The Sandman isn’t only about dreams. It’s really a story about stories, says creator Neil Gaiman.

“We own our own stories,” Gaiman tells Tudum, “but we only control them up to a point.”

The canonical graphic novel series follows the king of dreams Morpheus, played by a brooding, gothic Tom Sturridge, as he travels to Hell and back again, discovering how fears, pain and hope drive the paradoxical essence of humanity. Horror and happiness coexist, but across the Dreaming and human realms of The Sandman — and in our own world — sanity is maintained by the perspectives we create for ourselves.

“We tell ourselves stories to live,” as the great Joan Didion once wrote. But in the 24-hour diner of The Sandman, stories can kill you.

John Dee Takes Away the Lies | The Sandman S1E5You don't have to pretend anymore.

The nefarious John Dee, played as craven and misguided — but strangely compassionate — by David Thewlis, stops by a roadside diner and infuses chaos into the slice of Americana within. With his magic ruby, he unleashes the most terrifying weapon of all: the truth. The people in the diner lose their ability to lie, and they reveal hidden and sometimes dark truths that shatter their facades of happiness. John Dee sees himself as a crusader, a superhero of sorts; he’s ridding the world of lies, a noble pursuit. But the deeply unsettling reality hits home: Without lies, our world unravels. Repression and suppression, especially during the 1980s “culture war” zeitgeist when Gaiman wrote the original series, kept order in a world unable to accept difficult truths.

The Sandman comic book on which the diner episode is based, 24 Hours, drawn by artist Mike Dringenberg, inhabits a top spot for Gaiman fans as a challenging and existentially terrifying classic. The Netflix adaptation exists in that uncomfortable space too, pushing ethical and aesthetic boundaries, needling at painful moments and opening doors to places in the mind we’d rather keep shut. It’s not for everybody, like the other iconic and irreverent graphic novels from its era, Watchmen and Sin City. But for those who are willing, the diner’s enrapturing nightmare has moments that reflect on what it means to be human. And when paired with the next episode — the uplifting walk with Death — viewers experience the core of The Sandman’s mantra: Life and death are inextricably intertwined, and dreams are nothing without nightmares.

To dive deeper into the dark and rewarding episode, we caught up with executive producer Allan Heinberg, creator Neil Gaiman and production designer Jon Gary Steele to discover more.

And warning, there are some MAJOR, MAJOR spoilers throughout. Can you handle the truth? If not, check out our guide to everything you need to know about The Sandman.

(From left: Lourdes Faberes as Kate Fletcher, Steven Brand as Marsh Janowski, Emma Duncan as Bette Munroe, Daisy Head as Judy Talbot, Laurie Davidson as Mark Brewer)

What’s the inspiration behind the diner scene, and what makes it so terrifying?
Neil Gaiman: I knew that I wanted an issue in which John Dee had control of the ruby and was driving the world mad. And my initial idea for that story was that we would go all over the world, we would follow a whole bunch of things everywhere. The initial inspiration for me was actually the fact that comics had 24 pages. And I thought, “I wonder if I could do a comic that’s 24 hours and 24 pages?” And then I realized I couldn’t. But by that point, I was locked into this lovely idea of “I’m just going to go as far as I can. And I never have to go this far again in Sandman. If I go this far — once — nobody will trust me. They’ll know I’m a raving psychopath. They’ll know that this comic is dangerous and that I might do that again. And I’ll never need to do that again.”

Allan Heinberg: For me, it started with wanting to understand John Dee better and having more room in the TV show to explore John Dee’s relationship with reality as he experiences it. And, keeping enough of that character’s backstory so that the fans recognize him but [also] giving him a less nihilistic mission. In our version, he’s a hero. He wants a world where the truth can actually be told. That’s really all he wants. And the problem is, once people walk around and start to tell their truths, it becomes very uncomfortable very quickly.

It was an incredible way to explore this character. David Thewlis has given this character a performance unlike any other, unlike any other I’ve ever seen. I feel so much for this character who in the comic is a straight-ahead monster. Just a murderous creature. And I think we feel so much for John throughout because of David. And it really transformed how we approached the diner episode.

Gaiman: There’s the scene where David Thewlis goes to the fridge and gets himself some ice cream and goes back to the counter and sits and eats it, while all around him, terrible things are happening that he’s paying very little attention to — he just walks through and gets his ice cream. I think it’s one of my favorite scenes in the entirety of the 10 hours of Sandman. It’s just John. John Dee goes to get ice cream.

(David Thewlis as John Dee)

What are some of the bigger philosophical ideas surrounding the diner scene?
Gaiman: I think the biggest philosophical idea when I was writing the comic was about stories. Storytelling, the idea that we own our own stories. We can tell our own stories, but we only control them up to a point. Because if you follow any story far enough, it’s going to end in death, including of course the giant macro story of The Sandman. If you follow it long enough, it’s going to end in death.

