By Alex Zalben @azalben
It’s been three long, twisty seasons coming, but in this week’s episode of American Gods, an event that fans of the books have been expecting for a long time finally happened. Spoilers for Season 3, Episode 9 “The Lake Effect” past this point. Mr. Wednesday, a.k.a. Odin, played by Ian McShane is dead, struck down by his own spear.
…Or is he? Without getting into spoilers from the book, it’s fair for fans to speculate that even with this seemingly definitive end, we’re in for yet another shell game on the part of TV’s preeminent conman. Whatever is coming next in the final episode of the season, Mr. Wednesday’s “demise” has set up Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) for a potential sacrifice of his own; or potentially a chance to become the divine being the series has been teasing all along.
To find out more, Decider talked to Ian McShane about this week’s episode, the oft-lamented NBC series Kings, and whether he’d be back for a potential Season 4.
Decider: First of all, I’m very sorry that they 100% definitely killed you off in this episode. That’s a real bummer.
Ian McShane: Oh, things are never as they seem, Alex. I couldn’t wait to die. Yeah, I mean, that’s part of it. It’s all been planned by Wednesday anyway. What happens in 10 is, it’s going towards a deep sacrifice. I mean, this is really going back to the book, Episode 9, not the way it happens. But in the way that it happens, in the way they’ve taken the television show… Yeah.
As you said, fans of the book have known this was coming — and what’s coming next — but I appreciated that it’s still played pretty realistically in that moment. What was going through your head when you were playing that scene with the spear coming towards you?
When can I get out of this fucking cold freezing Canadian evening? I’m back at the hotel. After lying on my back, we’re out there in this astronomy place in Toronto. Out in the wild filming in the evening. No, I was thinking that Wednesday really has set the whole thing up. I mean, if that’s what you want, in terms of sacrificing, will Shadow now follow through with sacrificing himself for his father, which is part of what it’s all about. Will that happen in Episode 10? Has he been strong enough?
I mean, it’s a very difficult book to adapt in the sense [Wednesday’s] trying to please a lot of people because he’s really a blueprint of ideas. Neil Gaiman’s ideas about it are fascinating. These ideas are always fantastic and new, but you can interpret them however you want. So I can’t wait to hear how it’s interpreted by the so-called 1,000 fans of the book who have a different idea how the TV show should have been, which I’m sure they’ll still be arguing about when it’s long gone and over.
Photo: Starz
For your part, you really do sell it very well… It feels like Mr. Wednesday has been defeated in this moment, which is something that’s been building over the course of the season. You still have that con-man mode that raconteur, but it like to play this very different, more depressed Mr. Wednesday leading up to this moment to the end of episode?
Well, it made a change from sitting in a car next to Shadow and saying, “You’re a God, my boy,” and him saying, “now, tell me about this Dad.” A lot of that is in the book. But a lot of that sort of became confusing for people watching the thing saying, “what is all this talk about war?” Because he does talk about the war. Will it happen? Will it not happen? For those who know the book, you know, that it doesn’t… It happens in a different kind of way. And who is behind it, anyway?
So the last two episodes and whether they go on with the show… Who knows? I mean, this is series three. It’s [been] an enjoyable, if rocky, ride in terms of putting the show on, but it’s been interesting every year to see how the stories would progress, how the episodes would stack up, where we would be taking it next year? And how would the audience’s reaction be; which has been different every year? Well, not just the audience, but the reviewers and the critics about how they feel about this.
I still feel that the first series was overpraised, the second series was underpraised. And this has been coming along quite interestingly. Every person will have a different take on it … As I said, last week, I believe, when Hank remarks, “oh, you’re Odin in the shadow play, he’s an asshole.” But [Wednesday’s] reply is, “everybody’s a critic,” which I think sums up pretty well my attitude towards the whole series.
Maybe this is just because I have a soft spot for Kings, but there was a little bit of a sense of your King Silas from that show, in your performance this season. Did you feel that at all too? Or is that just me being a fan for that show?
