Many of you will remember Neil Sandilands from his phenomenal run as The Thinker in The Flash, but the South African actor is now taking on a very different type of bad guy in Netflix's Sweet Tooth.
The show arrived on the streaming service earlier today (you can check out our review by clicking here). The series is based on the beloved DC Vertigo comics by Jeff Lemire and executive produced by Robert Downey Jr. Following a boy who is half-human, half deer searching for a new beginning in a post-apocalyptic world, Sandilands plays the sinister and quirky General Abbot.
In this interview, Neil is kind enough to talk in-depth about taking on this role - when we spoke, we'd only seen the first four episodes - and the challenges that came with creating the world of Sweet Tooth, a story about a pandemic, in the midst of a real one. He also opens up on whether he'll continue to take on comic book roles and even shares details on his new album MAANSKYN.
You can find Neil on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, while we'd also recommend checking out his new album, Sangoma Sandilands & Jou Pa se Posse MAANSKYN, here (a physical copy is also available for pre-order at this link). Make sure to also take a look at what the actor and musician told us about his time in The Flash here and his thoughts on The Suicide Squad's new Thinker here.
It must be very exciting for you to be doing the rounds to talk about a show like Sweet Tooth given everything that’s been going on in the world recently?
It certainly is. Everything considered, the global conditions and the pandemic we are all dealing with on a daily basis, to be part of something collaborative which is more on the exalted side of things, it’s exciting and good news. I’ve got a tremendous amount of gratitude.
You’re no stranger to superhero TV shows after The Flash, and while Sweet Tooth is very different to that series, what about this project made you want to return to that world of comic books?
There are a couple of things. I think first and foremost, my read of Abbot, when you’re just negotiating the value of the script, in my world, that’s the Alpha and Omega. It’s the King and Queen of production. If the script is really, really good, that’s the first mover. I read the script and detected in the dialogue and presentation of Abbot, and the way it was scripted, yes, certainly he’s ‘big bad,' however, there was a quirkiness and wit that you could have fun with. Of course, he’s a bad guy, but he’s a bad guy with a smile. In a certain way, that’s even more chilling than a downright evil pathology. For me, at least, he seemed like a really interesting character to try and do. At face value, he’s not just the bad guy, there’s a wit that goes with it and a hop in his step. That was the first thing that was super attractive. The second, I’d like to allude to an association with Jim Mickle. I had the great opportunity to work with Jim in Louisiana right around my 40th birthday which was six years ago. I had just made the move to America and that was the first series regular I booked that was on Hap and Leonard with the likes of James Purefoy, Michael K. Williams, Christina Hendrick, Bill Sage, Jimmi Simpson, Jeff Pope, and me. That was lovely. It was the first opportunity we had working together and it still stands out as one of the highlights of my career because it was so familiar orientated and it was regional work in the Bayous of Louisiana and I had a lovely experience. Jim let me know that he loved the audition, but there were still several hoops we had to jump through, going to network and there are so many variables that go into casting a character like Abbot. With him, I’m lucky to say it went my way and lo and behold, we had a reunion on the other side of the world where we filmed Sweet Tooth.
As Abbott, you’re completely unrecognisable in the series, but did a lot of work go into your physical transformation for the show and do you find it helps get you into the mind of a character like this one?
Well, just to set the record straight, that is bona fide Neil Sandilands beard [Laughs]. That is my own beard! The transformation...I like working with those external variables that other players bring to the equation. It’s the same as a stylist who may have an approach of how they’d like to see the character and prior to that, I worked on News of the World, the Tom Hanks movie, and the stylist on that just received an Oscar for his work on Phantom Thread. By the time someone adds another variable like the costume to a character, you can already be very comfortable that this person is a master who has considered everything. When they give me external variables to work with like that, I usually find it very helpful. There was a prosthetics job on Hap and Leonard because I was a burn victim with around twelve different prosthetics applied to my face, and every day, that was about a three-hour process. In The Flash, I wore prosthetics in that, and I like flipping around and changing my physical appearance. Funny enough, in Sweet Tooth, there wasn’t a hell of a jump. There were the costumes, but I had already shaved my head multiple times in my career, and then I had the beard which was a manifestation of lockdown really, and when I got to set, everyone was like, ‘Keep it.’ If I may, it was a rather...I mean, I think you can get blokes who can sport a beard and some who probably shouldn’t [Laughs], but in this case, all the players said, ‘That is a good idea’ and we decided to keep it.
I know New Zealand managed to get the pandemic under control pretty quickly compared to the rest of the world, but how much of an impact on the production did the virus have and would you say that affected your work in any way?
I think you’d be a psychopath if you didn’t have on some sort of cellular level an acute awareness of what was going on internationally. It informed everything. We were in the pandemic and it took a whole lot of logistical hoops we had to jump through just to get all the players safely in New Zealand. I’d like to commend New Zealand for the way they handled the lockdown. I wouldn’t say it was an easy undertaking, but they had a fair amount of advantages being landlocked and having a good amount of cultural hegemony and social cohesion appears to be quite tight over there. If you have buy-in from your populace, you can certainly do that which is markedly different from the African or American experience. In terms of the working environment, we had to follow protocol and I was in quarantine in Dubai and Auckland, so there was definitely an awareness. Everything was infused with that idea. That was a first for me and I think for all of us to be working under those conditions. I find it a great miracle we managed to pull it off in the middle of a really tight global lockdown. To go through an entire production and, I’m not that in the know, but without incident. It does affect you. I don’t think there’s really a fair amount of scientific study out there that can demonstrate what happened to people on an emotional, cognitive level. I think the knowledge still needs to be published in terms of what we learned from that and we were all part of it and managed to make a production.
