Michael Sheen about David Tennant, bonding over working on Good Omens and their kids, Season 2 and suprises in S2, and David’s bad habits. (MCM Comic Con, 30.10.2022)
Q: Now, I’ve watched a youtube video, it was a really strange fan video, it was lovely though, and it was about the bromance between you and David Tennant.
Michael: I’m sorry, I didn’t… I don’t know who you’re referring to.
Q: I mean, what is he like to work with, he seems like a joy to work with and you guys get on really well.
Michael: I mean, it’s like having and an albatros around your neck, really, he sort of does drag you down a lot of time… no, I feel very lucky, you know, David and I were in a film called Bright Young Things together many, many years ago - [applause] thank you very much, thank you, thank you - but we didn’t get to act together in that and we didn’t, you know, we didn’t really know each other from that and we’ve know each other ‘say hello to’ over the years, but it wasn’t until we did Good Omens the first series really that we - [another applause] thank you thank you - that we got to know each other and of course we spent a LOT of time together on that, and people were coming in and out, but it was essentially me and David sitting in the tent all day every day a lot of the time. And so we sort of slowly got to know each other doing that and then, actually it was probably doing the publicity for that and the press for that that we really got to know each other and and then because we both had babies within weeks of each other, you know, me and Anna and David and Georgia, you know, we got very kind of bonded then because of over that. And we say that, so David and Georgia’s little girl Birdie and our little girl Lyra, we say, Lyra’s only got one friend and that’s Birdie. And we sort of got very close but we were very lucky, because you don’t know the chemistry’s gonna be like between you and another actor until you start working together. And, you know, interestingly David and I probably hadn’t work together because a lot of time we were up for the same parts, or you know, there was only one David or Michael shaped hole in the cast and only one of us would fill it, so we didn’t get to work together. And I’ve been a big fan of his work for years and years and really admired, you know, what he did, and so then get into work opposite each other, it just sort of clicked very quickly, and I remember when we did the table read for the first series of Good Omens and we were sitting there next to each other and starting to read the lines together and we’d not really talked about the characters much before then or how we were gonna do it abd you could sort of feel the two of us kind of adapting to each other over the first, you know, few pages and then we just kind of, it just clicked, the characters just clicked and we just sort of without having to talk about it we just instinctively understood how they would be together and I remember Neil Gaiman and Douglas the director saying that watching it was like that as well, you saw these characters sort of circling around each other a little bit and sniffing each other out and then bumph you’re just suddenly dancing and it’s been like that ever since, really. It was such a joy to come back and do the second series together again, and it was like… once we’d put the costumes on again, and we were on the Soho set - we filmed it up in Scotland and they’ve buil like entire block of Soho, on the first one where they only built a small amount of it and it was in a freezing cold carpark ouside Oxfordshire and it was miserable and this time we were in the lovely, warm soundstage with a whole of Soho built, and once we got the costumes on and I remember our first scene together - because David was a bit ill at the very beginning of the filming, so he wasn’t there for the first few days - and then when we did get to our first scene together and it was just a walk across the street or something and it was almost like the costumes were walking for themselves, like they just knew what to do, the characters just sort of took over, weirdly, and we were in that kind of groove again. So it’s an absolutle pleasure working with him and spending time with him and it’s so lovely that we found these two characters, or these two characters found us, to be able to sort of put everything into, you know, and to feel so comfortable with each other. It’s been brilliant and I hope when it comes out next summer I hope everyone really enjoys it, I think there’s gonna be a lot of great surprises for people and I hope you enjoy it.
Q: I mean, Michael, that’s all very well, that’s very sweet, what a lovely story, but I want you to dish some dirt. Tell me, is there something… does he have a bad habit… does he have an annoying habit, that he wouldn’t want us to know about?
Michael: About David?
Q: Yes.
Michael: Oh my goodness. David doesn’t have any bad habits. Em, what can I tell you about him… I mean, he’s a bit good to be true, really. He’s always lovely to everyone… oh! I tell you what his bad habit is. He leaves it to me to… when there’s a problem and we are unhappy about something, because I’m supposedly the grumpy one, he leaves it to me, so he can be the [imitating David:] ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, it’s just Michael has a wee problem with this, I don’t know… it’s not me, I’m fine with it, you know…’, but, you know, the two of us have gone, 'Well, that’s a bit out of order, innit?’ and then I’m the attack dog who has to go out.
