The first season of Good Omens felt like lightning in a bottle. The two lead characters, played by David Tennant and Michael Sheen, had amazing chemistry and there was a whole host of loveable and hilariously quirky side characters.
That can be hard to recapture, but season two of Good Omens does just that.
Alongside returning fan favorites there are also new angels and demons in town. Quelin Sepulveda, Liz Carr, and Shelley Conn all joined the cast of season two, which finds Tennant’s demon Crowley and Sheen’s angel Aziraphale trying to solve the mystery of why the archangel Gabriel — played by a returning John Hamm — showed up on their doorstep in the buff and with no memory of who he is.
Sepulveda plays the naive and trusting angel Muriel, who is sent on her very first mission to Earth to keep an eye on our favorite angel and demon dynamic duo even though she understands little of what’s happening around her. In an early scene Aziraphale offers her a cup of tea, but she just holds the cup and saucer awkwardly, obviously not having any idea what she’s supposed to do with it.
Courtesy of Prime Video
In an interview with PRIDE, Sepulveda said that the key to playing Muriel was to be curious. “It was just remembering to engage with the world in a very curious way and just be sensitive to the fact that this is their first time experiencing everything,” she said. “And finding the joy and the curiosity in the mundane. It allowed for so much fun to be had.”
This interview was conducted prior to the start of the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Actress, comedian, and disability rights activist Liz Carr plays the powerful angel Saraqael in the new season. While Carr’s own disability is never part of the plot, there is a lot of smart visual storytelling. Her character Sarqael uses a futuristic flying wheelchair while she’s in heaven and on Earth she’s able to use her powers to make ramps appear in places that would have been inaccessible otherwise. Originally the role wasn’t written as a disabled character, but when they cast Carr the role was altered by Neil Gaiman — who created the series based on a book he wrote in the ‘90s with Terry Pratchett. Carr said that when Gaiman told her about the character he said that “you’ll perform miracles and any kind of steps or barriers they will disappear.”
“Disabled people have been waiting for that, that’s a real miracle,” Carr tells PRIDE. “That would be incredible. To show that, to have the imagination of Neil Gaiman on what I think’s quite political, but without banging on about it, is brilliant. I loved that I'm there as, you know, a pivotal, useful character in the plot, but also, the fact that I am a disabled woman adds layers to it I think and I love that. I think that’s the whole point about when we do get representation and diversity it does add a richness.”
Without falling back on preachy exposition, Saraqael having to use her heavenly powers in order to access Aziraphale’s store subtly points to what a problem it is that most of the world remains inaccessible despite decades of activists working to create change.
“Even a heavenly being cannot get in the bookshop because of the steps,” Carr succinctly puts it.
Shelley Conn may be a fresh face on the cast this season, but she’s actually playing a new iteration of the character Beelzebub from season one — played originally by Anna Maxwell Martin. Conn said that it was easier than you would think to take over an existing character because what had already been established was “phenomenal.”
“I loved everything [Maxwell] did and I loved who that character was,” she said. “It was, for me, a gift to be able to observe that.”
The grubby Victorian-style costume worn by the leader of hell really helped Conn get into character because “you’re kind of like embodying your own version of what had already been created and then take it and mix it with your own ideas and the very new story that was in front of them and kind of skip along with it and play and take it further,” she revealed.
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When asked if they would rather spend time in the Good Omens’ version of heaven or hell, Conn said, “I think I’m an earthling at heart.”
“Yeah we want to be in that bookshop,” Sepulveda chimed in. Though she did admit it might be fun to “get down and dirty” playing a demon in hell.
“Of course you want to be a demon in some ways, but I think there’s nothing wrong with bringing demonic characteristics to being an angel,” Carr quipped. “That’s something we really see, I think, in this series particularly, that we’re capable of being both. We’re all both.”
Good Omens returns with season two on Prime Video starting on July 28, 2023.
