Neil Gaiman Talks 'American Gods' TV series and writing for 'Doctor Who'

Neil Gaiman is a brilliant storyteller, whether it’s in books, graphic novels, scripts or just in speaking to an audience. He has been one of my favorite writers from the moment I was first introduced to his work, and he has been a huge inspiration on my own writing and life, in general. So, when it was announced earlier this month that Tom Hanks’ Playtone Productions was set to produce an open-ended series of American Gods, based on Gaiman’s award-winning novel, for the fearless cable network HBO (to debut in 2013 at the earliest), and that Gaiman himself was on board as an executive producer and writer, I certainly got very excited.

Now in its 10th anniversary, a special hardcover edition of American Gods has been released and Gaiman is currently on tour promoting it. Instead of the typical book signing, where fans wait in line for hours and barely have time to say more than a passing greeting, the acclaimed and much-loved writer instead sells pre-signed books and uses the time to chat about everything from where his ideas come from to his writing process to what he’s currently working on. Hosted by Patton Oswalt, who is a self-admitted Gaiman fanboy, and including a reading with him, the author and actress Zelda Williams (daughter of Robin Williams), the conversation included the things that Gaiman wants to make sure are in the television adaptation of American Gods, what supplemental material he would like to include with the series, the story he’s looking to write for a Ray Bradbury tribute, how much it meant to him to be able to write an episode of Doctor Who, how China has inspired him to do some projects related to the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, his next children’s book, Chu’s Day, and his latest venture, writing his first musical with Stephin Merritt.

Now that American Gods is being adapted into a TV show, are there things that you want to make sure get in or don’t get changed?
NEIL GAIMAN: One of the things I’m concerned about is that I really want to make sure the races of all the characters are kept. I don’t like it when black characters become white in movies, or things like that. That was something I found deeply problematic with the attempt by some people who had a lot of money and a lot of clout, and who wanted the rights to Anansi Boys, at one point. Somewhere in there, they made the fatal mistake of saying to me, “And, of course, the characters won’t be black in the movie because black people don’t like fantasy.” They were suddenly very surprised that we were no longer interested in selling them the book. So, I want to keep the racial mix in American Gods the same. And, I want to make it faithful, but also would like it to have a few surprises for people who read the book. I hate that thing where people have read the books and they go, “Oh, I know everything that’s going to happen.” I want to be like, “Okay, no you don’t.” I want there to still be some surprises.

In the 10 years since publication, what are some new deities that would inhabit the world of American Gods?
GAIMAN: I do think the networking thing fascinates me, and the short attention span fascinates me. The fundamental law of American Gods, that new Gods are scared, which runs all the way through American Gods, has me fascinated by things like the God of Television. The network television Gods are in decay and decline. How sorry does one feel for the God of MySpace? It happens fast. Twitter is great and it’s glorious and it’s easy, but if somebody comes up with something kind of like Twitter tomorrow, that’s better or smarter or more useful, in three weeks time, Twitter could more or less be history because that’s how fast things go now. There are definitely places in which I look at American Gods as dated, but it’s less than I thought. If I had been predicting it then, I would have said, “Well, 10 years from now, the entire book will be historical.” There are travel agents in it, which some of you may remember. The set-up in airports is not the set-up in airports now. But, apart from that, it’s dated less than I thought it would be.

Source: Full Interview @ Collider