Zelda is right. Return the rights. They're taking off all this shit for tax purposes and so that they don't have to pay residuals but worse than that, for a great deal of projects, they also own the rights meaning these projects can never be available anywhere else.
The year is 2009, the place is the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in Honolulu, and I am recovering from a still-undiagnosed disease that left me with a 100+ degree for over three weeks, extreme weight loss and permanent Brain Damage. I have signed up for an introductory Art History class because I need an additional Humanities credit.
It's called "The History and Philosophy of the Japanese Tea Ceremony", and for a class I can only sort of remember, it stands out.
So I'm in professor Roberts' Japanese Tea Ceremony class, looking and feeling like death warmed over, but I'm genuinely interested in the subject matter and show up to every class because I have nothing better to do, and ask questions and turn in my homework, even if neither are particularly coherent at times, and rapidly become his favorite student. The thing I learned in public school was how to show up to events even if I don't want to, analyze tests and other written materials for patterns and charm educators by holding up my end of a conversation, skills that have served me in the modern world far more than learning actual course content would have.
The Tea Ceremony, historically, takes a good month to prepare and the entire evening to carry out- the guest list is curated to create social bonds and intellectual stimulation alike, a poem is composed for the season, and a seasonal flower arrangement created to decorate the space. When the guests arrive, they must all crawl through a small door to enter the tea garden, regardless of profession or rank. Hands are ritually washed in spring water, and there is a slow processional walk through the garden, to admire the artistry of the landscaping, and the composition of seasonal elements to create this particular night of beauty. The entire ceremony is about appreciating both the joy of existing right now, in this time and place, and the unification of the self and the universe and the endless cycles of nature.
The guests arrive at the tea house and meet the Tea Master, who will be making the Matcha that evening. The guests are seated in particular order, the Most Revered Guest- sometimes a high-ranking official, sometimes a visiting scholar or artist- is seated closest to the Tea Master. The Poem is read aloud. The Flowers are admired. The tools for making the Matcha are taken out, examined as objects of art, and their history told. The matcha powder itself is taken out- the case examined, the cultivation of the tea discussed, and only then does the Tea Master make the Tea.
Matcha is not brewed- it's a fine powder made of crushed green tea leaves, and the powder is whisked together with not-quite-boiling water in a bowl to create a much more substantial and flavorful drink. This drink is presented to the Most Revered Guest first, who is expected to take a sip and, in a moment of Zen spiritual clarity, comment on its flavor and how all the elements of the tea, art, garden and season all complement each other, and perhaps offer some sort of philosophical statement.
At least,
That's how it's supposed to go.
About a month before the spring semester is over, Professor Roberts announces that he has a surprise for his class- a good friend of his, a Professional Tea Master, will be visiting Hawai'i, and has agreed to perform a Tea Ceremony for our class! I am very excited. The other 10 people in class are varying levels of amiably confused to distressed by having to go to An Event (TM) for a grade, but agree. One of my classmates, an astrology hoe named Jessica, pointed out that with the 11 students, Professor Roberts, and the Tea Master, there will be 13 people present, which is basically inviting disaster.
"Jessica." Sighed Professor Roberts. "It's a Tea Ceremony. What disaster could happen?"
Despite Jessica's misgivings, Preparations for the ceremony went on. We learned about Ikebana while deciding on the Ceremonial Bouquet and tried our hands at it with what Professor Robert could get at the grocery store for $12. We learned about calligraphy and different types of poetic compositions while making the Seasonal Poem, and stain the hell out of the classroom carpet learning the brush strokes. We learn about different types of Matcha Bowl sculpting and glazing and we are not allowed to touch the demonstration bowls or the kiln because Professor Roberts was beginning to suspect that some of his students (me) were suffering from coordination issues. I apply myself with zeal, if not necessarily talent. I was, at the time, an Art Major, but my professors in the art department had been grading me on a secret "this bitch almost died last semester and is re-learning how to hold a pencil" curve, and boy howdy did I stumble and break leaves and splatter ink like it.
