‘The Sandman’ star was thrilled to turn the idea of Lucifer on its head

The Sandman, like every season of its sister Netflix series Lucifer barring the first, has swung hard out of the gate and never looked back. With captivating performances across the board, treats for fans old and new, and what is perhaps the single greatest episode of a fantasy drama series to date, The Sandman weaves together a masterful adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved comic series of the same name, once thought to be “unfilmable.”

Throughout its history, The Sandman has never been any stranger to subversion. Indeed, where the comic has always managed to render expectations completely null, the show manages to do so again in its own way, and one of the prime examples of this is Gwendoline Christie’s turn as Lucifer Morningstar, the ruler of Hell.

In an interview with Collider, Christie was all too happy to praise Neil Gaiman for his ability to turn the most well-known concepts on their heads.

“I suppose that’s part of it. What Neil [Gaiman] does so well in the comics, and that Allan [Heinberg] has translated brilliantly to the show, is that he very often plays against type. Just when you think know exactly what something is, he turns it on its head. And I felt that having this portrayal as my portrayal of Lucifer, is what made sense to me.”

She would go on to explain how this applied to her character and the fascinating nuances that came with portraying them.

“If you’re God’s favorite, and you’re cast out and have to live for the rest of your life as being in a state of rejection, you may as well try to derive some pleasure from the misery. I think Lucifer finds a way to take deep pleasure from what’s occurring because they’re just so bored. They’re bored of having to torture masochists. There’s nowhere to go. There’s no range. There’s not the spectrum of hope. There isn’t the all-encompassing transformation of love. It’s absence. That’s really what I’ve found with Lucifer. So, it’s a great pleasure for the actor, for me, to play it, but essentially, it’s hollow.”

The Sandman is currently streaming on Netflix.