#ella wolfnoth

Fun facts from the Ineffable Con 3 (2021) guest panels :):

The Good Omens Musical

Lourdes Faberes

Ella Wolfnoth

Peter Anderson

The Nuns

1. Good Omens The Musical

(Vicki Larnach: the composer and lyricist, Jim Hare: writing team, Jay James-Moody: writing team)

How it came to be: Vicki read the book, imagined figures dancing on stage with brilliant music and thought, ‘Ah, I’m gonna ask Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman if I can turn it into a musical.’ and sent an email to the publishers. The next day she got an email saying, ‘We don’t want a musical but Terry’s coming to Australia, so come and say hello and tell us what you got.’ Rob came down to meet Vicki and Jim and took them to meet Terry. They spent an hour and a half with them where Terry asked ‘piercing questions’, had tea with them and they showed Terry a song that Vicki wrote (about the Chattering Nuns). Terry said to Rob, ‘Rob, write and email to Neil, “Dear Neil, this is Terry. I’m sitting in front of two hippies from Sydney and they want to make a musical out of Good Omens and I’m tempted to let them do it.”’ which was the best email they ever heard and then Terry said, ‘Okay, you have me curious.’ - it was because of the Nuns song which sounded like the book. ‘I’m gonna give you six months, come back with a first draft libretto and five songs.’ They then sent it to Terry who sent it to Neil. Terry said, ‘I really like it, you’re moving story, you’re doing all the right things, but where’s showstopper, where’s the toe-tapper, you know I need people to go to intermission just snapping their fingers with the song they just can’t get out of their head, and I haven’t heard that.’ - and they realized that they were so busy serving the story they forgot to do the wow-factor, but found it very encouraging from Terry that he wanted to make it better. They went through the whole book again to find a centrepiece - and they found it  when Warlock is growing up and Aziraphale and Crowley are with him, and spent months working just on that one thing and called ‘All Living Things’ which is a line from the book.*’ Terry gave that song to a person he knew and asked him to play it to his wife with no context and when the next day the person said that his wife woke up still singing the song Terry said to Vicki and Jim: ‘Well, that’s what I asked you to do.’ [according to their page they got the permission to being adapting it as a musical in 2013] * ["This here's Brother Slug," the gardener would tell him, "and this tiny little critter is Sister Potato Weevil. Remember, Warlock, as you walk your way through the highways and byways of life's rich and fulsome path, to have love and reverence for all living things." "Nanny says that wivving fings is fit onwy to be gwound under my heels, Mr. Fwancis," said little Warlock, stroking Brother Slug, and then wiping his hand conscientiously on his Kermit the Frog overall.]

Vicki and Jim [who are married] worked on it for three or four years 'fumbling about’, took it as far as they could and decided to bring another person into it - Jay. [according to their page in 2015]

In 2019, ten days before the show came out they did their last presentation, since then they’ve been to London and shown a videotape of that workshop to Neil and Rob which was ‘a pretty heartstopping experience’ but both Neil and Rob were ‘so lovely and very generous with their time’ and they were showing it to them and in the intermission Neil said ‘I wish Terry could have seen this.’

The ending of the musical is a bit different, they were worried about it but Neil said, ‘I totally understand, the ending of the TV series is different, because I had something that was book-shaped and I needed to make it TV-shaped. And you had something that was book-shaped and you needed to make it stage-shaped.’

It opens with the burning of Agnes Nutter and Aziraphale and Crowley are introduced there. 

Act One ends with them ‘essentially breaking up’ because of a huge argument and they dissolve their friendship, Act Two starts with the first time they meet.

What is the future for the musical: they need to work on some things and then they hope to do another run, initially in Australia.

There will be a CD of the soundtrack available when the show is produced in it’s full version.

The best way to follow for updates is on their instagram, they also have a webpage where you can see the sizzle reel. 