Despite my ongoing unmonitored recovery, Professor Roberts viewed my enthusiastic class participation with rose-colored glasses, and about a week before the ceremony we had a class where he brought out the used Kimonos and Obi and other forms of japanese dress he'd borrowed from the theater department so that we would be traditionally dressed(ish) and experience the ceremony authentically(ish). While people were trying on clothes to see what would fit, he took me aside and told me he wanted me to be in the position of Most Revered Guest, the person who makes the zen statement upon which the entire event hinges.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" I asked.
"You're the only person who doesn't fall asleep in class and you talked about how the flowers stagger their blooms to not compete for the bees- you're perfectly engaged and conscious of the seasons!" He said, blindly. "You will need different shoes though." He indicated my flip-flops. "I won't make you learn how to walk in Geta, but nothing with Heels. Ballet flats are fine."
"...These are the only shoes I own." I said.
Professor Roberts stared at me.
"-I used to have a pair of sneakers but I think a homeless guy stole them while I was at the beach last month."
"What?" Roberts blinked.
"He probably needed them more than I do. I'll see if I can borrow some flats."
"...I don't think I've ever met a woman with less than 10 pairs of shoes." Said Roberts.
"I'm not a woman, I'm and undergrad." I said, still three years away from learning the term 'Nonbinary'. "Those are Jordan's only pair of shorts, you know." I pointed at my classmate, who had been wearing the one (1) pair of basketball shorts for the entire semester.
"I WASH THEM." Jordan shouted defensively, wearing the longest Men's Kinmo the theater department had, which barely came down to the top of his calves.
"Oh God." Said Roberts, a horrifying new world opening up to him like a tub of Expired sour cream.
*
It was the day of the Ceremony.
The Seasonal Theme we'd worked on was "The Turn Of Summer", and the weather was complying maliciously.
Normally, Tea Ceremonies are scheduled for the more temperate evening, but due to the school needing to host something in the adjoining cultural center later, we could only use the Tea Garden in the middle of the afternoon, and the summer sun was a sweltering 98 degrees and a similar level of Humidity. The Camelias were melting.
Where Jordan had difficulty finding a Kimono that suited his ent-like proportions, I'd had the opposite problem and the only Kimono short enough to not trip my Hobbit-sized self was a Child’s size. My roommate had helped me get into the Kimono and Obi before the ceremony, and leant me a pair of her Ballet Flats, but we discovered an issue- this Kimono was designed for a flat-chested prepubescent youth, and even though I barely scraped 5'0", I had the robust proportions of an Irish Peasant, and the only way to avoid displaying a frankly offensive amount of cleavage was to use the widest Obi we could find and sort of tuck my boobs into it.
"Hm" I said. "Kind of hard to breathe."
"Yeah, but you're sitting for most of it, right? It can't last more than an hour, so just like, shuffle and don't talk much?" She suggested.
To her credit, the first forty-five minutes of the ceremony only involved shuffling through the gardens and not talking while the Tea Master lectured us on some of the finer points of the garden's design.
But then we got to the Tea House- a small structure only barely able to accommodate the 13 of us, which was in the shade but hotter than the outside because of the roaring fire in the middle of the room, where the water for the Matcha was boiling. The room was surrounded by a narrow sort of porch, part of which hung over the Koi pond, where several massively overfed carp blurbled expectantly for treats at the arrival of humans. I sat down, legs folded under me like Professor Roberts had insisted, and realized that this pushed the Obi UP, and now my rib cage was being compressed in all directions.
I tried to pay attention to the rest of the ceremony, but two and a half hours is an awfully long time to listen about lecturers you've already heard when your body is undergoing a sort of internal horserace to see if the heatstroke, sciatica pain and numbness, allergies or suffocation-by-compression will cause you to pass out first. My legs had gone numb below the knee by the time we were done with the flower arrangement. My entire legs were numb before we were done with the Poem. By the time the Tea Utensils came out, I was seeing spots of colored light in my vision and could only breathe if I focused on it very, very hard.
But! The ceremony was genuinely interesting! and Professor Roberts was counting on me! So I did my best not to sway or throw up from watching the Tea Master whisk the Matcha, and dutifully took the bowl with a pair of hands that felt like slabs of ham that I was attempting to puppet from another dimension, and took a sip.
