Dead Boy Detectives Showrunners and Cast On Favorite Moments and Connections To The Sandman Universe
Edwin is the brains, Charles is the braun. Together, these teenage ghosts work to solve mysteries for their supernatural clientele in Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado spoke with showrunners Steve Yockey and Beth Schwartz, as well as actors George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri, about the new series.
The minute the showrunners saw the core group of young actors for the first time, they knew they were perfect right fit. “That’s the person,” said Steve Yockey. “Then certainly when we put George and Jayden together it was like instant best friend chemistry, so that's really carried into the show.”
George Rexstrew, who plays Edwin Paine, couldn’t agree more. “The connection was instantaneous really and it took care of itself,” he shared. “We first met during our chemistry read on Zoom, but we didn't probably meet until we were at Heathrow Airport together flying out to film the pilot and the rest is history.”
“The rest was very easy. The scenes spoke for themselves and we breezed through them as a pair,” said Jayden Revri, who plays Charles Rowland. “Everyone was like, ‘God, these two must have known each other before this show’ and Steve was like, ‘No, these are two very random English guys who have have never met each other before now.’ So, yeah, go us!”
Yockey calls the show “The Hardy Boys on acid,” citing the comic books by Neil Gaiman that the show is based on as a major source of inspiration. “The comic books themselves just on the page look almost psychedelic,” he said. “A lot of that is Neil, but a lot of it is all the artists from the comic books, so we wanted to capture that as much as we could.
While Dead Boy Detectives finds these two ghosts solving mysteries, the heart of the show is their friendship. “I think what's great about this character and the way his journey's fleshed out is it is a discovery of sexuality for sure and there's a real sense of awakening, but I think it goes deeper than that. It’s Edwin fundamentally learning how to love,” Rexstrew told me. “He comes from a time period where intimacy and PDA was frowned upon, even in straight relationships, so there's a real softening that he experiences. He's basically learning how to love and how much he wants to be loved for the very first time and that's what you see play out hopefully in the series.”
Revri continued: “[Charles] loves being with his best friend of 30 years with a case. You get a deep dive into his brain and find out what he's been through. He has a lot of conflict of trying to work out whether he's the good guy or the bad guy. It's quite funny that towards the end of the series you see Edwin having to reassure Charles that he isn't a bad guy. I mean, that episode speaks for itself. He's there wondering whether he's good or bad, but he's literally risked his entire existence to go save his best friend and that's what it's all about. That's what the series is. It's about friendship and true love. Love comes in many, many forms and, I think with Charles and Edwin, it's your first love, your best friend.”
When it comes to favorite moments in the season, Rexstrew loved getting a chance to learn the backstory of Edwin. “I absolutely loved during the pilot filming the flashback to St. Hilarion’s, the boarding school, because as an actor you rarely get to experience your character's backstory in real time. They set dressed this former hospital into a Victorian school. There were blackboards and chalk and everybody was dressed to the right period,” he shared. “It was actually really useful because I got to do that right at the start. Over the course of the series, when I was thinking back to Edwin's circumstances way back when, it had been a visceral experience, so that was really cool.”
Meanwhile, Revri loved the magical sets. “We were in Vancouver and they built this this incredible tube set and then we walked in just like, ‘Wow, this looks so much like a tube in London.’ Then the guy goes, ‘Oh, no, no, no, wait, watch this,’ presses the button, and the whole thing just starts spinning,” he exclaimed. “Being on that set and having to maneuver and imagine all the CGI, that was a crazy experience.”
“We’re obsessed with Teeth Face. I will say that the way we broke that episode in particular with the giant mushroom, I did not know that it could talk,” said Yockey. “Beth [Schwartz] turned in her script and it had a line of dialogue and I was like, “Oh, the giant mushroom can talk. That's amazing!”
Beth Schwartz added: “My other favorite part is Tragic Mick’s backstory. I loved that. It was so sad and he's such a fun character and so tragic obviously, but getting to write his backstory was also really cool and doing all the animated sequences was really really fun.”
The showrunners called working with Neil Gaiman on this show that expands The Sandman universe “surreal” and “amazing.” “He’s an executive producer on the show and he saw all of the scripts and he saw all of the cuts and so, if anything, he was just like the world's biggest cheerleader,” shared Yockey. “Like we kept making the show stranger and he kept being like, ‘Even more!’ and we were like, ‘Okay, here we go!’ The studio and streamer let it happen.”
There are two very specific connections to The Sandman universe that Netflix is creating, specifically the appearances of Despair and Death. “Despair (Donna Preston) is the person that I wanted, hands down. She only featured very lightly into season one of the Sandman, but I, from the comic books, am obsessed with that character,” said Yockey. “It did feel like at Edwin's lowest moment that would be the point that introducing that character made sense. We also tried to make her as comic book accurate as we could, so it was a lot of fun.”
“For Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), I mean, the whole show surrounds that character. Our boys are running from her the entire season. We had always written her in it, but in a way that you didn't see her before we knew we had permission to use her. It was always naturally in the pilot there just before we knew we could use her. You just saw them on the outside hiding from her,” shared Schwartz. “So to be able to actually have her character on screen was huge for us we were so excited.
Yockey added: “That scene is one of the scenes that Neil contributed to. Having his input and his hand in that scene I think makes it really special.”
The first season of Dead Boy Detectives is streaming now on Netflix.
