The comedian and 'MADtv' alum plays the African trickster god, one of the many deities on Starz's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's celebrated fantasy novel.
- Mar 7, 2017
AceShowbiz - Meet Mr. Nancy, one of the many deities on Starz's highly-anticipated adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel, "American Gods". Vanity Fair has got its hand on the first look at comedian/actor Orlando Jones as the African trickster god Anansi.
A fan of Gaiman's novel, Jones shares his reaction when reading the script, "Like you, I'm a massive fan of 'American Gods', so I was really just excited. At first, I kept flipping the pages, and I thought, This is like eight pages long. This is going to be fun. But are they going to run out of tape? What is this, an eight-minute take? I'm so excited to play Mr. Nancy-one of my favorite characters ever-this is really like a pinch-yourself moment the entire way. I'm just giddy about it."
Speaking about his character's accent since he's one of the gods brought to America, he says, "Because Anansi is a trickster god, for me, his speech definitely had to have some African element to it-some patois. It was key that at certain moments, particularly when communicating on a slave ship full of Africans who are soon to be sold at market, he communicate in a tone that is familiar to them. That's just the nature of communication."
"American Gods" centers on Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), an ex-con who becomes bodyguard for Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane), a con man but in reality one of the older gods who travels across America to gather American manifestations of the Old Gods of ancient mythology to prepare for a battle against the New American Gods.
The cast also includes Kristin Chenoweth as Easter, Gillian Anderson as Media, Bruce Langley as the Technical Boy, Pablo Schreiber as Mad Sweeney, Emily Browning as Laura Moon, Yetide Badaki as Bilquis, Crispin Glover as Mr. World, Jonathan Tucker as Low Key Lyesmith, Peter Stormare as Czernobog, Demore Barnes as Mr. Ibis, and Cloris Leachman as Zorya Vechernyaya.
From Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, the fantasy drama series is set to bow on Sunday, April 30 at 9 P.M. ET/PT on Starz. David Slade directs the pilot and additional episodes.
