The Sandman bosses defend inclusive cast changes: ‘No reason to be a white male’

The Sandman: Trailer for new Netflix series

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The Sandman has gone down a huge hit on Netflix, with many viewers loving the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s comics. However, fans will have noticed some of the characters have been gender-flipped, including Johanna Constantine (played by Jenna Coleman) and Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong). Screenwriter Allan Heinberg spoke to Express.co.uk and other press, defending the inclusive changes.

The Sandman series was inspired by Dream’s (Tom Sturridge) adventures in the comics from the late 80s.

But in the year 2022, creator Neil wanted to bring the story up to date, and he made some tweaks to the characters.

In the comics, the librarian in The Dreaming is a white male called Lucien, and Dream has a run-in with crook John Constantine.

Yet in the small-screen adaptation, both characters are female and are of different nationalities.

Allan Heinberg said it was “always in Sandman’s DNA” to be inclusive.

He said: “When we were adapting it to screen those same principles and priorities guided our casting process.

“A way we can see into these characters, we would always look at whether a character who may have been white and male in the comic originally needed to be white and male for storytelling purposes as we reimagined Sandman for 2022.

“In the case of Harry the violinist who Dream and Death encounter, it was very important to us that he, at the end of his life, he said the Shema.

“That dictates he’s going to be the way that Harry is in the book, for structural reasons.

“Whereas in the book Lucienne was white and male, a DC comic book character that Neil basically pulled into the Sandman universe who pre-existed the Sandman.

“There was no reason for storytelling why that character had to be white and male and so it allowed us to go to a much vaster talent pool to say ‘who among all of these actors would make the best Lucien?’

“That was Vivienne, without a doubt, so that’s how we approached it.”

Vivienne opened up about the advice Neil gave her when he offered her the role.

She told Women’s Wear Daily: “The best advice that Neil gave was, ‘we’ve picked you for this part. Trust yourself.’

“I wanted to bring my own take, but very much still be loyal to who that character is in the comics, those characters that we know so well.”

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Neil Gaiman also spoke to Express.co.uk and other press about bringing Dream to the small screen.

He detailed some tweaks he made to Morpheus’ final look, joking some of the original ideas looked like “cosplay”.

He said: “We do the starry Morpheus eyes the first time he meets Alex Burgess in The Dreaming, and also when he looks into the water.

“But we absolutely thought right from the beginning about putting him in jet black contact lenses and going in and creating the eyes with GG.

“We tried it and it looked like somebody cosplaying at San Diego Comic-Con, doing a good Morpheus cosplay.

“But we also felt we had lost something from who Morpheus was that Tom was bringing us with the eyes.

“I thought, in all the comics that have ever been, Batman’s eyes are pure white and in every adaptation that has ever been done for the screen, Batman’s eyes are human beings’ eyes.

“You don’t have a lot to act with and you leave the actor their eyes.

“I thought if Batman’s eyes can be white in the comics but human eyes on the screen, then Morpheus can primarily have human eyes on the screen.”

The Sandman is on Netflix now.

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