In season 1, Shadow Moon (Whittle) was released from his prison sentence to some devastating news: his wife, Laura (Emily Browning) had been killed in a car accident while cheating on him with his best friend. With the life that he’d planned to return to gone, Shadow was left without a clear path ahead - that is, until he met a mysterious stranger calling himself Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane). Hired as a bodyguard for Wednesday, Shadow discovered that all of the old gods that America’s various immigrants over thousands of years had brought to its shores are still hanging around, though their powers are diminished due to a lack of worshipers. Moreover, new gods like Technical Boy (Bruce Langley) and Mr. World (Crispin Glover) have emerged, and there’s a war brewing between the old gods and the new.
On his journey with Wednesday, Shadow was introduced to Mad Sweeney (Schreiber), a leprechaun with a special lucky gold coin that he accidentally handed over to Shadow. That lucky coin ended up being thrown on Laura’s grave, reviving her as an extremely strong walking corpse, who is determined to get back to her man. So, what lies ahead for this weird collection of characters in American Gods season 2?
- This Page: The House on the Rock and Shadow’s Season 2 Journey Page 2: Pablo Schreiber On Mad Sweeney’s Hate-Hate Relationship With Laura Page 3: How American Gods Season 2 Will Differ From the Book
Let’s start with the basics. At the start of the season, Shadow, Wednesday, Sweeney, and Laura are all traveling in a car together. Where are they going, and why are they going there?
Pablo Schreiber: They’re going to House on the Rock, and they’re going there because Wednesday is gathering all of the old gods together to have a tête-à-tête about trying to get them all on the same page as far as starting a war with the new gods.
I wasn’t aware until after watching the episode that the House on the Rock is actually a real place. I was very impressed by the set design, and then I found out it was really filmed there!
Ricky Whittle: Yeah, that was incredible, we actually went out to Wisconsin at the very beginning of the shoot. Even when I was walking around I’m literally looking at it, and I’m thinking to myself, it feels like someone just created this for an insane, wacky movie or a TV show, but this is a genuine establishment. It’s an incredible sight to behold, and every room you enter it just gets stranger and stranger. It’s an incredible find by Neil Gaiman when he was on his travels, obviously to include it in his book, and so we’ve brought it onto the show. It really does have the feel of American Gods, of mystique and magic, and that little bit of strange.
We didn’t actually do it justice. As wild and wacky as it looks on screen, being there in the flesh is actually even stranger, so I advise anyone rolling through Wisconsin to maybe pop in and have your mind blown.
What was the strangest thing you saw in there?
Whittle: I couldn’t even say, there’s so much. The most striking is a life-size blue whale being attacked by a giant squid in this huge warehouse, and it’s literally the whole warehouse, and it’s the chicken and the egg, you know? Which came first? Did they bring that from somewhere and then build the warehouse around it, or did they have the warehouse and build this whale inside? It’s huge, it’s phenomenal, it’s mind-blowing, to the point that you can’t even take a picture of the whole thing because it doesn’t fit on your camera. It really is an incredible sight.
So there’s this war that Mr. Wednesday is trying to plan, and what’s interesting is that Shadow, in the first episode, you see how invested he is in this war, even though he’s not - as far as he knows - anything to do with the old gods or the new gods. So what do you think is driving him to go to war for Mr. Wednesday?
Whittle: His whole journey throughout the first season was cynic to believer. He’s an intelligent man and an intelligent person’s always going to go towards a logical answer, when faced with all this magic of gods and leprechauns and dead wives in the first season. So now that he believes, I think he just wants answers, he wants to understand. And so I feel his investment comes from the fact that he just wants to know what the stakes are, what this war is, who everyone is, and what his part in this puzzle is all about. So I think it’s curiosity; once he starts something he wants to get to the end of it.
