HERO WORSHIP

‘American Gods’ pits old world against new in mythological power struggle

EVEN after watching the first episode of “American

Gods,” you’re not quite sure what you’ve seen. To wit: Sunday’s premiere (9 p.m. on Starz) includes a six-foot-tall leprechaun, mystical white buffalo and perhaps the weirdest sex scene on TV this year.

As co-star Bruce Langley describes it, “It’s mental in the best way.”

Based on the 2001 novel by Neil Gaiman, the eight-episode “American Gods” begins with Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) getting released from prison on news that his wife has died. Adrift, he meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane), a charismatic con man who hires him as his bodyguard and introduces Shadow to a hidden underworld where mythological gods are real.

“Shadow Moon spends the first few episodes completely confused by what he’s witnessing,” says costar Pablo Schreiber. “As audience members ... if the TV show doesn’t make sense for the first few episodes, that’s OK. That’s where you’re supposed to be.”

Shadow soon learns there’s a battle for relevance and power brewing between the Old Gods, led by Wednesday, and the New Gods. These memorably-named deities include Easter, the goddess of spring (Kristin Chenoweth); African spider god Mr. Nancy (Orlando Jones); Mr. World (Crispin Glover); Media (Gillian Anderson); Technical Boy (Langley); and the leprechaun Mad Sweeney (Schreiber), who works as Wednesday’s muscle. “Mad Sweeney’s big beef [is] he was a king in his culture and was brought to this country by people who worshipped him and then he was abandoned when they chose shinier and newer toys,” Schreiber says. “Now he’s been relegated to a cartoon on a cereal box. So he’s got a huge chip on his shoulder and he’s willing to fight for it.”

Gaiman says the novel was inspired by his move to the US in 1992, when the British ex-pat was living near Minneapolis and perplexed by American culture, such as the local custom of parking cars on ice in winter to place bets on when they’d fall in, and the popularity of regional tourist spot House on the Rock.

“[I was] thinking that I understood the place and then being here [I was] going, ‘This is weird,’ ” he says. “I was now fascinated by the immigrant experience. Understanding America was important to me.”

Turning “American Gods” into a series, on which Gaiman serves as an executive producer, allowed showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green to expand on characters from the book. Shadow’s ghostly wife Laura Moon (Emily Browning) and Bilquis (Yetide Badaki), the ancient goddess of love, are elevated to major players. Technical Boy was given a hip, young reboot: he’s now skinny, vaping toad skin instead of smoking it, and never wears the same costume twice to highlight the transient nature of current technology.

Gaiman, who had beeneen approached multiple timesimes about turning “Americanan Gods” into a movie, sayss that freedom to tell bigger stories makes the adaptation much better as a series.

“I’d never considered it when I was writing the book because you couldn’t put that stuff on TV. Nobody was going to spend the $80-$100 million to do this right for TV,” he says. “Then the nature of the world changed ... [and] begat the idea of big, complex narratives that you binge-watched and in which little details could pay off.”