Posted in: BBC, Current News, TV | Tagged: bbc, Britbox, david tennant, michael sheen, neil gaiman, staged

Neil Gaiman On How Much of The Real Neil is in Staged Series 3

Published Fri, 25 Nov 2022 11:07:11 -0600

Last updated Mon, 28 Nov 2022 14:05:27 -0600

Yesterday, the third series of Staged dropped on the BritBox streaming app – but only in the UK. It will be released in the US and other territories later and, indeed, will be available on the BBC at some point – but not quite yet, as people on social media are really rather keen to get angry about it.

Neil Gaiman, who was mentioned in the first series, actually appears playing a version of himself in the first episode as a writer on a radio project to star both David Tennant and Michael Sheen, to be directed by Simon Evans.

When asked, "who approached you to be in Staged 3?" on Tumblr, Neil replied, "Georgia Tennant." That would be David Tennant's wife and co-star of Staged. But not David or Michael, co-stars of Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. Maybe he just gets on better with Georgia, and given the reality as portrayed in the show, who wouldn't?

The meta-aspect of the show was covered by series 2, which revealed series 1 to have been scripted, and series 2 was meant to be the real-life reaction to that. Series 3 gets even more meta, especially when David and Georgia's son Ty Tennant gets involved, straight from House Of The Dragon, War Of The Worlds, and Doom Patrol. After all, the clue is in the name, the show is… staged. And the whole edifice comes crashing down…

But not before we have heard from Neil Gaiman. But how much of Neil, as seen in Staged, is the real deal, or the real Neil? He continued on Tumblr about what went down in the script. "The script was by Simon, but he encouraged me to go a bit wild on the adaptations of classics, so several of them are by me, and a few of the other lines just sort of came out of my mouth while we were filming. (Describing something as "the tits!" seemed like the kind of expression that the Staged world's Neil Gaiman would love to use, even if this universe's variant doesn't.) We recorded several different explanations of why that Neil Gaiman is no longer talking to George R R Martin, but I like the way it just sits there, unexplained."

We're sticking with Bleeding Cool's explanation…

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