choice is Christina Hendricks.
Eve is drawn as having black hair, but I’d rather keep her as a redhead, and hope the Sandman super-fans will forgive me. Hendricks first impressed me on Firefly, where over the course of a single episode, she went from a naive farm girl, to a dangerous, seductive con artist. She was equally convincing as both. Lately she has been utterly mesmerizing as Joan on Mad Men. It is one of the most nuanced performances on television. She has been powerful, and also vulnerable. Confidant, and also petty. Charming, and also manipulative. Sympathetic, and then repellent. She owns every scene she’s in.
Fiddlers’ Green is unique in that he is actually a location. An idyllic patch of land, that travelers, sailors in particular, often dream of. Fiddlers’ Green decided one day to go traveling, himself. He took a human form and set out to see the Waking World (which is what our world is referred to, in the Dreaming). He took both the appearance, and general personality, of the prolific late nineteenth, early twentieth century, English author G.K. Chesterton. He called himself Gilbert (which was Chesterton’s given name), and was genial, lovely man. I didn’t know that he was based on Chesterton, when I first read Sandman. In fact, I only learned it this afternoon, when I was reviewing the Sandman character page on Wikipedia. I am just not as familiar with English fantasy authors as Neil Gaiman is. Before today I had identified Gilbert as Teddy Roosevelt.
But the fact that he is English rather than American, works even better for for the actor I chose, Jim Broadbent.
Gilbert is an incredibly lovable, somewhat blustery, fellow. Broadbent is very good at playing endearingly, bombastic men.
Finally there is the Corinthian. The Corinthian is a nightmare. Nightmares have just as much a place in the Dreaming, as any other dream. He too escaped into the Waking World. In which he became a serial killer that preyed on adolescent boys. He is one of the most chilling characters I’ve ever come across. He looks like a handsome, well built, blond man. He almost always wears sunglasses. That is because he doesn’t have eyes. Where his eyes should be, he has two small mouths. It is really creepy.
My choice for the part is James Marsters.
He has appeared in countless scifi and fantasy series. Such as: Torchwood, Caprica, Smallville, but he is best known for playing Spike on Buffy, and later its spin off Angel. He, like Hendricks, is a top rate scene stealer, but he manages to do it while making everyone he is playing against look better. He has great comic timing, but also excels at imbuing his characters with depth. He can go from broad physical comedy, to intense emotional soul barring, in the blink of an eye. He is also capable of scaring the living daylights out of me. Which is essential for the part. But his range will also come in handy for some aspects of the Corinthian’s storyline, that I don’t want to give away.
I also want to put in a quick plug for Marsters’ audiobook narration of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series. They are a blast.
Next time, some notable humans.
Tags: Buffy, Casting, Firefly, Neil Gaiman, Sandman
