Former Hollyoaks actor and Strictly Come Dancing finalist Ricky Whittle has scooped the lead role in one of the most hotly anticipated new TV shows of the coming year – the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
Oldham-born Whittle has been announced today as Shadow Moon, the protagonist of Gaiman’s 2001 novel which posits a war between the gods of the ancient pantheons and the newer deities representing modern life.
Production is due to start on the TV series, which will be broadcast on the American channel Starz, this spring. Since Fremantle Media was given the green light to begin work on the show last year, there has been much speculation as to who would play the part of Shadow, an ex-con who gets drawn into the war between the gods.
Gaiman said he was “thrilled” by the casting. “[Whittle’s] auditions were remarkable. The process of taking a world out of the pages of a book, and putting it on to the screen has begun. American Gods is, at its heart, a book about immigrants, and it seems perfectly appropriate that Shadow will, like so much else, be ‘Coming to America’. I’m delighted Ricky will get to embody Shadow. Now the fun starts.”
In Gaiman’s novel, Shadow is an ex-con who becomes bodyguard and traveling partner to Mr Wednesday, a conman but in reality one of the older gods, on a cross-country mission to gather his forces in preparation to battle the new deities.
Showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green said in a statement: “We searched every continent and country and all the islands in between for our Shadow Moon, and we are lucky to have found Ricky. Fans of the novel will find he has every bit of the heart of the character they fell in love with.”
Whittle’s TV work includes The 100 and Hollyoaks, the soap that made his name, as well as British TV staple Holby City. The son of a former RAF serviceman, Whittle spent his early years travelling around the world and represented England and the United Kingdom at youth level in football and rugby. He came second in Strictly Come Dancing in 2009.
American Gods been translated into more than 30 languages and earned numerous accolades including Hugo, Nebula and Bram Stoker awards for best novel. It was the first novel from Gaiman, then primarily known for his comics work on titles such as Sandman from DC/Vertigo. The novel reinvents the gods of myth and places aspects of them in modern-day America, brought over by waves of immigration in US history.
When the adaptation was announced, Gaiman said: “I am thrilled, scared, delighted, nervous and a ball of glorious anticipation. The team that is going to bring the world of American Gods to the screen has been assembled like the master criminals in a caper movie: I’m relieved and confident that my baby is in good hands.”
