While Morpheus/Dream is the titular Sandman of the series, this former Doctor Who star has consistently stolen the show across two different
This article was obviously written by a Jenna Coleman fan, lol. 😅
But no, in all seriousness, I love Jenna and her take on Constantine, but I do feel like as much of the credit here should go to the writers as her on this one. I'll explain fully after the jump.
TL/DR: Jenna's performance IS more than worthy of praise, but an actor is only ever as good as their script. The writers of the Netflix series are the ones who nailed this character and Jenna is "simply" performing what they wrote, so I think they should get a bit more of the credit, too.
You see, by Jenna's own admission, she's never actually read a Constantine/Hellblazer comic, or even The Sandman for that matter. Her only bit of research into the role was to watch the Keanu Reeves Constantine movie; a movie which, as far as I can tell, is widely hated by diehard John Constantine fans because it's not considered to be a particularly good adaptation of the character.
This is a choice made all the more baffling by the reason Jenna has given for making this her only bit of research: she didn't want to be influenced by previous actor's performances. Totally fine, as far as it goes. But here's what I feel is a fairly pertinent question here, speaking not as a massive lifelong fan of the character (because I'm not, though I do want to get more into his comics at some point) but simply as an objective observer looking at things as logically as possible: if you're playing a COMIC BOOK character in a COMIC BOOK adaptation, and you're only intending to do one bit of research, why wouldn't that one bit of research be to pick up a comic book and read it?
Again, I say this not as some angry fanboy or anything, but simply as someone who doesn't understand this approach to researching the character. Actually reading The Sandman or Hellblazer or whatever wouldn't have provided any drawbacks; in fact, it would've done quite the opposite and provided two major benefits:
It would've avoided the issue of being influenced by other actor's performances ALTOGETHER, because there ain't no actors in a comic book!
It's the very same source material you're supposed to be adapting in the first place! As far as being influenced goes, surely this would've been a good case of that?
This is to say nothing of how much of a rookie error it is to assume the movie or TV adaptation of ANYTHING is ever accurate. There ARE accurate adaptions of things out there (Sandman, appropriately, being one such example), but the world of film and TV has too tiresomely long and frustratingly storied of a history of INaccurate adaptations of novels, comics and true stories for this to just be assumed. Admittedly, it wouldn't be entirely fair to solely blame Jenna for this, because we ALL bloody do it, even those of us who should know better - but ironically, that's precisely why Neil Gaiman spent the better part of 30 YEARS fighting off adaptations of Sandman that he KNEW would be bad: because he knew people would see them, think they were shit and assume the comic was shit as well based on that.
You can't just assume adaptations are accurate, and with regards to research in general, the golden rule is always to go to the original source. When someone quotes someone else in their work, you can't just lift that quote from them, because they could be misrepresenting what that first person actually said - you have to go to the very original source to see it in its full purity and true context. It's the same principle here with Sandman, and Jenna clearly knows that because of what she said about not watching too many previous versions by other actors. Isn't that why, when she was researching Queen Victoria, she went to the trouble of reading Victoria's own real-life diaries, in order to get a real sense of what she was like, in the woman's own voice?
Now, in fairness, Jenna does have some leeway here regarding modern day Johanna Constantine, as she's (apparently) not really supposed to be just a gender-flipped John Constantine. That's why it's forgivable that she's not as scruffy a dresser, serves as exorcist to the Royal Family and speaks in a cockney accent instead of John's famously scouse one. She's kinda/sorta a merge of elements of both John and Lady Johanna, so it's not wrong to say that reading the comics wouldn't have been THAT helpful anyway, or that having a decent amount of knowledge about/some experience of the source material wasn't that essential.
But she still serves the same function as John and takes his place in the narrative, which results in everyone treating her as though she IS just a straight-up gender-swap. She still gets praised for being "the best version of Constantine (meaning John) yet", despite neither of the two Constantines she's playing - Johanna and Lady Johanna - technically being characters who have ever been portrayed by anyone before. And Jenna's research was into (an unpopular version of) John, so I think there's at least some validity in critiquing the research she did (she doesn't seem to have researched the Lady Johanna version of the character AT ALL).
I'm absolutely NOT trying to take anything away from Jenna here. Her performance IS absolutely spectacular and she deserves every bit of praise she gets. That's not what I'm saying.
I'm not even criticising how much research she did; I get why she would want to stay as focused as possible on the actual script she's being given to play, without too many other influences confusing the issue. After all, she put TONS of research into playing Queen Victoria, only to end up abandoning a lot of it on the day because, ultimately, you just have to follow the script you're given. So maybe she just didn't want to go through that again? I can understand that; that's not my critique.
My critique is that she didn't really find the right or most logical source for her research.
Maybe there's a valid reason for this - perhaps she was actively told NOT to read the comics (though I can't think why, given how accurate they've really tried to be with the series)? Perhaps she didn't realise how easily available comics are these days (you can download pretty much any series on the Kindle app for just a couple quid for new stuff; older stuff like Sandman is often less than a pound per issue) and/or doesn't have any nerd friends she can ask for guidance.
I mean, she could still have logged into a forum somewhere anonymously and just asked, or googled it, or looked up a Constantine reading guide on a blog or on YouTube somewhere; I know that might sound like expecting too much, but she literally went to trouble of finding a website where you can enter a date and it'll come up with Queen Victoria's diary entry for that date, so I'm not sure why this role should be treated any differently. Maybe she didn't think it would be worth it for a recurring role, as opposed to a main one?
I don't know why she didn't read any comics for research. So long as it's not a case of her being some kind of snob who thinks reading comics is beneath her, I can probably forgive any reason there might be for this. Point is, she didn't, which means she wouldn't have been as "in the know" about Constantine as a character as she could've been.
But THAT'S where the show's writers come in. It doesn't matter how much Jenna knows or doesn't know about the character, because THEY have read the comics; THEY do know Constantine inside-and-out. THEY'RE the ones who truly nailed this character, through their writing. Jenna's only receiving praise for being the best and/or most accurate version of Constantine because THEY wrote her that way.
Of course, in the hands of a lesser actress, all of their hard work would still have gone to pot. As I've said before multiple times now, Jenna absolutely deserves all the praise she's getting for her performance, but she's standing on the shoulders of other people's work here - just like all actors, all of the time, regardless of the role they're playing. An actor is only ever as good as their script, after all.
So I don't think Jenna should really be getting SOLE credit for how good her Constantine is. All these headlines banging on about how she's the breakout character of the series? The writers' names should be in those headlines, too. They've done 75% of the work yet Jenna keeps getting 100% of the credit.
I know you could say this about any actor who receives praise for a great performance, but for some reason, this was the example that really got me - probably because of how much better her research could've been; I'd probably feel better about her getting all the glory if she knew the character a little better (I know I said the cockney accent was forgivable, but Jenna's said even she doesn't know where it came from, which suggests she doesn't know John is supposed to be scouse, otherwise she'd be doing a scouse accent, surely? That's such a basic and easy-to-find-out piece of information about the character and it's just a bit irksome to me that she doesn't even seem to know that!)
I don't know. Maybe I'm taking this too seriously, but - as much as I love Jenna and her work - this just seems a bit unfair to the writers to me.
Feel free to tell me how wrong you think I am, though! And enjoy the rest of your day! 😊❤️