Earlier this year, literally a week before the coronavirus pandemic shut down a lot of aspects of life in the United States, DC Comics and Audible announced that Neil Gaiman’s Sandman would be adapted into an audio format this year. In May it was announced that James McAvoy would be bringing his talents to the drama, voicing Morpheus, also known as Dream of the Endless. Considering the timing of these announcements one wouldn’t be too off base to assume that McAvoy had recorded his work on the series ahead of the pandemic, but in a new roundtable interview the actor confirmed he recorded it all from the comfort of his own home.
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“I recorded this all entirely in my spare bedroom during I think the month of April after the lockdown hit,” McAvoy said. “I was doing a play. I was in Cyrano de Bergerac in the West End, when I was meant to be recording this, but I just called up Dirk and I said, ‘Listen, now my voice is f***ing banjack from the play, so can we maybe do this after I’ve finished the play?’ Which was, I think 29th of February.”
He added, “And Boris Johnson announced a lockdown on the 16th of March, so it’s like a, for f**k’s sake. But the good thing about that was that by the time I got to record in my spare room, where I built a sort of makeshift recording studio, the rest of the cast had already laid down their performances. Every single cast member has done their job except me. I got to be in the position I’ve never been before in my entire career where I got to listen to the entire show before I recorded my work. It was awesome. It was absolutely fantastic. So good.”
McAvoy said that joining the cast was a dream come true for him as he’s been eager to appear in something written by Neil Gaiman for a while. “Honestly you could offer me like the worst part in the most inappropriate thing that I could be cast in of any of Neil Gaiman’s things I’d probably still say yes,” the actor said. “Because I just love the worlds that he creates, strange, fantastic, quite scary and controversial at times world that he creates. And so, that was, it’s a no brainer really like then and there.”
The Sandman audio drama debuts on Audible on July 15th featuring a stacked cast alongside McAvoy includingKat Dennings as Dream’s sister, Death; Taron Egerton as John Constantine; Andy Serkis is Matthew the Raven; Michael Sheen as Lucifer; and Gaiman himself as the narrator. The drama wille adapt the first three Sandman graphic novels into the format.