Obviously it’s about perception, there’s no good guys and bad guys, it depends on what your point of view is. I feel that if Wednesday hadn’t got his hands on him first, and maybe Tech Boy or Mr. World had, maybe we’d be looking at it from a completely different angle. So I think he’s just intrigued to see where this goes, and he’s following Mr. Wednesday around like a little puppy and just wants to learn. But friction will begin, this season, between the pair, because [Shadow] wants answers and Wednesday’s reluctant to give them and acknowledge his power on the show, and that’s going to cause a little bit of frustration between the two. And if Shadow can’t get answers from Wednesday, he’s going to go and find them himself elsewhere.
In the second episode of season 2 we get to see Shadow’s backstory and some of the formative events from his early life. How does that episode, and what we see from his teenage years, inform the choices he makes in season 2?
Whittle: Well, you can see he likes to swing! He likes fighting. But he likes fighting for others, for those who can’t. So you kind of see where his light came from. Shadow is basically the universal punchbag, physically and emotionally, is attacked from all angles by new and old gods, but he constantly gets up and keeps moving forward with his hope that it will be OK and his willingness to move to the next day. And you see the love that he lost in his life. He grew up without a father, his mother was his everything, and so he’s really truly experienced love and something pure. And so when she died, and we first meet Shadow in season 1, you can kind of see how far he’s fallen, and how he’s just empty and devoid of any emotion and love - which left him vulnerable for Mr. Wednesday. So in season 2 it’s nice to see him kind of add some layers and evolve from that kind of character, who was vulnerable and emotionless, and heading back more towards the young Shadow that we see in episode 2.
Page 2: Pablo Schreiber On Mad Sweeney’s Hate-Hate Relationship With Laura
“A Prayer For Mad Sweeney” was a favorite episode for a lot of fans in season 1, and I understand that there’s another Mad Sweeney episode on the way in season 2. Pablo, can you tell us anything about that?
Schreiber: Yeah, we’re going to get a bunch of backstory for the character. So it’s the same as last season, it’s episode 7, and it sort of functions as the history of Mad Sweeney. Most of it takes place in the old country, and it’s about how he became who he was prior to coming over to America. And it’s interlaced with the current day descent into madness slash one shot at final retribution, and in the end is something that I think will truly leave fans excited.
As far as Laura knows, Mad Sweeney’s only sticking with her because he wants his coin back, but we now know it’s more complicated than that because he had a chance to take it back, but didn’t. So how does Mad Sweeney and Laura’s relationship evolve in season 2? Is there a romantic element to it?
Schreiber: I certainly wouldn’t call it romance. They hate each other too much to be romantically involved. But they’re now, at the end of the first episode of season 2, they realize that they have a common enemy, and the general arc of season 2 for them is their common goal of revenge and retribution, and their journey towards that as the season goes on.
They have such great chemistry and banter, those two characters. Are they mainly together for season 2?
Schreiber: Most of my scenes are with Emily. Outside of episode 7, where… we’re separated, in the course of that episode, so she’s somewhere else in that episode. But other than episode 7, all of our stuff is together, yeah.
The first season only covered the first 100 or so episodes of the book, and I understand in season 2 we’re not going to get as far as Lakeside. Do you have any idea how many seasons are being planned?
Schreiber: Oh, about 12 seasons. We’ll keep it simple.
Whittle: [Laughs] At the end of the day, Neil Gaiman mentioned at New York Comic-Con that he feels the book… I think when he started this process with Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, they kind of planned out five seasons for the book, as just the general target. But it could be more, it could be less, depending on how we go about the story, because there’s so much there in the source material with Neil Gaiman’s book, but what we’ve been able to do is use it more as a blueprint and expand and flesh out characters who are sporadic or feature very little in the book - like Mad Sweeney, who’s only in the book twice. Laura’s very sporadic, Bilquis is hardly in there, as is Tech Boy, Mr. World and so forth. So fans are kind of getting what they love in the book, and so much more.
So with all this and with Neil Gaiman’s other stories featuring these characters, like Anansi Boys and Monarch of the Glen, there’s so much scope for taking it beyond. Neil’s even writing a sequel to American Gods. But I feel for now that we’re looking at around maybe five seasons, but again that evolves, depending on character dynamics and story evolution - things could get bigger, or we could compact it all as well.
