Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN Netflix Series Adds More Cast Members Including Patton Oswalt and Jenna Coleman

Netflix has added a bunch of new cast members to Neil Gaiman’s highly anticipated series adaptation of The Sandman. The new actors joining the project include Patton Oswalt, Jenna Coleman, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Mason Alexander Park, Donna Preston, Niamh Walsh, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Kyo Ra, Stephen Fry, Razane Jammal, and Sandra James Young.

They join the previously cast Tom Sturridge, Gwendoline Christie, Vivienne Acheampong, Boyd Holbrook, Charles Dance, Asim Chaudhry, and Sanjeev Bhaskar.

The series is described as “a rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy in which contemporary fiction, historical drama and legend are seamlessly interwoven.” The story follows “the people and places affected by Morpheus, the Dream King, as he tries to fix all the cosmic and human mistakes he’s made during his vast existence.”

Here are who the actors are playing in the show:

• Kirby Howell-Baptiste will play Death, Dream’s wiser, nice and much more sensible sister.

• Alexander Park will take on Desire, Dream’s sibling, and desire personified. Desire is also trouble for Dream.

• Donna Preston will portray Despair, Dream’s sister, and the twin of Desire. She is the moment when all hope is gone, the bleakest of the Endless.

• Jenna Coleman is Johanna Constantine, haunted exorcist and Occult Adventuress for Hire. Johanna is also John Constantine’s great-great-great grandmother.

• Niamh Walsh will appear as is Young Ethel Cripps, a betrayed and determined young woman seeking to survive.

• Joely Richardson takes on Ethel Cripps, Master thief and woman of a thousand identities.

• David Thewlis is John Dee, Ethel’s son. Dangerous, insane and on a quest for truth. He was driven mad, long ago. Now he’s out and on a quest for Truth that may destroy the world.

• Kyo Ra will play Rose Walker, a young woman on a desperate search for her missing brother. She discovers a connection to Dream that neither of them can escape.

• Stephen Fry is Gilbert, Debonair protector of Rose Walker.

• Razane Jammal is Lyta Hall, Rose’s best friend, travel companion and a young widow mourning her husband Hector. Rose doesn’t know that Hector has started showing up in Lyta’s dreams, though. Or that strange things are happening.

• Sandra James Young will take on Unity Kincaide, Heiress and Rose’s mysterious benefactor. She has spent a century asleep. Now she’s awake, having missed out on her life.

• Patton Oswalt will voice Matthew The Raven, Dream’s trusted emissary. A Raven.

• Tom Sturridge is Dream, Lord of Dreaming

• Gwendoline Christie is Lucifer, Ruler of Hell

• Vivienne Acheampong is Lucienne, chief librarian and trusted guardian of Dream’s realm

• Boyd Holbrook is The Corinthian, an escaped nightmare who wishes to taste all that the world has in store

• Charles Dance is Roderick Burgess, Charlatan, blackmailer and magician

• Asim Chaudry is Abel and Sanjeev Bhaskar is Cain, the first victim and the first predator, residents and loyal subjects of the Dream Realm

Neil Gaiman previously talked about bringing this story to life as a series saying:

“For the last thirty-three years, the Sandman characters have breathed and walked around and talked in my head. I’m unbelievably happy that now, finally, they get to step out of my head and into reality. I can’t wait until the people out there get to see what we’ve been seeing as Dream and the rest of them take flesh, and the flesh belongs to some of the finest actors out there.

“This is astonishing, and I’m so grateful to the actors and to all of The Sandman collaborators — Netflix, Warner Bros., DC, to Allan Heinberg and David Goyer, and the legions of crafters and geniuses on the show — for making the wildest of all my dreams into reality.”

Allan Heinberg (Wonder Woman, Grey’s Anatomy) will serve as showrunner and executive producer alongside Gaiman and David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Terminator: Dark Fate, Foundation). Gaiman, Goyer and Heinberg are also co-writers on the project.

The first season of the series is expected to adapt the first arc of the Vertigo comics series, "Preludes and Nocturnes," which finds Morpheus captured by a black magician and held prisoner for the better part of a century. When he finally escapes, he sets about recovering three very important items.

Gaiman already confirmed that the storyline for the show will be set in 2021, and there will be some changes from the source material. He explained:

“We’re working with Netflix, we were meant to start shooting at the end of May. Given this COVID world, everything is on pause. The Netflix version is going to begin in 2021, so Morpheus will have been kept prisoner in the Netflix version for 105 years rather than 70 years. We’ll take that one, see what that does. It’s already in the scripts, it does interesting things because… if we were creating this character now, what gender would the character be?”

I’ve got high hopes for this series. This is just such a fantastic story filled with interesting characters, and I want it to be great.