“I never asked at all who wrote which bits because I didn’t want to get… That’s kind of Neil’s business with Terry and I didn’t want to get either sentimental for something that I couldn’t … I didn’t want to get confused by that. Past that, Mackinnon worked hard to keep himself ignorant about which parts of Good Omens were written by Gaiman and which were written by Pratchett. Pratchett is represented in the story, of course, but Mackinnon also made sure that he was represented on the set, including by placing Pratchett’s hat in Aziraphale’s bookshop. “It was written by the two of them, so we couldn’t do anything else but honor him.” “I never met Terry, but I felt his presence everyday on the set because the thing we were trying to do was honor the book,” said Mackinnon. Could I make him laugh? Could I make him say ‘That’s a good book’? That was my standard, and I think his was the same for me.”ĭirector Douglas Mackinnon, who is behind the camera for all six episodes of the Good Omens TV show, was Gaiman’s partner in bringing this book to the screen. When I wrote my bits of Good Omens, the novel I was writing was for a very specific audience of Terry Pratchett. When you make a TV show you have an imaginary audience in your head. When you write a book normally, you have kind of an imaginary audience in your head. “ the other fun bit was impressing Terry. “I couldn’t do that, and I also couldn’t phone him up when I solved the problems and felt very proud of myself and just said something clever,” continued Gaiman. Just tell me what you think.’įor Gaiman, the writing process was an ever-present reminder that he could no longer call up his friend.

And he looks at it and carries on liking it, or he phones you up and he says, ‘The answer, Grasshopper, is in the way you ask the question.’ And you go,'”Terry, don’t be irritating. And either, you send him what you’ve done so far and you send him up to where you got stuck. “One of which was, if I got stuck, which I did from time to time during the writing process, what I had always done before on Good Omens when I was writing it, if you get stuck you phone Terry. “There would be two different phenomena going on,” he said. Gaiman said he missed his friend especially during the writing process.

Neil gaiman terry pratchett death