Like you said, there are characters like Salim and the Jinn who were previously only featured in one chapter, but now have their own ongoing story arc. Are they on their own for season 2, or do they end up being part of the bigger story as well?
Schreiber: They’re intertwined into the bigger story, for sure. They’re almost always together, but yeah, they’re used in the broader picture of the larger story.
Page 3: How American Gods Season 2 Will Differ From the Book
So is the show following the main beats of the book, but elaborating on them?
Whittle: Yes and no. I mean, at the end of the day it’s an incredible story by Neil Gaiman. It was 16 years old, award-winning, translated into 30 different languages, and so the source material’s there, it’s not like we’re wanting for material, it’s an incredible story. But at the same time it has been adapted to TV so we come at it from a slightly different angle, because a TV audience is after something else. We’re able to keep it fresh for them by deviating from the book a little and going down those paths where Mad Sweeney and Laura - who don’t even meet in the book - we’re now all of a sudden invested in these great characters. Or Salim and the Jinn, who only really feature in that one Coming to America story, who now have their own thread and you’re invested in that beautiful relationship.
So yeah, we will follow the book’s bullet points, use it as a blueprint, but there’s plenty of fresh material in there as well that keeps it fresh for those book lovers, so not everyone knows what’s going on. I think that was evidenced in the season 1 finale, which wasn’t in the book, I think that left everyone excited and hungry to see what would happen in season 2. And I believe we’ve done the same for the season 2 finale, so hopefully that’s going to be a big enough hook to bring people back for season 3.
Those Coming to America stories were such an enjoyable part of season 1. Do we get more of those stories in season 2?
Schreiber: Yep. We have a Coming to America for Tech Boy. And we have a Coming to America for Shadow.
Oh, is that episode 2?
Schreiber: Yeah. Which is obviously different because he’s not a god, but we do get his backstory.
Whittle: With season 1 we established the world and the players, and season 2 is really a deeper dig into those characters and what makes them who they are in the current world. Digging into Mad Sweeney’s backstory kind of helps us develop empathy for a character who we love to hate, and with Shadow we understand why he’s got this light, and with Tech Boy you’re following his story. And so you’re really investing into the characters now as we push this story along.
In Shadow’s Coming to America story, young Shadow is played by Gabriel Darku. Obviously you don’t have any scenes with him, but did you work with him on the character and did he come up with anything interesting?
Whittle: I’m normally in every day, so that was one of my first days off, and I usually grab it with both hands when I’m not filming, kind of relax and recharge those batteries. But I did actually come in on his first day to say hi and introduce myself and say, “Break a leg, enjoy yourself, and just do your thing, you know. You’re not trying to be me or Shadow Moon, just bring your own flavor to whatever it is.” And he does a fantastic job, you know, he should really watch that episode and be really proud, because his performance is fantastic. And he did his homework, he watched season 1 and took the material and really developed a beautiful relationship with his mother (Olunike Adeliyi). I think fans are really going to feel for Shadow Moon because of his fantastic performance.
Neil Gaiman has said that whereas in season 1 Shadow was being led around a lot, in season 2 he’s going to be more proactive role. Can you tell us a little bit about what he’ll be getting up to?
Whittle: I guess it’s just his search for answers. I’m very fortunate in that Shadow interacts with so many different characters, and so we begin at House on the Rock with him meeting up with different characters - old favorites like Mr. Nancy and Peter Stormare, who comes in as Czernobog. And as Mr. Wednesday starts to elude his questions, he goes in search of others’ answers, with Mr. Ibis and other characters. He’s also got some unfinished business with his wife, him and Laura need to have that conversation, and that’s something that will happen this season. It’s going to be exciting to see what I feel is a really, truly beautiful scene with Emily Browning, and I think fans are really going to enjoy finally getting that closure on the questions that Shadow and Laura had for each other.
