After five years, Jenna Coleman is returning to genre television. But this time around, she isn’t playing the companion of an enigmatic and trench-coated hero like she did on Doctor Who. With The Sandman, Coleman is throwing on her own trench coat to portray a daring and adventurous woman of mystery.
In the forthcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s groundbreaking comic, Coleman portrays Johanna Constantine, a sardonic occult detective who is haunted by her own demons and related to the DC Comics character John Constantine (Coleman also portrays Johanna’s ancestor Lady Constantine). Fairly early in the season, the tricky necromancer crosses paths with the titular Sandman, Morpheus (Tom Sturridge), the Lord of Dreams, shortly after he escapes his century-long imprisonment. Morpheus is on the hunt for several powerful items and reluctantly turns to Constantine to find one of them.
Below, Coleman takes Tudum inside her portrayal of Constantine, what it was like to work with Gaiman and more.
How did you join The Sandman?
I’m been a long, longtime Neil Gaiman fan. Obviously I worked with Neil before on Doctor Who. It was one of my first episodes, “Nightmare in Silver.” I already had a previous relationship with him. And then I was shooting in Bangkok and some material came through to me. And I knew it was Sandman, but I didn't know what [character], so it was purely an instinctive response from the scripts that I was sent. And then I had a [conversation] later with [executive producer Allan Heinberg] and he explained their idea that we've got Lady Johanna Constantine [in flashbacks and who has] a direct ancestry down to Johanna Constantine, our contemporary corpse detective for hire.
Neil was a writer-for-hire on Doctor Who, but here he’s playing in a world he created. What was it like to work with him on something that was so personal to him?
That was the big thing for me — his world is so vast and rich and poetic and [he has] such a psychedelic imagination. For a performer, it allows you to bring a sense of theater that is very hard to find in material like that. And it feels like it's so distinctly Neil Gaiman's visual aesthetic and imagination and art. That was a big reason for me wanting to do it.
Outside of what was in the scripts, how did you start developing your performance once you found out you were playing Johanna Constantine?
What was great is that I'd already built from what I'd read based on the writing alone before I even knew [I was playing Johanna]. What was great was it allowed me to have a very instinctive reaction to Allan's writing as opposed to being previously influenced by anything. So that kind of set me, I think, on a good path with it. And then a lot of the research came from the comic books, [Gaiman’s story] “Dream a Little Dream of Me” and looking at exorcisms and going down the occult research route as well.
It was great having that character so close [on the page], but then entering and seeing it really changed. I think when we got to set, in terms of the meeting of Dream and how Tom [performed], it was like he was completely present and grounded and in the present world with you, but his movement, his voice, caught that ethereal nature. He's operating on so many levels of consciousness at once. It was so interesting because I was like, “I'm not reacting [like] this is just another human or another character. This is another kind of being.” So it really changed the dynamic and the performance, just working with him and reacting to his interpretation of Dream.
How would you describe the difference between what you prepared and what your performance became when you interacted with this otherworldly being?
I think it's really hard to capture. There's a certain disillusionment and disenchantment with Johanna Constantine. She's been working since she was young. She's seen a lot of things in her life. It's very hard to surprise her or intrigue her. I also think she has a vast intellect and is quite easily and quickly bored. And I think that's where the conman artist aspect comes in as well. She's always looking three steps ahead and operating in a way of trying to distract people while she's doing something else on the back end. Whereas with Dream, and what I found with Tom in terms of his rhythm, she was kind of intrigued by him, so I think it changed that tempo a bit.
She can very easily read people and very easily, obviously, deceive and trick and be that con artist, whereas obviously Dream is an entirely different kind of someone than [who] she's come into contact with before. So it is kind of seeing Johanna tick in a way that, one, she's impressed by him and she admires him, but also equally, she's trying to work out how to crack him and [find out] where his weaknesses are and using humor or wit to do that while she's also constantly calculating. It's like playing a game of chess; she's chess-gaming with him all the time. As we were filming, there were certain scenes where they took unexpected directions. And I think there's a mutual admiration for the other one with an absolute reluctance to show it. I think that it was like a lovely, slow dawning of a friendship of two lone warriors.
Episode 3 touches on a tragedy from Constantine’s past. How did that inform your performance?
I'm really glad that we got to show that on screen, because it really was her working class roots. And she's a worker and she's learning her craft and getting things wrong and [Episode 3 shows] where she's learned the skill set and her trade. It helps the audience as well to see Johanna in her early days, from who she was then to who she is and how she's operating now. But yeah, I found it really informative to go back to the roots and also [explore] what it is that's keeping her up at night and what it is that's in her dreams and what it is that's torturing her, where she went wrong, and the fact that I don't think she can ever forgive herself.
Was there a particularly memorable scene or day on set?
I really loved the stuff with Mad Hettie [who warns Constantine about Dream] because I just felt like it was right out of the comic book. I could see the images from the comic just coming to life. And we were shooting in London at the height of the pandemic, and there was nobody [anywhere]. London was so quiet. It's the stillest I've ever seen London and there was something quite beautiful about that. So yeah, I'd say that. And there's certain iconic shots, like Dream with the Raven in silhouette form and Johanna in the rain with the umbrella — there's something like a nod to a lot of those old noir films there.
The trench coat may be the most iconic aspect of Constantine. Did you have any input on the jacket? Did you try on multiple looks until you found the right one?
Yeah, we went through very different versions of Johanna Constantine. There was a version that we went down, which was very much like a roguish trench coat similar to the comics. And then we had me looking at versions where I had smarter shirts, but then suspender belts and masculine trousers, and a lot more rugged and broken down and a bit scruffy. But I think it was Allan in particular who wanted to see, this is Johanna Constantine, who's now an exorcist to the royal family. She's a working woman who's risen to the top of her ranks, at the top of her game and doing well for herself and [he wanted] to bring in this sleek, sharper, armored, put-together Constantine. And I think there's something about that coat as well, which felt like armor in lots of ways and a good way for her to disguise and hide. I also think it really worked as an antithesis to Dream visually, the black and the white and the silhouettes. So much of the show is about juxtaposition.
Where do you hope to see the character go in a potential second season?
We've only touched upon Lady Johanna Constantine [in Season 1], so I think there's definitely a lot more to explore there. But in terms of as a character of the contemporary Constantine, yeah, I'd absolutely love to see that particular version return.