I was a fan of that show. I think it’s the same powers, a certain amount of power always comes when you’re playing powerful characters. Kings was a terrific idea. It’s just that at the time it was when studios, you know, like NBC or CBS said, “oh we want to make a series like they do on cable,” but when they’re presented with it, like Kings, they don’t know what the hell to do with it, which is why they put it out on Saturday night at nine o’clock on NBC. They sacked all the executives of the television studio. So when they sack the executives, they sack all their projects, too, because they want to come in with a new budget. So that didn’t help. But I did think Michael Green did a great job with the Kings… There was some terrific stuff in that. It’s just the timing was not exactly… Spot on for it.
That’s definitely one that feels like it would have gotten a very different reception in the streaming era, versus on broadcast.
Well, yeah, it might have done, but it might have done [better] if NBC gave it a chance. But that’s because [they’ve got] all the other things on their mind, their own survival in mind. I was amazed that they allowed us to complete a whole season. I think we did 12 episodes. [Editor’s Note: Kings aired 13 episodes.] What if America was a kingdom? What if they had a spiritual advisor? it’s kind of like American Gods. Religion doesn’t just have to be the three so-called great religions. All you have to do to get a real take on that, just go to YouTube and watch Christopher Hitchens take them all down. If you’re an imam, to a rabbi to an evangelical preacher, don’t talk to him because he will destroy you within 10 seconds.
Some of that is behind the thinking is American Gods, which is more like, why does it always have to be about religion? Mass religion creates half the problems in the world anyway. Europeans, when they came to America, brought their God’s wisdom. But the good ones… Nad ones didn’t want to cross the ocean because they needed to remain where they were. But once you’re in America, the last 400 years, they’ve tended to forget about why they came: they came to get away from organized religion, from the brutality of totalitarian methods, no matter where they come from.
You could of course say now, this is what all these people who were spouting about freedom, but it’s not two different things. There’s nothing wrong in saying, “be nice to the gods of nature, cut your finger and put a little bug in the ground and harvest whatever, as a gesture of the goddess of harvest.” I mean, that’s all they were in the old days. Belief in each other, belief in nature, belief in the land, belief in what you’re given from the weather in the stars. We get too sophisticated and forget about certain other things. That’s what Wednesday’s been trying to say for three years, guys, I’ve been trying to get his message across. And now… You kill me.
There’s that great scene in the planetarium with you, Crispin Glover and Peter Stormare. You’re three actors known for this very wild, intense energy… What was it like when you get all three of you in the room together?
That’s what we said. I mean, it was great. You can’t ask for more terrific actors. You let them do their thing. When we came to talk about that script, to talk about that episode, and say, they want you to cut that down, I said, “excuse me!” You’ve got Crispin, who’s become Mr. World again — and thank god they went through the transition, but they came back to Crispin again. Let it fly. That’s what happened in that scene, and it worked because as a result, we just did it. It’s like a three or four pager, but it was all this very simple and very powerful and worked very well. And then you’re followed by, you know, the death of Mr. Wednesday.
For your part, you really do sell it very well… It feels like Mr. Wednesday has been defeated in this moment, which is something that’s been building over the course of the season. You still have that con-man mode that raconteur, but it like to play this very different, more depressed Mr. Wednesday leading up to this moment to the end of episode?
Well, it made a change from sitting in a car next to Shadow and saying, “You’re a God, my boy,” and him saying, “now, tell me about this Dad.” A lot of that is in the book. But a lot of that sort of became confusing for people watching the thing saying, “what is all this talk about war?” Because he does talk about the war. Will it happen? Will it not happen? For those who know the book, you know, that it doesn’t… It happens in a different kind of way. And who is behind it, anyway?
