Sandman Trolls Aren’t Real Fans But Gaiman Knows Who They Really Are

Earlier this month, fans of Netflix’s The Sandman were treated to the good news that the streaming service had renewed the live-action adaptation of Neil Gaiman‘s comic book series. Now, we’re getting to hear more from Gaiman about what the first season experience was like. During an interview with Inverse (alongside executive producer Allen Heinberg), Gaiman explained why there wasn’t any controversy with real The Sandman fans when it came to Kirby Howell-Baptise being cast as Death, Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer, Jenna Coleman as Johanna Constantine, or having LGBTQ characters in the series. Gaiman noted a number of common traits among the “complainers” who plagued the show since casting announcements were first made with their unfounded complaints and silly “woke” conspiracies. “These complainers don’t like gay people, they don’t like Black people, and they don’t like women,” Gaiman said. “And if you look at their profiles, they don’t like vaccines, they don’t like Democrats, and they’re not big on voting.” Here are some highlights of what else Gaiman had to say:

On Kirby Howell-Baptise’s Death: “Death’s casting wasn’t controversial with ‘Sandman’ fans because ‘Sandman’ fans know that The Endless are supposed to look like what the people looking at them think they look like.”

On Gwendoline Christie’s Lucifer: “The people that were getting all upset about Lucifer’s casting and were up in arms about the ‘gender swap,’ again, weren’t ‘Sandman’ fans because then they’d know that Lucifer looked kind of like an androgynous David Bowie and doesn’t have any genitalia because they’re an angel. Other grumpy people tended to be Tom Ellis fans, who were like, ‘I love Tom Ellis! Lucifer is based on him! Why didn’t you cast him?’ And honestly, he’s not. He’s a lovable rogue. He wouldn’t work in ‘Sandman’ because we have to get someone that makes people scared.”

On Jenna Coleman’s Johanna Constantine: “And the other one was Lady Johanna Constantine. Again, people were like, ‘why did you gender-swap John Constantine, and why did you replace him with this imaginary character that we’ve never seen in the comics before?’ But ‘Sandman’ fans know that she was a character introduced in ‘Sandman’ No. 13 in 1989 and that she goes off and has several more adventures in the ‘Sandman’ storyline. So it was much more economical for us to get her and to have Jenna play her.”

On Reminding Trolls That Gay Characters Were in the Comics: “Those are the three most controversial castings. Oh, and occasionally, you get people shouting at us for having made up all of these gay characters who weren’t in the comics, and then we’d go, ‘Have you read the comics?’ And they’d go ‘No.’ And we’d go, ‘They were gay in the comics.’ And they’d go, ‘You’re just woke, and nobody is going to watch your horrible show.’ And then we went Number 1 in the world for four weeks. And they went, ‘It’s all bots! We hate you. You’re woke.'”