They say that Smell and Taste are far more closely connected to the emotional centers of the brain than any other sense, and I believe it because the instant I inhaled both the grassy, powdery smell, and tasted the moderately viscous bubbly liquid, I experienced an intense flashbulb memory back to a previous late May-
The Year was '98, the place was my elementary school art room, and we'd been using the seasonal hot weather to paint on a massive scale as the art dried quickly- each third-grader had been given a roll of butcher paper, a cheap brush, squirts of non-toxic paint and a water cup, and allowed to go hog-wild on our murals, and the rush of creative energy and the imminent sense of freedom as the semester drew to a close truly embodied the summer of youth, carefree but with an almost psychotic fervor, where lack of care was both freeing and dangerous as you lost track of your surroundings in the act of creation-
Which isn't a bad seasonal-philosophical connection statement to make, but the actual words that came out of my mouth were:
"Wow. This tastes exactly like paint."
The first sound I heard after the moment of silence was the cartoonishly loud gasp of horror from Professor Roberts, which was almost immediately drowned out by the thunderclap of laughter from the Tea Master, slapping his thighs and wiping tears from his face, unable to stop. I desperately tried to explain the connection between the fact I might be dying of heat stroke right now, and how I ended up drinking my paint water back in Mrs. Krantz's art class because back then I was also dying of heat stroke, but mostly ended up wheezing half-formed sentences as the rest of the class took sips and offered opinions varying between "Wow, that's thick. Like a Hot smoothie." and "Oh yeah, it tastes like summer. Like how a freshly-mowed lawn smells like summer." Professor Roberts slowly melted into a pile of shame, and the Tea Master slapped him on the back, still howling with laughter.
"They're honest! Nobody else will be honest! This is magnificent!" he wheezed.
Eventually, everyone had their taste, and the ceremony was concluded. The second the Tea Master had packed up his tools and stepped outside for a breath of fresh air, Professor Roberts was in my face.
"HOW COULD YOU SAY THAT?" he hissed, grabbing my arm and pulling me up. "GO APOLOGIZE RIGHT NOW!" he shoved me out onto the porch where the Tea Master was looking at the Koi, who had started bubble-begging aggressively again.
Except that my legs felt like blocks of wood that my pelvis was renting from another planet where legs hadn’t been invented yet, my vision was entirely static between the dehydration and lack of oxygen, and my vestibuar system had fucked off an hour ago, leaving me to stay upright by purely by the virtue of the over-tightened Obi. So instead of bowing and apologizing profusely like my professor expected, what I actually did was stumble out of the room, say something like "Hsdfkf" and topple head-first into the koi pond.
Fortunately, the impact of the bottom of the pond with the top of my skull activated a sort of last-resort emergency self preservation system and I inhaled with enough force to break the Obi-Jime and probably a couple ribs from the pain that hit both my sides like lightning. Unfortunately, the thing I was inhaling was fish-shit riddled Pond Water, so my emergency self-preservation system ordered an even harder Exhale.
The Tea Master, to his immense credit, had immediately jumped in after me, and pulled me upright just in time for me to forcibly exhale half a gallon of rancid pond water directly into his face, then start screaming. Screaming is an extremely appropriate reaction to have when injured, because it alerts everyone that you require medical attention, but is very unpleasant to experience from four inches away, which is probably why he then immediately dropped me.
Fortunately the pond wasn't very deep and this time I sat there, scream-gasping as my lungs reinflated, Koi fish burbling and sucking at me with tremendous excitement, until the EMT from the campus clinic arrived, a vanguard before the actual ambulance.
"Okay uh. You're bleeding." he said, cautiously wading into the pond.
I opened my eyes to find that I had apparently acquired a large and profusely bleeding head wound, which had activated some long-suppressed Shark Instincts in the Koi, which were eagerly gumming at the streams of blood and trying to suck on my forehead. "Good thing they don’t have teeth." I said in the distant bliss that only zen masters and people with serious head injuries get to experience.
"Do you want a towel?" he asked, helping me up.
"No, this is rather refreshing, actually." I said, still absolutely smashed on endorphins, Koi still enthusiastically swarming at my kneecaps.
"I mean like for your-" the EMT Gestured Vaguely at my torso.
