Two of The Sandman’s best loved comic book issues have been turned into a surprise 11th episode—and Netflix just dropped it with no warning.
The episode, entitled “A Dream of A Thousand Cats/ Calliope”, originally collected in the comic’s ‘Dream Country’ volume, are two unrelated stories, one following a group of cats that meet a visitor in the middle of the night after their owners go to sleep, one following an imprisoned muse.
And yes, Tom Sturridge returns as Dream.
“A Dream of A Thousand Cats” is fully animated by Hisko Hulsing, known for the Amazon Prime series ‘Undone’.
“We endeavored to make the animated version of ‘A Dream of a Thousand Cats’ as mesmerizing and hypnotic as we could by utilizing the magic of real oil paintings on canvas. We combined the paintings with classically drawn 2D animation, based on realistic 3D animation of telepathic cats in order to create a trippy world that feels both grounded and dreamy at the same time. Untold Studio’s in London created the breathtaking 3D animation of the cats. The wonderful 2D animation, oil paintings and stylizing were all done at Submarine Studio’s in Amsterdam,” Hulsing.
The cast list for “A Dream of a Thousand Cats” is absolutely stacked, featuring Sandra Oh, James McAvoy, David Tennant, Michael Sheen, and Neil Gaiman himself.
Clliope features Melissanthi Mahut as Calliope, and Arthur Darvill from Doctor Who as Richard Madoc, as well as Souad Faress and David Jacobi.
Watch here.
We recently sat down with Sturridge to discuss how he and the team nailed down the character.
Esquire Middle East’s interview with The Sandman star Tom Sturridge
Esquire Middle East: Morpheus is such a difficult character to nail down. Sometimes he’s heroic, sometimes he’s a rat bastard. How did you wrap your head around that and come to some sort of understanding of how to portray him?
Tom Sturridge: Initially, I was lost. I didn’t know. I think you’re absolutely right, there is an extraordinary breadth of expression inside of him.
What’s amazing about Sandman as a whole is it’s this enormous world in which you spend so much time with him, and his complexity only increases. As a fan of it, as you are, I was aware of all the directions that he goes in. I had to kind of bring it back to the beginning, and ask myself what is it that he does, what is his responsibility.
I realized that the key is he contains within him the collective unconsciousness of the universe, our dreams, our fears, and our fantasies and that in doing so, he knows how each and every one of us feels. And therefore, the first thing that does is create a quality of empathy and must do, but it’s such a kind of unsafe, dangerous, entity, that unconsciousness, that it requires an exquisite discipline to contain it.
I think the withheld, isolated, closed-off creature that we’re presented with is born of having to hold that feeling, because the consequences of not doing so would be catastrophic.
What did your conversations with Neil Gaiman help you figure out about how to portray him?
Tom Sturridge: The first questions I had for Neil, were, what does he look like? And what does he sound like? Which may sound counterintuitive because it there are a litany of images of him in these books.
But when we started doing camera tests, as a fan, all I wanted to do was literally realize the images that were in the graphic novels. So we painted my skin as white as A4 paper, we put black contact lenses in my eyes, I had wild huge hair, and the extraordinary costumes made by Sara Arthur, and, and it was perfect. It was a perfect representation.
But the thing that Neil said was that if Morpheus walks down the streets of New York or London, no one should notice him. Perhaps they feel a presence, he should blend in with all humanity. And so I would walk down the corridors of Shepparton and people would be like, ‘Whoa, like, what are you wearing?’ You look like—whatever. And so it didn’t work.
It took a long time. It took multiple camera tests to get to a place where Neil was like, Tom, you look sickly pale anyway, your hair is always messy, and I can see the cosmos in your eyes. [Laughs]
How did you go about crafting Morpheus’s voice?
Tom Sturridge: I don’t know about you, but when I see those white capital letters in the black speech bubbles for Morpheus, I do hear something. There’s a power to them. And Neil was very specific and said that he is the voice inside of your head. He is the voice that invites you to sleep and guides you through your dreams. And that was really helpful. Because, you know, at the beginning, I was like, ‘he should be Terminator!’ And that cleared that up very quickly.
The Sandman is now streaming on Netflix