Trivia / American Gods (2017)

• Acting for Two: Essie McGowan from "A Prayer for Mad Sweeney" is played by Laura's actress Emily Browning.
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Ricky Whittle, like Shadow, is half Black and half White.
  • The Native American characters are played by actors of indigenous ancestry, though not always the same specifically (e.g. Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, who's Mohawk, plays Cherokee Sam Black Crow).
• Ascended Fanon: Laura biting Robbie's penis off during the car crash is a bit of fanon from the books (to explain how Audrey knew that Laura died with Robbie's penis in her mouth). In the series she explicitly says that it was severed at the base for this reason.
• Creator Backlash:
  • A majority of the cast signed up for the show because they wanted to work with Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, and when the two were given the boot this naturally caused a lot of backlash amongst the cast - Gillian Anderson went so far as to quit the show itself.
  • Orlando Jones was fired by season 3's new showrunner, and made a furious response accusing him of being afraid of Mr. Nancy causing a race rebellion among the fans, as well as the production company of treating all its employees like "second class citizens." However another part of the show's team mentioned that Orlando was not so much fired as simply asked to not return for season 3, due to it covering a part of the novel where the character of Mr. Nancy did not appear (Neil Gaiman even expressed hopes that he would agree to return for future seasons - though the cancellation of the show makes this unlikely). The exact details of this feud stay muddled, and the issue is still unclear to this day and a big point of contention among fans.
  • Neil Gaiman has expressed regret upon being informed that the show cast white actors Julian Richings and Stephen R. Hart to portray the Native American (Lakota) cultural characters Iktomi and Gnaski. The casting decision drew backlash from fans, especially given that the show had cast a Native American actress (Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs) to play another Native American character. Neil Gaiman also promised to talk to the showrunner to try to avoid such things in the future.
• Creator Killer: One hopes to be proven wrong, but several years on, this seems to be the case regarding Bryan Fuller. He departed after the first season in vague but clearly acrimonious circumstances; various rumors involve excessive Executive Meddling making it impossible for him to tell the story he wanted, while other sources claim Fuller went heedlessly overbudget filming the first season. Regardless, after leaving several other shows abruptly, this seemed to be the last straw for television in general with regards to Fuller; the only credit he's had to his name since is a documentary on queer horror films.
• Fake American: This is fundamentally a story about America as a country of immigrants, so it's a bit weird to label the actors as "Fake Americans", but there are certainly several actors in the show that put on fake American accents:
  • Brits Ian McShane and Ricky Whittle play Wednesday and Shadow, respectively. McShane uses his natural English accent in the scene where Wednesday cons the airline employees in the first episode.
  • Australian actress Emily Browning plays Laura Moon.
• Fake Irish: Canadian Pablo Schreiber plays Irish leprechaun Mad Sweeney, and Australian Emily Browning plays Irishwoman Essie McGowan.
• God-Created Canon Foreigner: Vulcan was created by author Neil Gaiman in response to an experience he had with American gun culture in Alabama.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Easter/Ostara/Eostre, an ancient goddess of spring and fertility who is bitter over her name and worship being co-opted by Christianity is played by devout Christian Kristin Chenoweth. But then, Easter has nothing against Jesus themselves and focuses her ire upon humanity itself.
• Playing Against Type: Danny Trejo is usually played as Tattooed Crooks and stoic tough-guys with a perpetual stink-eye. As Mr. World, he's portrayed as an affable Nice Guy (albeit Affably Evil), being the most laid-back of Mr. World's three personas.
• Produced by Cast Member: Ian McShane, who plays Mr. Wednesday, becomes one of the executive producers on the show from Season 2 onwards. Orlando Jones, who plays Anansi, is also credited as a consultant producer in Season 2.
• Production Posse: Many actors from Bryan Fuller's previous projects show up as recurring characters or one-shot guest stars:
  • Wonderfalls: Tracie Thoms (Detective Buffer) and Beth Grant (Jack).