I looked down and realized that not only had I broken the Obi-jime, the entire Obi had come undone and was floating several feet away, and I was only wearing the Kimono, fallen completely off my shoulders and was only being prevented from performing a full Lady Godiva by the valiant efforts of the safety pin my roommate had put in to keep it folded correctly while we figured out the Obi.
"Professor Roberts?" I stood up all the way, soaking wet, bleeding from my forehead with such force as to create actual streams of blood down my face, neck and chest, tits out, and addressed the poor man standing, white-faced on the deck above the pond. "I don't think I'm going to be in class on Monday-" I paused to fish a small Koi that had gotten trapped in the remains of the now-ruined Kimono, and tossed it back into the pond. "-Can I schedule a make-up exam for the Final?"
"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET IN THE AMBULANCE!" He screamed.
I was x-rayed for a skull fracture, but my lifelong membership to the Lactose Tolerance Club had protected me, and I happily texted my roommate to come pick me up as "They x-rayed my head and found nothing" while the doctor stitched part of my scalp back together.
The following morning, I discovered that Professor Roberts had graded my exam before I took it. 100%. Truly, the best way to get a good grade on your finals is to get a serious head injury.
So, Matcha is not a Tea, in my humble opinion.
Matcha is an Experience.
And sometimes that experience is drinking something almost exactly like paint, ruining an important cultural ceremony, traumatizing your professor, and introducing a bunch of fish to the taste of human flesh.
***
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and it has its right paw up! the correct paw for this.
and from the markings on its ears, it looks like it might be a calico cat. which is the luckiest kind!
Y’know I reblogged this a bit ago and was saved from financial probation and getting kicked out of school because of it, just mere months from graduation. Got a call from the financial aid advisor telling me that they made a mistake with filing my account (or some other sort of clerical error) and said that, basically, they owe me money. Welp.
Hi Neil... I wondered if you had any advice for aspiring writers who have the enormous responsibility of raising and providing for a family to balance with their dreams. I am married and have a 2-year-old son (and a little girl inbound). I can no longer devote 3-4 hours a day to writing and maintain a healthy lifestyle (though I've tried). I love my family with my whole heart, but there's nothing I've wanted to be but a writer since I was 8. I'd appreciate your perspective.
My late friend Gene Wolfe was a writer with a more-than-full-time job, so he used to get up an hour earlier each day, when everyone was still asleep, and write for an hour, before breakfast and heading to work.
My late friend Terry Pratchett had a full-time job for many years, but when he came home, he'd write 400 words every night. And when he finished a book, 200 words done, instead of celebrating (which I would have done) he put a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter and started another novel for 200 words.
It's really hard to find the time, especially with small children (and another on the way), and finding 3-4 hours may be impossible. It's probably harder for a mother than for a father.
But an hour, or 400 words, may well be achievable, even if it won't be easy. And if you do that for a year, you have a novel all finished.
This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees' range has shrunk by 90%.
(my own photos)
Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.
Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.
You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:
Trees that once depended on animals like the wooly mammoth for survival have managed to adapt and survive in the modern world.
“Aah, you were at my side, all along.
My true mentor…
My guiding moonlight…”
This is Ludwig’s most iconic scene, at the beginning of the second phase of the battle against him, his OST just changes when he regains his humility and becomes the hunter warrior he once was.
This is the last fanart of the year and it is based on an Inktober that I did in 2017 and that I said that one day I would paint it in watercolors,
(link here from the original Inktober)
I hope it is to your liking and happy new year for everything
Eme
Tools: Painted with watercolors Winsor & Newton and Gouache Holbein on Canson Montval paper.
Since I’m not seeing anyone mention this in the reblogs, all credit for this design should go to Bill Sienkiewicz, artist of Frank Miller’s Daredevil: Love & War, which was the basis for his Spider-Verse appearance.
It’s another reason why I think Spider-Verse is a masterpiece, because they looked at this and didn’t go “oh that’s too cartoony and cheesy and comic-book-y.” They embraced the Sienkiewicz version of Kingpin who looks like a well-dressed walk-in freezer and it was awesome.
It’s Hogswatch (equivalent to Christmas) on the Discworld and the Hogfather has gone missing, requiring Death to take his place while his granddaughter Susan endeavors to find out what has happened.
