Preacher Cast Describes Jesse, Tulip, And Cassidy’s Bond

Any fan of the original Preacher comic book series is likely to tell you that, even with all of the over-the-top moments and bizarre characters that inhabit the story, the series’ greatest strength is the bond between the three leads – Jesse Custer, Tulip O’Hare, and Cassidy.

Now that the characters are being brought to life on screen or AMC’s Preacher TV series, we thought we’d ask the actors who will portray the characters for their own take on those powerful bonds.

Dominic Cooper players Jesse Custer, the preacher with a sordid past. Much of that past involves his old flame, Tulip, played by Ruth Negga. We asked Cooper if there’s a love story, if that moment has already passed.

“This is a relationship that I think is much broader,” Cooper says. “What’s being really investigated in our show is how dependent those two are on each other. There’s quite a beautiful love for one another. They’ve known nothing else. A majority of their life decisions have revolved around an actual real care for one another. They’ve gone through hell together.”

Without straying into specifics, Cooper also said the Tulip is partly responsible for the feelings that sent drew Jesse back to Annville.

“She’s the cause of his relationship with God, and his father, and the guilt,” Cooper says. “He loved her so much as a child. You find out the back-story of their life and it all makes sense. The fractured nature of their relationship, how they despise but adore each other. It’s so complicated, but they find it very hard without one another. They know nothing else.”

Jesse isn’t the only one who is fond of Tulip. Joe Gilgun, who plays Cassidy, says his character “adores” her.

“The way I played it is he sees Tulip, and for the first time in a long time he’s seen something special and something different,” Gilgun explains. “First about Jesse, and there’s certainly something different about Tulip.”

“There’s still vulnerability there,” Negga says of Cassidy. “The lovely thing about Cassidy, even though he’s been around for so long, and the things he must have seen, he’s still longing for relationships.”

Negga describes the relationship between Jesse, Cassidy, and Tulip as that of “kindred spirits.”

“The three of them recognize something in each other that resonates within each of them,” she says. “I think that they’ve been outsiders for all their lives. They’re misfits. I think that misfits find each other, don’t they?

“There’s a home there,” she adds. “There’s a certain peace there, when you find your tribe and kin.”

Gilgun describes the relationship in a more bombastic, but no less affectionate, manner.

“I think they’re a disaster together,” he says. “Tulip and Cass together is a fucking calamity, isn’t it? Both completely lunatics with not many limits. They’re both more than willing to hit the self-destruct button and keep pushing that.”

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