Dominic Cooper On The Theology Of Preacher

Religion is always a complicated topic in our society. Some people have no time for, and some believe its all that matters, and the divide between the two is such that discussions of religion are typically barred from polite conversation.

But when you're working on a show called Preacher, that conversation becomes unavoidable. That's especially true when you're the one doing the preaching, as is the case for Dominic Cooper. We asked him about his character, Jesse Custer's, relationshp with his faith and his God.

"He has a very complex relationship with God, and what I love about the show, the show never judges anyone's opinion on it," Cooper says. "There are two main characters in it who have very different opinions on existence and their beliefs, Cassidy and Jesse. I adore those scenes, and I was always told that, "It will be a repetition, this constant argument that they have with one another. The conversation, the dialog about it." I think you're on very dangerous ground when you start to have an opinion about religion in what is essentially a very religious country. It doesn't judge and it welcomes anyone's opinion and anyone's ideas."

"What it does bring up is that anyone's interpretation of this God is acceptable and fair," Cooper continues. "No matter how you perceive it or what your ideal of it is, it's up to you."

"Jesse's relationship is one of a man who's so strung out and effected by the guilt of what he thinks he caused, and so he's desperately reaching and searching for forgiveness," Cooper says of Jesse's relationship with religion. "At the moment, the world, his world, is silent for any sign of that. So that's where his search springs from, because he's desperate, he's in need, and when he thinks he's found it, there's this wonderful relief and this lightness that comes to him. But has he necessarily found it? That's what we are watching. Has this person found something true, or is it stained by something else?"

Cooper's own religious background isn't quite so rich.

"I haven't grown up in a religious environment," he says. "I have in that it's always present in our lives. We're surrounded by it. In childhood, at my schools, it was there... I've, up to this point in my life, never needed the encouragement of something like that, or the support of something like that. I'm sure there will be times when I do and am searching for something else"

Of course, any work of fiction that deals with religion runs the risk of offending practioners. Just recently, ABC came under scrutiny for their depiction of Catholics in the sitcom The Real O'Neals. Cooper doesn't see Preacher as being outright contentious about religion.

"I don't know whether it paints a bad light," Cooper says. "Here are opinions and the conversation is had. Anyone that is really, truly religious and has surrounded themselves with that, that's been part of their life. They don't know anything different. They're fully aware of the argument. They've had the discussion. The conversation is part of their daily life, I imagine. They're confronted with non-believers constantly. It doesn't speak one way or the other about it. Its opinion-less, but it has characters within it that have opinions.

"That's what's brilliant," Cooper continues. "I think some days you come away from an episode going, 'It's an absolute necessity that there's something we all have to believe in, that holds us together, that holds society together and it's essential.' Then there are probably other episodes where you come away going, 'Yep, that's a waste of their time. They should move on. There should be something much more simple that they all need.' And I think that it's an age-old argument, and I think that that's what's so clever about it. I don't think anyone who really reads into it, and really looks at it, and who would be threatened by it or offended by it in the religious sense isn't really paying proper attention to it and is just reacting to what they think this is. Like the same people who found, originally, the comics blasphemous."

Preacher premieres Sunday, May 22 at 10 p.m. ET on AMC.