[They showed some footage from the workshop presentation in 2019, it looks wonderful :) (the All Living Thing song is truly great :)).]

2. Lourdes Faberes 

(Pollution in the show)

How did she get involved with the project: she worked with Douglas Mackinnon on a TV show called Knightfall, they got on really well and became friends and when she heard they were doing Good Omens and Douglas was in it she thought it would be quite fun to be in too. Douglas messaged her saying he wants her to go up for it, that she would be great and sent her stuff after which she was like, ‘You mean you want me to go up to play a blond young blue-eyed man? Alright. - Because in the book it’s still ‘He’. But then in the show we made Pollution non-binary.’ And she got the role, being probably the first of the horsepeople to get cast.

Was she already a fan of the book before the project: She was a fan of Neil’s work but didn’t read Good Omens before, and she’s happy that she got to meet him and became friends with him, ‘Apart from anything he is truly one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet.’ 

What did she like the most about the costume: apart from the custom made leathers she loved the hair and eyes. She kept the contact lenses, which were also custom made. They had a dedicated optician and had to take the contact lenses out every three hours as a safety precaution, but she loved them so much that every time they asked for example if she wanted to take them out for lunch she declined. They are uncomfortable but one can get used to them. The black contact lenses [those at the airfield] cover whole eyes and are so thick that there had to be a precautionary clear lense on the eye under them. She could see through them - though not so much in a bunker.

They were not prepared for the hurricane of love for the show and for the characters, and it’s amazing how it grew from just love of the show to a fandom that brings people together.

If she enjoyed playing a nonbinary character and was it different in any way to playing a character of another gender identity: she was not thinking of gender when playing, she was playing a concept [of Pollution] in a human form, believing that the spirit of nonbinary is not adherering to any boundaries, concentrating on the character and what the character loves, finding beauty in a mess.

Which character other than Pollution she feels most in tune with: she likes their ‘motorcycle family’, most Famine and War. Also physically Death was played by two guys - Jim in England, and another guy for a few days in South Africa (and voiced by Brian Cox).

When asked about S2 she did her best not to answer, saying she doesn’t know because of scheduling and mentioning some stuff she was recently working on, but saying that there are things that she’d love to be in and smiling :) [so hopefully Pollution in S2 :)*].

* now we know that Lourdes won’t be in GO S2 but was in Sandman and will be in Anansi Boys

3. Ella Wolfnoth

(the lead graphic artist in Good Omens S1 who created the prophecy book, the magician Aziraphale poster, magazines, Tadfield map and more)

How did she get involved with the series: she saw the job advertised and ‘It was quite vague, it was sort of like “graphic designer needed for magical adventure”, no names were mentioned.’ She met with them, got along well with everyone and got the job. She was familiar with Neil’s work but not Terry’s.

She doesn’t work on Season 2 because she was on something else when that started up and also far for her to travel.

Which one of the things she did for the show is her favourite: the prophecy book, ‘It’s a graphic designer’s dream, you know, you get to design the inside, all the prophecies, all the illustrations, what are we going to make it from, how are we gonna make it look old, the paper had to be right, it was such a dream to work on.’ The prophecy book is full of prophecies and illustrations. The prophecies they took from the Good Omens books, Neil wrote some and some they sort of made up from Nostradamus. They got nine books made, three were made to be new as if Agnes just had them printed, three were meant to be aged as if Anathema had it, as if they had been handed down - they had been waxed and the edges sandpapered to give them and old feel, and three as if burned - they did it with a blowtorch. They burned one and showed it to Neil who said, ‘No, you need to go and burn it more.’

If there’s going to be a book of all art she did for the show: not possible because she doesn’t have the rights for it since it was made for the show, but she will think about the possibilities. 

What is her favourite detail in the prophecy book that we didn’t either get to see or is too small to catch: a lot of the pages didn’t get seen.

How many prophecies are there: something between 40 and 80. To make the book thick as it is they repeated the content several times and all the pages are printed in case a character flicks through it.

