Offerman said (in true Offerman style): "If you had told me when I first read Good Omens in the early 90s that I would one day visit South Africa to giggle with Neil Gaiman at laptop-screened footage of Doctor Who and David Frost dancing because I was assaying a role in the adaptation of said book, I would likely have offered to purchase some of whatever you must be smoking. But here I am, still giggling at the luck of it."
And Gaiman commented: "There may not be anyone alive who can deadpan a line quite as well as Nick Offerman. He's a terrific performer, and has to say a lot of things in Good Omens that are humanly impossible to deliver with a straight face. Fortunately, Nick is not entirely human. We are very lucky to have him."
The Parks and Rec star will now join (deep breath) David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Jon Hamm, Anna Maxwell Martin, Jack Whitehall, Miranda Richardson, Mark Gatiss, Sian Brooke, Derek Jacobi, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton for the Amazon and BBC adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s comic apocalyptic novel. The production has already revealed that Sheen and Tennant will play lead characters Arizaphale and Crowley while Mad Men star Jon Hamm has been cast as the Archangel Gabriel.
An official synopsis of the six-part series reads:
Good Omens takes place in 2018 when the Apocalypse is near and Final Judgment is set to descend upon humanity. According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter Witch (the world’s only completely accurate book of prophecies), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.
So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, and tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, and Crowley, a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth’s mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming war. And… someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist.
Good Omens will be launched by Amazon Prime Video in 2019, and shown at a later date on BBC2
