Michael Ralph, the Good Omens Production Designer, interview for Movieweb :), summer 2023
Question: What is your reaction to your fan's positivity?
Michael Ralph: It's unbelievable. To see your work reflected in the eyes of people that love it is incredibly complimentary and it feels on, you know, you're honoured by having that response .It's rare that you get to experience it. You know, I think that we were involved recently in a fans' view of the set where all the fans who'd been involved in a competition were able to walk around the set. It's extraordinary. And I got hugs and people in tears. And it is an overwhelming experience to stand in that street and be in that bookshop when you didn't think, even though you knew, but you didn't quite know it really existed as a place that you could walk around in is quite phenomenal.
Question: Do you see locations as extensions of characters?
Michael Ralph: My feeling is that we would all, if possible, choose to live where we believe and within an environment that we believe suits us, doesn't suit anyone else. It's a fingerprint thing. It's like, where are you most comfortable? Where are you most comfortable to read or to write or to watch a programme or where do you feel the most secure?That bookshop is an anchor point visually for the show and always has been an anchor point since day one. And it is where you feel most secure. It's where the door closed, you feel safe within it. And what emanates or resonates with that bookshop, not only from the character and the position or who Aziraphale is, is that everybody that walks into that bookshop feels the same thing. Everyone that walks in that bookshop, I've said it before, just want to live upstairs and drink red wine and read books all day and they feel comfortable and they feel nostalgic and it creates a sense of security and protection. And I think that if you can create that sort of sentimentality in something that you're walking around in, it must transcend the lens. And it obviously does because people feel it all the time and they want to go there and sit around in the corner and feel comfortable. So I think that from character point of view, I started really emotionally from Aziraphale. And Neil, whenever I've thought of a great idea that I tell Neil about and he tells me how amazing it might be or how fantastic or inspired it was, I suddenly start to realise it's probably in the book or it's probably in the script between the lines. What stimulates my apophenia, what stimulates my vision and my emotional motivation to design anything is what I can see in the page. So if he has written something so universally empathetic to an audience, then I'm seeing the same thing you are, in my variation, but it really is the same warp or the same sentimentality as I said, or any of those things. So if I can find how to get my fingernails under the edge of that, how I can actually depict it, then I know that it's going to work. And that's obviously... and you can believe in it then, and you can say it with all honesty, rather than impersonate your love for something or say something because your ego tells you you should, or produce something that's a duplicate of something you saw once in Italy. This is something you've got to feel that's specific to the project and specific to the written word, you know.
Question: Do you have the freedom to do what you want?
Michael Ralph: I must admit, reading the book the first time, it was difficult to get my head around how it was going to be depicted. You've got to be very careful that you don't impersonate what you've seen before, you don't copy and then call it original when it's not, because that's sort of like a cop out. You really, honestly have to live with it 24 hours a day, even while you're asleep, and search and search and search and search to find what it is that gets your fingernails under it, to find out what it is you really believe in. And it sounds so ethereal, but it's absolutely true. If you can get that, if you can openly find that, and you've got to feel that, if you can get that, then you're absolutely on something you can invest in and then something you can produce. Because then it's not something that's duplicated. All the furniture, literally all the furniture, all of the dressing on the walls, all of the bookshelves are all built but Bronwyn, a set decorator, will buy me a lot of brown furniture that she finds as really interesting furniture. Furniture that's got spindles and handcarved pieces and reliefs in it. And she gets me stuff that she believes goes with the character of the place. And then I'll break it open. This is what construction. I love working with construction with, because I'll break it open, cut it down, reattach it, and I'll remake wholewalls and bookshelves, like in the magic shop that none of it existed until we put together loads of stuff the set decorator found, that Bronwyn found. And then all that stuff ends up having a profile of the period, or echoes to you, little visual trip hazards of the period, of size and weight. But it isn't really anything you've ever seen before. It's not from a higher shop. It's not from a piece of furniture you bought, just plunk there. Because the camera sees things differently. And we have to lift all that up and make it bigger and larger in scale to punctuate the vision. So all of that is... there's all sorts of theories, I could go on forever, you know. I was saying to Bronwyn today that I think I've been working all my life on trying to raise my intellect, to be able to incorporate a vocabulary to explain what it is I do creatively. I'm not there yet.
Question: Is there something you'd like to explore in the future?
Michael Ralph: And it's funny you should say that, because that process, from what I've explained to you, doesn't originate with me. So you need to get that book or that source material, and someone has to say, you're the guide for this, I'd love to see what you see. And then it's like this massive submerge, you submerge into it. And then it's a journey, a journey that you embrace and it reveals things that I could guess maybe 15-20 things I'd like to do on Season Three, but it's not scripted. So what is that? You know, I've got imaginary things that I will adopt because I know that they've got weight or purpose that will work for Season Three. But I need to see what Neil shows me, you know, what Neil teaches and tells me, and then once I've seen that, I can run with it. He's such a wonderful appreciator of what you achieve. He's never questioned anything I've done, ever. And it's been hundreds of things, hundreds of sets and ideas. And no matter how crazy what it is, I might end up drawing the craziest things first. But he still loves them, you know. And it feels like it probably was there already between the lines. And all I've done is pick up on it. You got to really get into it to mime what it is that affects you and what moves you. What it is you love about something. You can watch a show and read a book and not love it. You don't know why you didn't love it, it's unequatable, but you just didn't connect. But what we're trying to do with everything we do cinematically is to connect, is to somehow get through the equation. So you feel it. And I got a feeling that's why Good Omens works so well. Because of the amount of love and emotion that people put into it and amount of faith people have in what they're doing, because it's only done out of joy and it's only done for the goodness of that wonderful story that is developed and matured, within it, between the characters. And because of that, you can do nothing but sprinkle magic on it all the time.