‘American Gods’ have very human weaknesses
Get ready to worship the weird on "American Gods."
The new fantasy series (April 30, 9 p.m. on Starz) is an adaptation of acclaimed author Neil Gaiman's best-selling 2000 novel and it’s just as twisted, strange, controversial and magnetic.
Like the book, flashbacks provide the backstories of how the selfish, old gods emigrated to America with their worshippers over the centuries. But most have since fallen on hard times as humanity has replaced them with other powerful upstart gods like the internet and media.
The gods are going to war and caught in the middle is Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), a fresh out of prison ex-con who lands a dubious job as a bodyguard and sidekick to the mysterious Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane).
It’s on a wild road trip across America with the divine Wednesday that Shadow learns how all the gods are real - and that powerful beings struggle with powerful, familiar issues, like fear and loneliness.
"We meet a lot of gods who are currently down on their luck and threadbare who remember much finer days," says co-executive producer Michael Green. The gods of old are lonely, horny and angry, while the new ones are violent and manipulative.
If that doesn't quite make sense, it's on purpose. "It is a weird show based on a weird book, and that's what's wonderful and exciting about it," says Green. And bloody. The gods demand sacrifice and
they have ravenous appetites
The first of eight episodes features a gory scene in which Vikings stab each other in the eyes to gain the attention of their god; an odd dream sequence with a flaming buffalo and a gnarled old tree that sprouts human heads instead of fruit; and a goddess who devours a man - a worshipper - with her voracious nether region.
"In one scene it was several buckets (of blood)," Whittle said. "There was so much blood that it took away from the 'ew', disgusting factor. It's more like art."
The best part is that the people playing legendary gods are TV legends themselves. Gillian Anderson (“The X Files”) as the god of media, Peter Stormare (“Prison Break”) as Slavic god Czernobog, Kristin Chenoweth (“Pushing Daisies”) as the goddess of fertility Easter, and Orlando Jones (“Sleepy Hollow”) plays Anansi, or Mr. Nancy, a jive-talking African trickster god and of course, McShane - who resembles Odin, the ancient Norse king of the gods.
Whittle, surrounded by actors he’s watched on television his whole life, called the cast, “the best ensemble cast I've ever seen on TV.” To be fair, “American Gods” is not an easy series to jump into. It takes its time pulling viewers into an unsettling world. At moments it even purposefully aims to shock. Green calls the series “verbose” and “operatic,” but producers and Gaiman aren't too worried. The author says that like some critics of his book complain, not everyone will get it. “Some of (the readers) give up and that’s fine. And some of them get to the end of the book and say ‘I don't get it’ and that’s fine too,” Gaiman said.
Big scenes from the book happen at unexpected times partially to expand on certain characters, and partly, Gaiman said, to just to shake up viewers who know the novel.
"We have fun messing with the minds of the people who've read the book because we love them,” Gaiman jokes. “And we do not want them to get a significantly inferior experience than the people who haven't read the book, in terms of understanding what's happening."
It’s those uncomfortable twists and turns that the makers of “American Gods” hope will set it apart.
"It rarely behaves like a traditional show," Green said, "and we take that as a good thing."