Micheal Sheen was originally cast as Crowley
(I will never tire of hearing this 🥰)
Neil Gaiman: The truth is that Michael was meant to have played Crowley. That was where it all began: was me going, 'Who do I know who could be Crowley? Michael Sheen loves the book, Michael would do it.', called Michael, do you want to do it, and he's like, 'Yes!', I thought, 'Great, I have a Crowley.'. So when I started writing the scripts, I was writing them going I know I have - at least I have my Crowley, I have Michael Sheen. And around the middle of Episode 3, I was going, 'This Crowley doesn't really feel a lot like Michael Sheen.', and I wrote this sceen when Crowley comes down the center aisle of a church hopping like a man on a beach on a hot day 'cause it's walking on holy ground and I thought, 'David Tennant would be really good at that, I could get David Tennant.', and then when it was all done I figured I had to break it to Michael, that he wasn't going to be Crowley, that I wanted him to be Aziraphale, and he read the scripts, and we had this really really awkward dinner, that because I was trying to pluck the courage to break it to Michael that I wanted him to play Aziraphale, and Michael was trying to find the way to break it to me that he did not want to play Crowley that he wanted to play Aziraphale having read the scripts. So it was an awful dinner until the end where we just like, 'Oh, you too?! Oh! Oh, good! Well I'm thinking of David Tennant, oh good you like him. Okay.' So it became a lot easier at that moment.