So the last two episodes and whether they go on with the show… Who knows? I mean, this is series three. It’s [been] an enjoyable, if rocky, ride in terms of putting the show on, but it’s been interesting every year to see how the stories would progress, how the episodes would stack up, where we would be taking it next year? And how would the audience’s reaction be; which has been different every year? Well, not just the audience, but the reviewers and the critics about how they feel about this.
I still feel that the first series was overpraised, the second series was underpraised. And this has been coming along quite interestingly. Every person will have a different take on it … As I said, last week, I believe, when Hank remarks, “oh, you’re Odin in the shadow play, he’s an asshole.” But [Wednesday’s] reply is, “everybody’s a critic,” which I think sums up pretty well my attitude towards the whole series.
Maybe this is just because I have a soft spot for Kings, but there was a little bit of a sense of your King Silas from that show, in your performance this season. Did you feel that at all too? Or is that just me being a fan for that show?
I was a fan of that show. I think it’s the same powers, a certain amount of power always comes when you’re playing powerful characters. Kings was a terrific idea. It’s just that at the time it was when studios, you know, like NBC or CBS said, “oh we want to make a series like they do on cable,” but when they’re presented with it, like Kings, they don’t know what the hell to do with it, which is why they put it out on Saturday night at nine o’clock on NBC. They sacked all the executives of the television studio. So when they sack the executives, they sack all their projects, too, because they want to come in with a new budget. So that didn’t help. But I did think Michael Green did a great job with the Kings… There was some terrific stuff in that. It’s just the timing was not exactly… Spot on for it.
That’s definitely one that feels like it would have gotten a very different reception in the streaming era, versus on broadcast.
Well, yeah, it might have done, but it might have done [better] if NBC gave it a chance. But that’s because [they’ve got] all the other things on their mind, their own survival in mind. I was amazed that they allowed us to complete a whole season. I think we did 12 episodes. [Editor’s Note: Kings aired 13 episodes.] What if America was a kingdom? What if they had a spiritual advisor? it’s kind of like American Gods. Religion doesn’t just have to be the three so-called great religions. All you have to do to get a real take on that, just go to YouTube and watch Christopher Hitchens take them all down. If you’re an imam, to a rabbi to an evangelical preacher, don’t talk to him because he will destroy you within 10 seconds.
Some of that is behind the thinking is American Gods, which is more like, why does it always have to be about religion? Mass religion creates half the problems in the world anyway. Europeans, when they came to America, brought their God’s wisdom. But the good ones… Nad ones didn’t want to cross the ocean because they needed to remain where they were. But once you’re in America, the last 400 years, they’ve tended to forget about why they came: they came to get away from organized religion, from the brutality of totalitarian methods, no matter where they come from.
You could of course say now, this is what all these people who were spouting about freedom, but it’s not two different things. There’s nothing wrong in saying, “be nice to the gods of nature, cut your finger and put a little bug in the ground and harvest whatever, as a gesture of the goddess of harvest.” I mean, that’s all they were in the old days. Belief in each other, belief in nature, belief in the land, belief in what you’re given from the weather in the stars. We get too sophisticated and forget about certain other things. That’s what Wednesday’s been trying to say for three years, guys, I’ve been trying to get his message across. And now… You kill me.
There’s that great scene in the planetarium with you, Crispin Glover and Peter Stormare. You’re three actors known for this very wild, intense energy… What was it like when you get all three of you in the room together?
That’s what we said. I mean, it was great. You can’t ask for more terrific actors. You let them do their thing. When we came to talk about that script, to talk about that episode, and say, they want you to cut that down, I said, “excuse me!” You’ve got Crispin, who’s become Mr. World again — and thank god they went through the transition, but they came back to Crispin again. Let it fly. That’s what happened in that scene, and it worked because as a result, we just did it. It’s like a three or four pager, but it was all this very simple and very powerful and worked very well. And then you’re followed by, you know, the death of Mr. Wednesday.
https://decider.com/2021/03/14/american-gods-the-lake-effect-ian-mcshane-interview/
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