  • Pushing Daisies: Kristin Chenoweth (Easter) and Beth Grant.
  • Hannibal: Gillian Anderson (Media), Demore Barnes (Mr. Ibis), Jonathan Tucker (Low Key Lyesmith), Jeremy Davies (White Jesus) and Scott Thompson (Kind Man).
  • Mockingbird Lane: Beth Grant.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor:
  • Yetide Badaki who plays the Depraved Bisexual goddess Bilquis came out as bisexual herself in 2021 and credited the show with helping her to be open about her sexuality.
  • Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, who's queer, was Samantha "Sam" Black Crow, a Cherokee Two-Spirit.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Gillian Anderson and Kristin Chenoweth leaving the show after Season 1 meant the writers had to work around their characters' absence. Media was replaced with New Media, played by Kahyun Kim, and her character's focus changed from 20th century movies/TV and music to 21st century social media; while Easter's absence was Handwaved as her being furious at Wednesday for his slaughter of the bunnies on her driveway in the first season finale.
• Reality Subtext: According to Orlando Jones, the scene that introduces Mr. Nancy was inspired by Donald Trump rallies.
• Referenced by...: Mortal Kombat 11. Yes, really. Cassie Cage's fatality where she kicks her opponent in the crotch so hard their body splits in half and their skull and spine fly up is an explicit Shout-Out to Laura Moon doing the same to one of the Children in "Git Gone."
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Following the multiple abuse and assault accusations against him from several women, Starz announced that episodes featuring Marilyn Manson would be edited to remove his scenes.
• Schedule Slip: Season Two premiered two years after the first Season for a number of reasons. Firstly, Starz wasn't willing to renew it until it saw the audience reaction. Then, Bryan Fuller and Michael Green left the show under mysterious circumstances, and a new showrunner had to be found. Then Jesse Alexander went over schedule, and over budget.
  • Season Three was similar, given that more behind-the-scenes drama and delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic made it only return after nearly 2 years again. It also had an enforced case, as Starz decided to not release an episode on Super Bowl Sunday.
• Those Two Actors: Jeremy Davies and Jonathan Tucker both previously appeared in season 2 of Hannibal and season 6 of Justified.
• Throw It In!: In "A Murder of Gods", Laura's claim that she likes anal sex wasn't actually in the script.
• Troubled Production: Making the series has not been an easy task (The Hollywood Reporter downright called it "a magnet for trouble"), to the point that every season runs into budget problems and ends with the showrunners leaving and some actors quitting. Season 2 in particular had the scripts being constantly rewritten by the actors themselves, with the production forced to hire Orlando Jones as a writer so as to not get in trouble with the WGA - and Jones added that there was barely anything done for the minority parts, including series lead Ricky Whittle! It ultimately culminated in the show being cancelled following low ratings in season 3, making the producers seek a way to conclude the story, possibly with a movie.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Nicolas Cage was approached to play Wednesday, but he turned the role down despite liking the script.
  • In "The Bone Orchard", Shadow rejects Audrey's drunken offer of a blowjob as a means of closure to the revelation of their spouses' affair. Bryan Fuller and Michael Green wanted to have him accept it, but Neil Gaiman categorically refused, saying it was utterly out of character for Shadow and that he would "step in front of a bus" if they filmed the scene.
  • Andy Mientus auditioned for Technical Boy, but didn't get the role. His audition video was online briefly until fans alerted him that GIFs were made of it and he made it private.
  • According to Fuller and Green, several women were auditioned for Technical Boy.
  • Ian McShane was originally offered the role of Czernobog. He turned it down because as he read the script he was much more interested in Mr. Wednesday instead.
  • The first season was planned to be ten episodes long and to end with the meeting at the House on the Rock. Due to budget restrains, it was cut down to eight episodes and the House on the Rock meeting was re-used for the opening of season 2. One of the cut plotlines involved the Intangibles, the new gods of the stock market mentioned in the novel, and there is still concept art of it.