What I love about what we did with that as an episode is that Allan and the writers talked a lot about what John Dee was trying to do. And in the comics, really, he’s somebody who has been driven mad, he’s got power and he’s abusing his power in a horrible, petty, awful way. It’s monstrous, and part of the monstrosity is the pettiness.

What Allan and his people did, which I think was so brilliant, was they dug in even deeper, and they said, “What people want right now is honesty.” We live in a world in which we know that we're being lied to. When I was a kid, you had jokes about politicians lying. Now, they just do it. And you’re like, “But — but — this isn’t true! This thing, you’re actually up there and you’re going on screen and you’re lying. And everybody watching knows you’re lying and you know you’re lying, and what is this?” What happened? What happened to at least some kind of ideal: truth, justice and the American way?

John Dee is somebody who is just as damaged, just as monstrous as he was in the story. He is not a good person, but you realize the thing that actually tipped him over the edge was the fact that he was raised in a world of lies. And in his crooked, bent, half-destroyed way, what he believes he’s seeking is truth.

And what he’s trying to do is liberate people into truth. And of course the world can only take so much truth.

(David Thewlis as John Dee)

Gwendoline Christie told us that Neil gave her insight into villains: “Each character is a hero within their own story.” John Dee is a superhero, in his mind: He’s ridding the world of lies, but that action actually ends up being villainous. Could you talk about that a little bit?
Heinberg: It’s just like a hall of mirrors. The animosity between Dream and John has historical references. One of the first decisions we made was to make John Dee Burgess’ biological child. This is the resolution of a conflict that we established in Episode 1, essentially, between Burgess and Dream. Now it’s been passed down a generation to his son, so it feels inevitable. But then we realize that John basically referred to the king of dreams as the king of lies. Then we discern the difference when Morpheus finally tells John why he’s wrong in the end — dreams are not lies; dreams are a form of hope.

It had so much power, especially with Dream, who’s coming out of hell and had just faced down Lucifer, having to examine what hope is and what hope means for himself [and] to then bring it back into the waking world with him. And a lot of this was inspired by David’s performance and being able to play John’s heartbreak and also his monstrosity.

We just wanted to give David as much to play as possible and to be rooting for him right up until the end. So that Dream’s act of mercy in the end makes sense, because Dream is empathetic in that moment in a way that he probably wouldn’t have been, if he hadn’t met Johanna Constantine and Lucifer, and now this battle with John Dee. He could crush John Dee in his hand and he chooses not to. And I wanted to understand why he doesn’t. And I think this version of John Dee sort of answers the question. Dream has compassion because he knows the monster that John’s father was.

John Dee Makes Bette Tell the Truth | The Sandman S1E5 Isn't it a relief to tell the truth for once?

What are some of the queer themes throughout the diner scene?
Gaiman: The fun of Sandman for me, when I was writing it, was going, “I’m going to write a comic that has my people in it, people I’m with, my friends, my world.” And in order to write that comic, there are things that are going to be a given. One of those givens is there are going to be gay characters in the story. And another given is there will never be any gay characters where the important thing about the character is that they’re gay. The important thing about the characters is that they’re themselves, and their sexuality may well be part of that, but it’s not going to be a story. It’s never going to be an issue story.

In the first Sandman, you get to watch Alex fall for Paul and they’re a couple. The story is about Alex’s relationship with his dad and Paul’s relationship with this relationship that he’s in, that comes with the baggage of somebody imprisoned in the basement. That for me was important.

There were absolute queer things all through the diner, because I wanted my people in the diner, I wanted to care for them, but I also wanted things that were hard and harsh, about honesty, about relationships in the diner. And one of the things that I loved was that those things and those people translated fairly effortlessly, I think, onto the screen.

(From left: Laurie Davidson as Mark Brewer, Lourdes Faberes as Kate Fletcher)

Heinberg: I knew that in the comic there’s an orgy, everybody’s having sex with everybody in the comic and it’s off-panel, under the counter. I knew we were building toward this sex and violence crescendo. And obviously, Judy’s sexuality is overt in the comic and becomes a point of conflict for her. She feels that Bette treats her differently because of her sexuality. We learn in the comic that Marsh has actually had sex with Bette’s son in prison. So Marsh’s sexuality is twisted in a way that Bette has no idea about, and their sexual relationship is murky, but you know that she’s devoted to him. I was like: “I don’t think the orgy is going to be the way to go.” But if I coupled them off in surprising ways, we knew that Mark and Kate were going to end up together, because Gary was going to be jealous as he is in the book. And that’s where the murder was going to happen.

