Sweet Tooth Creator Jeff Lemire Wishes He Had the Show’s Original Characters in the Comics

Like most adaptations, Netflix’s Sweet Tooth takes a few liberties from Jeff Lemire’s original comic book series. Some stories are expanded on, some characters and situations are built on smaller ideas from the comics, and others are entirely new creations for the live-action show. Aliza Vellani’s Rani Singh, Stefania LaVie Owen’s Bear, and Dania Ramirez’ Aimee Eden are all brand new for the show and not found in Lemire’s comics, but if he had his druthers he’d have liked to put them in there if he could. Speaking with ComicBook.com in a recent interview, we asked Lemire his feelings on the new additions and he’s all in favor of them.

“It’s cool. It’s really neat to re-experience the story and look at it from slightly different angle. I did the book a decade ago, so a lot of things have changed since then. And there’s been a lot of post-apocalyptic stories since then. So some things just needed to change, to feel fresh again. But I think some of the new characters make me a little jealous, because I really wish I had them when I was doing the book. Like Aimee Eden, for sure, is like a character, I really wish I’d had her, because she’s a fantastic character.

He continued, “It’s really exciting. I love finding things in the book that have stayed the same and then finding things that have been added or changed and kind of… It’s all really interesting to see the adaptation happen and experience both things. I still love the comic and it always can stay the comic, but then to have this new thing that embraces the heart of the comic, but kind of finds some new language is cool.”

Series star Christian Convery also spoke about the new characters being added to the series. Having read the comic before he started filming he knew who was new and he was from the comic, but Convery says it’s a welcome addition.

“The biggest surprise to me was how many different aspects Jim added to Sweet Tooth, like so many new characters which I just love to see, and I really love getting to also keep the original story, but making other characters come into play. So, that’s really cool to see others coming to the show, which is pretty cool.”

Season one of Sweet Tooth, and all of its original characters, is now streaming on Netflix.