SDCC 2019: ‘Everything Is Boring After Preacher’ – The Final Panel!
by Hannah Means Shannon
Moderator Terri Schwartz from IGN hosted the panel for the show’s final season, which will be premiering with two back to back episodes.
Executive Producer Seth Rogen, Dominic Cooper, Ruth Negga, Mark Harelik, and Julie Anne Emery took part.
Teasing about shooting this season and bringing about the apocalypse, Rogen joked about the Preacher panel following the Game of Thrones panel, and offered to field questions from their absent showrunners.
Asked his reaction to the trailer, Cooper said it was the first time they’d seen it, and most of their shooting happened in separate groups. Seeing it all together for the first time is a big treat.
Rogen said they knew going in that this would be the final season, and to them it felt like every episode moved them forward at a fast pace with a definite ending (unlike Game of Thrones).
People who are fans of the comics will recognize a lot of stuff that they might hope the show would include before wrapping up, Rogen said, even in the exclusive Comic_Con trailer that they showed for the panel.
Cooper said that each season got more “ludicrous” and this season is an extension of that.
New characters are coming up, derived from the comics, like Frank the Eunuch, the Marquis de Sade, and more, Rogen confirmed.
The relationships between the big three characters will suffer from “ambiguity” and “panic”, but they will be resolved in a similar way to the comics. It’s still about three “lost individuals” who find “solace in one another”.
Negga confirmed they’ll recognize “what they’re all worth to each other” this season.
Mark Harelik said that in Preacher, God has been created in man’s image, and in Jesse Custer’s culture, this is what God looks like, and “he ain’t a good boy”, someone who can’t make up his mind. He wants man to have free will, but that messes up his plan. He spent most of this final season trying to “manipulate” everyone’s paths to achieve his “divine will”. But the humans don’t necessarily follow plan.
Asked if God is a ‘big bad’ in Preacher, Rogen agreed that he’s an antagonist.
Emery is thrilled with this season and the direction in which Featherstone has been taken.
Asked about the fight scenes, Cooper said they have to be filmed quickly, but are well choreographed. It’s not violence for violence’s sake, but always informs the storyline and becomes like a dance. Harelik thinks they are like classic movie fights. Rogen laid out connections to the Bourne films and the Black Widow film in their choreographer.
The physical and verbal fights between Featherstone and Tulip are going to be “epic” this season, Negga and Emery teased. Their last scene together is “unexpected, weird, and odd” and beneath all the “rancor”, there is “respect” for one another, too. Emery thinks Featherstone understands that Tulip is the person who best understands her in the world by the end.
God vs. Jesse is the really big confrontation this season, though. The question is what Jesse will do with God when he catches him, Harelik commented.
Cooper said that Jesse wants to know that he was not to blame for his father’s death and that his father is in a safe place. And he wants to know a good reason why God has deserted mankind.
Asked what he’s proud of about this whole series, Rogen said, “It’s just fucking nuts”, which is why they loved the comic series in high school. The “audacity” and “skill” of the comics were something they wanted to emulate. The fact that “no one has assassinated me means I’ve done a great job”, Rogen laughed, commenting on the fierce nature of comic book fans.
Negga said she’ll feel a real “absence” and “cry a lot” next January when they aren’t filming again. She’ll really miss the fight scenes, she said, and she loves Tulip’s “found weapon” approach, which will continue this season.
Cooper said he feels very grateful, and it will be hard to find a job that allows you to do “broad comedy” on the same day as doing dramatic scenes, and that’s how brave the show is.
Emery said “Everything is boring after Preacher”.
“Unfortunately, this is what we like to watch”, Rogen laughed during the Q&A, confirming that he will keep making shows like this until the powers that be tell him to stop.
Rogen says he’s been talking to a lot of comic creators and within a few years, they’ll be announcing working on comics property that are the kind of thing that people would hope he would be working on.