It must have been quite surreal filming a series about a virus in the midst of everything that was happening in the world?
From the get-go, I was scratching my head about the serendipitous nature of it. If you take into account Jeff Lemire, I think it goes back to 2010 when the comic was published, and then we shot the pilot well before there was any notion about what was happening in 2020 and it deals precisely with that subject matter. It meant to me, and I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but there is something in that it’s always been said that it’s not the medicine, but the diagnosis. What I mean is that artists tap into very subtle forms of communications and what the planet is whispering. Perhaps they produce things without knowing exactly why it is that they have or what the outcome is. I don’t think it would be a stretch to say something was going on with Lemire when he created Sweet Tooth. There was something going on with Jim Mickle having some sort of relation to the material and then bringing everyone on board. That line of thinking is going to continue when it’s delivered to a viewing audience. I think people are going to resonate with the material. There is definitely something going on there that is beyond my ability of articulation.
Given his history with Marvel, there’s a lot of excitement about Robert Downey Jr.’s involvement in the show as a producer; did you talk to him at all about his vision for the series and Abbot, in particular?
We had Beth Schwartz on set with us, but I’ve never had the privilege of meeting Robert. Team Downey, hats off to them. I can truly say from an artist's perspective that the entire way the production was held and the way they made sure we were all held during the process was just one of the nicest, and I know nice is such a rotten word, but nicest experience I’ve had in more than three decades of working.
I've only seen the first four episodes of Sweet Tooth, and there’s been the one Abbot appearance so far. Without getting into any spoilers, what would you say about the role he plays in the series moving forward?
Abbot...what would I say about Abbot? Hmm. Well, if you can imagine a guy that had a great amount of fun while doing the role. You get to certain stages of your life where you live certain experiences and you’re in a particularly good frame of mind and being. I know for a fact that while I was there and I was in New Zealand working on this production, my internal energy and the way that I manifested in the world, I was in a particularly good place and had loads of fun doing it. I know this is a contradiction because I’m playing a bad guy, but when people look at the character, they can now look at it with the knowledge that this is a guy who was enjoying himself while he was doing that [Laughs]. I hope that’s sufficient!
The graphic novel gets really dark in places, and while I know this show is going to have a lighter tone, do you anticipate getting to really delve into Abbott’s twisted side here?
Answering that question is way above my pay grade because there’s a lot of unknowns going into the future. I think collectively, we’ve put out a real solid, enchanting piece of work into the world. I think a large amount is going to depend on how our international audience resonates with the material, and touch wood, but nobody knows what the future holds. If indeed it does give me the opportunity to investigate this character further. I think it’s set up really well as a first season. I think it’s beautiful. I know what’s happening all the way up to episode eight, and I think I’d say to people that you’re in for a treat and a ride. Who knows what the future holds. I don’t think I can get more out of that answer [Laughs].
With comic book adaptations dominating film and television, do you see this as a genre you could quite comfortably dip in and out of as an actor, or are you wary about being locked into a huge superhero franchise for years and years?
That’s an interesting question in that I’ve never even considered those postulates as part of it. I think the reason for that is being from South Africa, and I have a considerable body of work from here, but because of the economic variables of creating for a much smaller provincial audience and the largest body of my work is in Afrikaans, it’s a really delivered position to be in. We don’t have that massive of an audience, the budgets we work with are smaller, it’s much less regulated, and the mechanism is much, much smaller. Quite often there are limitations on how imaginative one can be if you simply don’t have the economic mechanism to think large and think big. When you’re privileged to be working in America, and that’s part of the reason I went there; right off the bat I was presented with really imaginative material. I think there’s a really good reason they came up with Disney, for example. They’ve created an environment where you can be imaginative and I often wonder whether I would have ever been engaged with the same imaginative material had I stayed in South Africa. Fast forward to when I was presented this material and I tried my hand at it, and the powers that be decided to give me a shot at it. If it comes my way and consistently comes my way, I have a lot of miles in me before saying, ‘Ah, I would rather be doing something else.’ I think I’ve got a lot of miles in the diesel tank. With Abbott, there’s a lot in terms of where we can go with it, so that’s the one thing I’m really confident about. There’s a lot we can still investigate which is exciting.
Thank you so much for your time Neil. Before we let you go, can you tell our readers about what you’ve been working on since finishing the series?
I alluded to Afrikaans being the largest part of my body of work, so when I came back to South Africa, I had the opportunity to create again in Afrikaans. I just brought out an album in my native tongue and that is globally available. It’s super easy to find. It’s on all streaming platforms and is called Sangoma Sandilands & Jou Pa se Posse. The title is MAANSKYN. It’s done in a local musical idiom and I’m super proud of it. I had the pleasure of working with South Africa’s finest musicians during this time to create that. For me, coming back home and being able to give something almost as a gift back to the language and people I came from, it’s that kind of album. If people are interested, you can simply type in my name and the artist profile will come up. It’s a really new thing for me, but it’s one of the ventures I’ve been keeping myself busy with since we wrapped Sweet Tooth. For your readers who want to know a little more about me, they’re welcome to go there.