Pulpit Fiction

BEHIND THE SCENES OF PREACHER SEASON 2…

- Tara Bennett

It took 20 years for writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon’s Preacher comic book to finally be adapted for another medium. Surprisingly, TV ended up being the right home for the notoriously violent and often profane black comedy. Both comic and series follows the journey of Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper), a former bad boy turned preacher, on his quest to find God. Along the less than angelic route, Custer encounters a vampire ally, half-demons and even an immortal bounty hunter who wants him dead.

It hardly sounds like the easiest story to reshape on screen. But in the first season of Preacher, exec producers (and self-confessed comic super-fans) Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen and Sam Catlin nailed the requisite combo of weirdness, comedy and outrageous violence. And that was just for starters, according to showrunner Catlin. “Season 2 is going to make Season 1 look like My Dinner With Andre,” he teases with no small amount of glee.

Reflecting on the first season, Catlin admits that they’ve listened to – and addressed – feedback (from both critics and viewers) suggesting that the show was tough to figure out. “We’re trying to make the show less confusing,” he says. “There was so much mythology to set up in Season 1 that the audience was overloaded with information. We’re trying to make it clearer, but by no means is it going to be any less weird.