AMC's Preacher returns to AMC tonight with a Season 3 premiere that sees Jesse and Cassidy race to Jesse’s childhood home to see if his Voodoo-practicing Gran’ma can bring Tulip back from the dead.
The return to Angelville heralds the show’s arrival at one of the most memorable storylines from the acclaimed comic by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. This will no doubt appease fans eager for Seth Rogen’s and Evan Goldberg’s television adaptation to actually, you know, adapt the comic. So far, they’ve delved into prequel territory by exploring Annville, Texas, in Season 1, and meandered into an introduction of the Grail in Season 2. While the drama has been well-received by critics, it’s frustrated some comics fans who’ve waited patiently to see more of the source material they fell in love with make it to the small screen.
RELATED: Preacher Season 3 First Look Introduces Gran'ma
Luckily, they won’t have to wait much longer. The first three episodes of Season 3 bring Preacher closer to the source material than ever before. Ahead of tonight's premiere, CBR spoke with showrunner Sam Catlin about what to expect from the horror show that is Angelville, and the rest of the angels and demons that populate this corner of cable.
CBR: As Jesse gets settled back in Angelville, we were pleasantly surprised to see how you adapted the Angelville residents, specifically in the case of T.C. (played by Colin Cunningham), and his subsequent friendship with Cassidy, which is not in the comics. Was that intentional or was it something that developed in casting?
Sam Catlin: Yeah, for sure, it’s just one of those things where you’re sitting in the writers room and ... really probably since we saw Colin’s audition everyone was like, "Oh, my God, he and Cassidy …" And Cassidy is the sort of mature, more grounded character. It was a good opportunity for us. You know, casting is luck, so much of it is luck and we really lucked out with both those characters. And then you just want to see them together.
Absolutely, specifically with Cass – it's refreshing to see him play kind of an older sibling.
Yeah, I agree.
Speaking of casting, let's chat about Betty Buckley. Marie L’Angell is terrifying and disgusting in the comics, and Buckley's performance is pretty revelatory in that it's both of those things, but it's also tender and compelling. Did you have her mind from the beginning?
I didn’t have her in mind at all. But the casting director, Mark Rutman, I think suggested her. I’m not sure how we heard about her, but [he asked] would we be interested in seeing her read. And we were, like oh, my God, yes, absolutely. I mean, she just has such a great presence, such a great face and she’s just such a powerful performer that it felt like we definitely needed somebody with that much authority. We’d have to believe that Jesse could be bullied by her, could be intimidated by her. So, once she auditioned for her it was just sort of a no-brainer. I agree, she’s fantastic.
Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Season%203%20Will%20Check%20in%20With%20Eugene%20%26%20Hitle']
She has a relationship with the Grail and Herr Starr in the comics. Will you explore that this season?
She definitely will have more of an interaction with the Grail going forward. I won’t really quite say what that is, yet, but it’s not entirely like the comics what her relationship was. But she’s definitely, she has not seen the last of Herr Starr and the Grail, that’s for sure.
Moving back to our heroic trio: Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy underwent a fair amount of strife in Season 2. Are we going to see that resolve or get worse and take new shape?
I will say that something has to give in terms of Season 2 really drove them apart in a lot of ways. And I will say that some of them will get closer, closer than ever before in terms of this season. But others ... sort of the wounds and insults of last season won’t be easily put away, at least for some parts of this season. But yeah, I think they’re going to be working, some of them will be working much more as a team.
What can we expect from Eugene and Hitler this season?
We’ll definitely see what they’re both up to after getting out of Hell, and their paths will probably cross again.
We're curious to see how you adapt the character of Jesse's mother, Christina, whom we see in flashbacks. She doesn't appear to be the shrinking violet she was in the comics.
We had to sort of understand how ... she could be the mother to somebody like Jesse Custer. We sort of understand an aspect of Jesse based on his father in Season 1 and the sort of moral clarity and the way of seeing the world. So to us, as a L'Angell, Christina L'Angell had to have strength and resourcefulness and the ability to not be a victim for sure ... We want to understand that there’s a similarity from Gran'ma to Christina that passed down to Jesse.
Part of the way you've deepened the character of Jody is by revealing that he was in "love" with Christina. Is this something Jesse's aware of or is he blind to it?
No, I think he has an understanding. It’s a family. Jody and T.C. aren’t blood relatives of his, it feels like they’re sort of the loyal servants that’ve always been there that will be the last ones to leave. To him, they’re sort of stepbrothers, to Jesse. And I think what’s been interesting for us throughout this season and in terms of the family that Jody and T.C. and Gran'ma they all sort of repulse and infuriate Jesse, and I think he hates them in other ways.
But he also has a history with them. They’re family. I think it’s complicated. Jesse spent many years here and even though the reason why he grew up here is because they killed his dad, there’s something to be said for even the most fucked-up family that it’s hard to give up on. And that’s sort of one of the main thing that’s gonna be the biggest challenge for Jesse. Because he divorced himself from them. That to us is interesting. If he just hated them and Gran'ma was only a villain and Jody was only evil I think it would get pretty tired after a while.
Yeah, it's interesting that while Marie is so disturbing, there are moments in which we're very moved by her.
Yeah, well that’s the intention. Hopefully it’s extra creepy that she actually loves Jesse and just makes her that much creepier. The things that people do out of love as opposed to pure hate are always more disturbing.
Premiering tonight at 9 ET/PT on AMC, Preacher stars Dominic Cooper as Preacher Jesse Custer, Ruth Negga as Tulip and Joe Gilgun as Cassidy the Vampire. Betty Buckley (Gran'ma), Colin Cunningham (T.C.), Jeremy Childs (Jody) and Liz McGeever (Christina) join the cast.