In the bookshop there are tags on Aziraphale’s desk saying ‘Wolfnoth Press’.

She tried to get a lot of easter eggs in, such as uncle Terry’s hat in Lost and Found in the newspapers. 

Was the New Aquarian Digest magazine based on any publication in particular: no, previously she did a lot of work for Cambridge University and they did a lot of scientific journals and she wanted it to be slightly nerdy, slightly scientific journal-y, something you might pick up and be enticed on the inside and what was in there. She was trying to get in quite a few of Neil’s books on the covers, there was a rat she managed to get in there from Neverwhere.

Her favourite moment from the set: telling Neil how years ago she had stopped reading and then reading Neverwhere made her fall in love with reading again.

When they were burning the bookshop the whole art department went to see it, and before they got to keep some of the books.

Check some of her wonderful Good Omens art here. 

4. Peter Anderson

(Peter Anderson Studio created the opening title animation and in-show graphics)

How he got involved with the project: He got a call from Douglas Mackinnon who he had previously worked with on Doctor Who and Sherlock and Douglas said he wanted him to come in for a meeting with him and Neil which made him panic a bit because he had read a lot of Neil’s books and was a very big fan. The meeting was great, ‘To this day they are two of the most inspirational people I’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with.’ 

There was a wonderful organic collaborative process with Douglas and Neil about the title sequence where they initially talked about subverting tapestries and other things, then one day Douglas talked about a protest that he had seen while filming in South Africa which lead them thinking about a procession and what would that procession look like and why would that procession exist. So they slowly started building the procession with the characters, ending with Armageddon and some flying to Heaven and some falling to Hell. Also since there is good and bad in everyone and in a way Aziraphale and Crowley represent that, so characters in the sequence got the face of Aziraphale or Crowley.

The sequence is also about the relationship of the two lead characters and all the way through the sequence they do different things. Part of the fun is when watching it and discovering something new each time.

First they wanted to do the first in-show graphic sequence [where God presents Earth] theatrically and actors with props and costumes but were told to go more crazy about it.

One of the most difficult things he ever created was the sequence about the witchfinders which he didn’t get at first but then when listening to the script was quite simple once accepted the bonkers of it. One of his favourite moments when deciphering this very complicated and clever script was, ‘How do I show that Milkbottle is dead?’ and the moment when, ‘I know! If there’s no milk in the Milkbottle, that’s it.’ 

The sequence with dancing angels and demons was originally CGIed in 3D but it didn’t quite work and reducing it and flattening it worked.

It was important that each simple piece of graphic told the story, so for example when introducing the horsepeople the Pollution’s horse there is made out of oil, Famine’s was a skeleton horse, Death was looking up at the stars.

They had a wonderful relationship with Milk VFX who did a lot of the visual effects. 

Was the title sequence created before, during or after of the theme song: before.

Does he have a favourite moment in the title sequence: there’s a moment that makes him smile every time he watches - when everybody is going up on the sort of metaphorical escalator to Heaven everybody seems pretty content, but when they’re going down the escalator to Hell you’ll notice that there’s one little who’s going ‘I don’t want to go to Hell I’m going back up the escalator’.

Will there be a new title sequence for Season 2: most likely yes.

Which part of the making of the title sequence he had the most fun doing: filming wearing the actual costumes and he wore a lot of costumes f.e. the astronaut, and also putting it together - 2 dimensional animation, 3 dimensional animation and live action. 

‘We were incredibly lucky with this process [of making the title sequence] as well to have an incredible soundtrack, that soundtrack was something that just pulled everything together and became a kind of partner to the sequence.’

5. The Nuns

(Amy Engelhardt, Aviva Pressman, Rena Strober, Maureen Davis – four of the Nuns that were on the promo tour had a panel in which they stayed in their roles)

It seems that two of the the original nuns from the TV show might be returning in different roles for S2.