Then I started to think about: “We know Marsh is gay from the comics, so what if Gary is a sex addict? What if Gary is a sensualist, is bisexual, and that’s one of the secrets, one of the lies he’s keeping from Kate?” It all seemed very organic. And then Bette who seems overly interested in Judy’s sex life — what if the revelation is, as John says to Judy, she doesn’t think [her partner] Donna’s good enough? And this moment blows Judy away.

I cannot tell you the sigh of relief in terms of not having to stage an off-camera orgy. It’s inevitable because we did the work to make it seem inevitable. But I think it’s also going to surprise comic viewers who are expecting the other thing: the orgy.

Observe How the Comics were Adapted for The SandmanFrom comics to screen, here's how the filmmakers translated the rich source material.

Gaiman: I love that you deliver everything that is in the comic, but not necessarily in the way that anybody is expecting.

Heinberg: That was a stated goal of ours, which I think is important to know.

Gaiman: That was our goal for the entire series: reinspecting everything. There wasn’t anything that was sacred in the sense of it could not at least be talked about or discussed. Everything was up for grabs, and a lot of the time we would go around the house and then go back to where the comic was and feel grumpy about smug 26-year-old Neil Gaiman somewhere making stuff up and going, “OK, well, he actually did get this one right.”

What were the challenges of adapting the comic for the screen?
Gaiman: [Unlike the comic,] we don’t have pages and a formal structure, we actually have time to fill, and people moving around, and people speaking, and we don’t have a narrator who will come on and tell you what Bette’s dreams are, what her hopes and aspirations are, and let you realize that these things will never be fulfilled.

What we have instead is amazing actors, and we have a set that is accurate — in fact, it goes beyond accurate.

I asked [original diner issue comic artist] Mike Dringenberg: “Was your diner based on a specific place?” And he said, “Yes,” and he got us references for this Salt Lake City diner that has long since closed down, but there was a website devoted to it because people loved it so much, and we even got to reproduce the typeface and style of their menu as our menu, and to go in there and then build that.

How was the diner built?
Jon Gary Steele: The diner was fun, it’s my favorite. We looked at tons of diners in books, magazines and paintings. And yes, that famous Edward Hopper painting. But I didn’t want to make it too like that, because that’s been done in many commercials. I wanted it to feel like a slice of Americana, to be truthful and nostalgic. The colors, I wanted it to be deep and dark colors. The tile was weird, lime-greenish. Then, the glass, all the glass dividers. We were trying to make it dark, but beautiful. We could have aged the shit out of it. But we didn’t.

(Clockwise from bottom left: Lourdes Faberes as Kate Fletcher, Laurie Davidson as Mark Brewer, James Udom as Garry Fletcher)

What is the backstory of shooting the diner episode
Heinberg: The backstory involved COVID. I don’t think I had a working draft of that diner scene until we were in London and down with COVID. Because of COVID, we ended up having to shoot Episode 5 right after the pilot, right when we got back from Christmas. And so the diner set was being built, I was trying to figure out how we were going to do it, and it became this wonderful collaboration between the director, Jamie Childs and Gary [Steele], the production designer, and all of the actors where I was writing the script there.

Neil gave me essentially permission to free up the way that the interactions happen in the diner so that you can essentially walk in with John Dee, and meet everyone as they go through their day. You experience them the way John is experiencing them. And David’s such a brilliant actor that he gets invested in their hopes and dreams and then the audience gets invested in their hopes and dreams. And then things start to curdle a little bit.

But because of COVID we couldn’t go outside. And so we were a theater troupe, essentially. We took an extra day to rehearse the episode like a stage play, which you never get to do in TV. You’re always rehearsing a scene right before you shoot it and you’re always shooting out of sequence. Sometimes cast members never meet each other. And with this, we were able to actually rehearse it like a play and shoot it in sequence like a play. And it was an experience that none of us had ever had before in TV and film, and it was very special. And the cast was on set for every shot, even if you weren’t in the kitchen for that thing.

If you shoot through the portal window, where the food gets passed through, you can see the cast. They are supporting each other. It was really magical and special, and I think that contributed to why Gary loved that set, just because we spent two weeks there, and it was gorgeous and it was accurate and we loved it.

Neil, what was it like when you saw that set?
Gaiman: I was sad [that] because of COVID, things were very, very restricted. So the only set that I actually got to physically walk on, as opposed to being in the dailies or whatever, was the Undercroft, where Morpheus was kept prisoner. Because of the restrictions of COVID, everybody else was off in Burgess’ manor house, shooting the stuff in there and I got to be in the cellar underneath seeing the water and the candles and the globe in which Tom Sturridge would spend a week basically naked and imprisoned. And I was awestruck. It was like walking around in my own head.