National Post (National Edition)
A consummate actor with the right stuff
Ian Mcshane on Deadwood, American Gods
Before he landed the role of Mr. Wednesday in American Gods, Ian Mcshane hadn’t read Neil Gaiman’s fantastical 2001 novel. Then he picked it up and, four readings later and counting, still hasn’t put it down.
“It’s not my preferred genre, as they say, but there was something rather thrilling about it,” he recalled. “It seemed like a perfect blueprint for a TV series because of all the ‘coming to America’ stories. You could go wherever you wanted within that world.”
American Gods, the book and series, presumes a world where deities are real — and walk among us. There are the old gods (like Loki, Bilquis and Anansi), who came to America through the beliefs of immigrants, and the new (Technical Boy and Media), who ascended through contemporary fixations.
And in the first season, the show’s creators, Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, trailed Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), an aimless ex-con, and Mr. Wednesday, an eccentric grifter, on a serpentine crosscountry road trip to visit the increasingly irrelevant old gods — and make the case for war against the upstarts trying to usurp their power.
Mr. Wednesday was eventually revealed to be no less than Odin, the omnipotent Norse all-father. Season 2 — returning to television after a 21-month hiatus, during which Fuller and Green left the show — finds him preparing his ancient troops for an epic battle.
His fierce charm intact at 76, Mcshane is burning up the screen this spring, with American Gods followed by four films in April and May: Hellboy, Bolden, John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum and Deadwood, the longgestating follow-up to the popular HBO cult Western. In a phone interview from Los Angeles, he recounted his own “coming to America” story and revealed which god he’d want to be.
Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Q: A: Hey, that’s what happens in life. A little turmoil never hurt anybody as long as it came out slightly more creative in the end, and I think it maybe has.
Q:
A: Where they are, where they’re going to, is to get back to Gaiman’s book a little more than the first season, which I thought was excellent and provocative and a lot of startling good things but tended to stray from the book. Season 2 is more about asking questions of Shadow, because he’s got to become more proactive, and concentrating on the gods themselves. And also bringing the new gods into it more, because they tended to be just too shadowy toward the end. So yeah, I think it’s quite a thrilling year.
Q: A: I first came back in ‘75 and I’ve lived here now mostly permanently for the past 17 years while I work. It’s very odd what’s going on in America. I still think it’s a wonderful, wonderful country. It’s just strange times.
Q: A: Well, it was very interesting what was happening when we did the first season of American Gods. The country has taken a serious lurch to the right, as much as they’d love to say it’s taken a serious lurch to the left. I don’t think America would know a socialist if they fell over him. They think it’s somebody who lives in a garret in Russia and has no telephone and no refrigerator. But that’s due to their lack of education. America’s been dumbed down over the years, which is a shame.
Q: A: Deadwood was like being on an acid trip, like being transported back 15 years ago. People you’ve loved and known, some you’ve seen, some you haven’t — but you have a good time with them when you walk on that set, doing great work, loving the work you’re doing and hoping that people, when it comes out, will enjoy it.
Q:
A: I can say it’s 10 years later, South Dakota just got statehood and Gerald Mcraney is coming back as a senator — he plays George Hearst, who is sort of the villain of the piece — and it all connects in a strange, great way to the last episode when we left.
Q:
A: Ten years will make a difference, especially if you drink that much. But that’s life.
Q:
A: Yeah, he may have the propensity for swearing but every swear word was written by David Milch. If you put a (expletive) in the wrong place you’re (expletive) because it was all rhythm. It was a deliberate attempt to shock.
Q:
A: That will be big and that will be good.
Q: A: Well, the High Table doesn’t like anybody stepping out of line so maybe they’ll take me to task, giving John an out, even. And you’ve got Laurence Fishburne and me, and maybe we get together, maybe we’re unvirtuous. Who knows? Because nothing is the same.
Q:
A: Hellboy, yeah! I think that’s going to surprise a lot of people. David Harbour is a marvellous actor. He just fills out the role. It was nice and bittersweet taking over Professor Bruttenholm from a dear old friend of mine, John Hurt. But it’s not Part 3. It’s a complete reboot of Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy, and I think they picked the right guy in David.
Q: A: I believe Jesus Christ is a great guy, absolutely, and if he came back again they’d kill him, absolutely. And not just because he was Jewish, either. They’d kill him because in this day and age, if you talk about anything you’re misinterpreted into something else. So if I was a god, I’d be the god of tolerance. Not a vengeful god — no. I’d be the god of tolerance and understanding and say, “Everybody is worth it.” harassment by those in news and entertainment, and this sketch offends millions,” the statement reads, in part. “The mockery of this difficult time in the Church’s history serves no purpose.”
Davidson’s bit continued with him joking his mom had informed him she was attending mass. “And I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to listen to the Ignition remix,’ ” he said, referring to an R. Kelly song.
Church officials slammed Davidson for making light of the sex abuse scandal the church has been grappling with. “The clergy sex abuse crisis is shameful, and no one should ever get a laugh at the expense of the victims who have suffered irreparably,” the statement continued. “The insensitivity of the writers, producers, and the cast of SNL around this painful subject is alarming.”
This Davidson joke probably won’t end the way his last humour controversy did: The SNL cast member took the rare step of apologizing last year to Rep. Dan Crenshaw after mocking the eye patch the Texas Republican wears, saying he looked like a “hit man in a porno movie.” Crenshaw, wounded while serving in Afghanistan, appeared alongside Davidson in a feel-good segment accepting the mea culpa.