AMERICAN TURMOIL
Posted: 012719

Starz is doing a second season of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods even though showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green are no longer on the show. Gillian Anderson has bailed on the show as the shape-shifting deity Media and will be replaced by an Asian woman in her twenties called, New Media, who receives her power by engagement on social media networks. That character will be played by Shameless’ Kahyun Kim. Kristin Chenoweth has decided not to return as Easter, the goddess of spring and resurrection. She was going to appear in quite a few episodes of the new season but left because Fuller isn’t around. We will see Dean Winters (30 Rock) and Devery Jacobs (Mohawk Girls) join the show as Mr. Town and Sam Black Crow. Mr. World (Crispin Glover) has tasked Mr. Town with tracking down Shadow (Ricky Whittle) and finding out what he knows about the plans of Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane). Sam Black Crow is a college student who sells the chainsaw art she carves by the roadside for extra money. The season became more troubled behind the scenes with Starz and the production company Fremantle cutting the knees from under executive producer and showrunner Jesse Alexander. He was or wasn’t fired after he complained about the seven drafts he wrote for the season finale that were rejected. THR reported that Gaiman wasn’t happy with Fuller and Green’s scripts for the second season and had them fired. He hand-picked Alexander and has taken a more direct role in the creation of the series. So Alexander tossed the scripts and started over but the actors found them so weak they changed their own dialogue on the day of shooting. A replacement for Alexander had been found and left once he/she saw what was going on. With the delays the show isn’t likely to return until late 2019.