Garth Ennis wild and shocking supernatural comic book comes to AMC this weekend.
Sam Catlin: Theres not an interesting answer to that, other than we both had the same agents.
Its sort of just like a dead-eyed, crass commercialism was how it started.
I didnt know them.
I mean I knew who they were and they were bigBreaking Badfans and they were hugePreacherfans.
I had never heard ofPreacher.
But they were like, Hey, you should meet Seth Rogen!
and they gave me the comic and they were like, Dude, you never heard ofPreacher?
What the fuck, man!
You gotta read this!
So I read it and I was like, Thats incredible.
Its not a TV show.
Theres no way thats a TV show.
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That was like two years ago that we sort of first got together.
Theyve been great collaborators.
But they really are.
But I would say, You cant pace it that way for a TV show.
Because they had never really done TV before.
Anyways, its been a great collaboration.
So theyve been great collaborators and they are super smart and great directors.
I think people are going to be really impressed by what they did with directing the pilot.
So I think people will be really impressed.
What was your approach to that?
Ive got to do…weve got to go there and then weve got to do this.
Maybe we see him actually as a preacher trying to be a preacher.
I mean hes still a hot mess.
It gets crazy bloody, over the top.
Its got to be that week after week after week, but it also has to be airable.
Im going to make a run at turn this into a TV show?
And this sort of…whats the word?
This sort of exuberance of the world, like anything can fucking happen.
you’re able to go to the south of France.
you’ve got the option to go back in time to the old West.
And its done with such confidence and such bravado… Its crazy.
Theres nothing like it.
Theres certainly nothing like it on TV.
I didnt know what else to compare it to.
I mean it may not work.
We may understand why a show like this has never been on the air.
I think it has the potential to be a lot of fun, hopefully.
You want to do a show that has some life.
Did you say you want to do like three books a season?
How did you break that down?
Or do you break that down?
Obviously theres great sort of chapters and episodes all throughout it.
There are these chapters to it, which is really liberating.
So you’re able to kind of tell stories all over the place.
Do you know where this season ends?
Do you sort of have an idea…?
We just broke the last episode yesterday.
Theres three specific elements that we havent heard about that I am curious about.
One is The Saint of Killers.
And the third one is the Fuck Communism lighter and how youll get around language restrictions with that.
We dont get to (the lighter) in Season 1.
Well distress one of the letters on it.
But its not a Season 1 thing.
Thats my big breaking news for you.
We wont see that in Season 1.
And the Saint of Killers or Heaven?
Theyll definitely be involved in the show.
But just maybe not Season 1?
I cant tell ya.
I could not tell ya.
I dont think people are going to watch the show and say like, Oh, God.
I wish it were on HBO, because then they could really fucking go for it.
I dont think people are going to think that.
And I dont think people are going to be like, Wow.
They left money on the floor.
I mean I think people are going to have strong opinions about the show.
They want us to doPreacher.
A lot of people over there and at Sony, they are like geeked out fans of the comic.
They are not just dead-eyed widget makers.
Theres a lot of people that are comic book nerds.
And they dont want to see us fuck it up by doing sort of the PG-13 version.
In terms of the language?
Theres a little bit of restrictions to that.
But Cassidy swears so much in Irish that it gets past (Standards & Practices) every time.
The violence youve seen the violence.
And it gets really hectic.
They are fans of it and they want us to doPreacher.
Its not going to hook people.
They are constantly looking for things.
So I think theyre excited.
I did not know they could do that on TV.
How do you begin that process of making the edges big enough to contain all of that?
Well, thats easy, because thats just in the comic.
One of the things I love aboutPreacheris its, Yeah, theres vampires.
And theres ghosts and theres angels…
I love that its sort of unapologetic.
Its just like theres Satan, and theres a vampire, and people are surprised or they are not.
The big scary X factor was Cassidy because he was such a big character.
You think of actors but you are like, I dont see it.
First of all, you nailed it.
How did that process unfold and when did you realize youd found your man?
Joe, Id never heard of him.
Ive never heard of him.
I was like, Oh my god.
But we hadnt even hired a casting director yet.
So we went for months auditioning Cassidys.
I was like, I want this Joe Gilgun!
And the more I learned about it, it was like, Well, heres the thing.
Joe lives in the woods.
He doesnt have easy access to technology.
I was like, Oh my God!
So I had to sort of wrangle him and get him to meet with me and talk to us.
But it was weird.
And one of their execs was like a totalPreachergeek.
He was like, So have you thought about casting?
I was like, No.
We havent even started casting.
And hes like, OK.
But I gotta tell ya, theres a guy on this show calledThis is England.
His name is Joe Gilgun.
I was like, Are you fucking kidding me?
Thats the guy in my head!
So it was meant to be.
And I agree, I think he nails it.
How quickly did he rise to the top?
Were there other names in the mix or was Dominic pretty much on the radar from the start?
When we saw him thats who we wanted, for sure.
Theres so much television.
Theres so much competition for actors.
Theres so many jobs out there.
And we were casting during pilot season, which was crazy.
But, again, I saw his reel in pilot season.
And when someone of Dominics stature isnt a movie star…well, not yet.
Hes gonna be.
But still, he has stature enough where the game of agents is like, they dont audition.
They dont audition, you offer to them, so its this whole game.
So I looked at his reel.
I was like, Hes awesome.
I sawDevils Double, which has sort of like…those are two certain colors of Jesse.
Its like, Hey, hes a nice normal guy, but hes also a fucking maniac.
But it was a roll of the dice; youre not auditioning this guy.
He can do that.
Oh, he can be really quiet.
Oh, he can be a fucking badass.
You sort of need to ratchet these things up.
OK. Well, what about this?
What about this, and this, and this?
By the time you look upon Satan, you are like, OK!
Any sense of how AMC is going to educate audiences who arent fans of the comics?
As manyPreacherfans as there are, theres many more people who havent heard ofPreacher, too.
So we want everyone to get the show from the beginning.
I didnt know the comic.
You know, its a simple story one can identify with (laughs).
Preacherpremieres Sunday night (May 22) at 10:00 p.m. on AMC.