  • Bryan Fuller and Michael Green had already prepared plans for season 2 before leaving the show. Information is scarce, but we know that aliens would have appeared, that there would have been a great focus on Audrey, and that Media would have appeared as Princess Leia and Mr. Rogers.
  • Season 2 has an important amount of deleted material. Several trailers and promotional pictures show several cut scenes from "The Greatest Story Ever Told", including a scene involving a miniaturized Technical Boy in front of New Media. A storyboard released on Instagram revealed that it was planned for Mr. Nancy to confront and fight the ghost of Froggy James in "The Ways of the Dead". Behind-the-scene materials also revealed the existence of a deleted scene involving a previous incarnation of the Technical Boy, a god of video games whose appearance was a nod to the original novel's Technical Boy (obese and dressed in geeky 80s/90s clothes). When asked about it, Bruce Langley promised that if the scene was not reused in the future he would release additional material about it.
    • And he eventually did several years later, in December of 2023, on his Instagram account, right here.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Due to the messages of the show, its exploration of various cultures and the outrage the fans felt upon seeing Orlando Jones fired (see above), one would believe the fandom to be pretty strong against discrimination. Yet there was one big incident in season three, when Ricky Whittle decided to let his hair grow instead of shaving it to play Shadow. Many fans criticized him as a "sell-out" for using a perm to make his hair look like that of a "White guy", even going as far as linking this to the Orlando Jones incident and presenting Ricky Whittle as a Black actor rejecting his Black heritage for money. Except that... it was his natural hair. Most viewers visibly completely ignored that Ricky Whittle was a biracial actor, and he had to publicly remind them that biracial discrimination was a thing too.
• Word of God: The writers of season one, when discussing the sex scene between Salim and the Jinn, clarified that it was not intended to be Salim's first sexual encounter with another man. Rather, the significance of the scene was the real intimacy between the two and their lack of shame or fear of discovery, which were new to Salim, whose life until that point was defined by being a closeted and lonely gay man in a deeply homophobic country.
• Word of Saint Paul: Bruce Langley spoke extensively about his character's psyche and evolution, as well as his interpretation of the dynamics between the New Gods, throughout the duration of the television series (it even became a running joke that he would delve into extremely deep and complex analysis whenever asked a question about the Technical Boy or the gods). As a result, he gave some interesting info to understand the show. For example, about the disappearance of Quantum Boy in season 3, Bruce Langley explained in an interview that in-universe it was caused by Quantum Boy's unstable nature (since he was the embodiment of quantum computers, Langley even pointing out how his costume had cooling tubes). In the show itself? It is handwaved as Technical Boy "failing" his upgrade and never brought back again.
• Written by Cast Member: Besides being credited as consultant producer in season two, Orlando Jones reveals in several interviews that he ended up being roped into writing the character bibles and scripts for several characters, including Bilquis, Salim, the Jinn, Sam Black Crow, Mr. Ibis, main characters Shadow and Laura Moon, and his own character Mr. Nancy.
• Wrongfully Attributed: Due to being the author of the book the show is based on and frequently participating in interviews about the show with actors and showrunners, Neil Gaiman has been often mistaken for an active power on the show, and credited (or blamed) with many of the decisions (or mistakes) the show committed. To the point Neil Gaiman had to reclarify his actual role in the making of the series in a Tumblr ask: he did not create the show, he talked with each new showrunner at the beginning of each season to explain to them what the story and characters were about, he helped some actors get cast and he made some suggestions (that the showrunner had no obligation to follow - except this one time he threatened to throw himself under a bus). In fact we know that he was unaware of a lot of things that actually went on in the show - for example he was mostly absent from the making of season 2 due to his work on Good Omens, to the point of discovering some unfortunate casting decisions upon the episodes being released (see Creator Backlash above).