There are few people on the acting scene cooler than David Tennant. On television alone, he’s been a part of two of the biggest science-fiction franchises ever — both of which he’ll return to this year — played a Marvel villain, and provided the voice for a beloved Disney character. Add to that some Shakespeare characters and a vampire hunter on film, and one might be hard-pressed to find a space to fit yet another iconic role for him to play. And yet he’s managed it, bringing his unique, hilarious talents to the long-awaited second season of Prime Video’s Good Omens.

Tennant returns to the small screen this month as the demon Crowley, an eternally cranky lord of Hell whose friendship with a particular angel tends to get him in trouble. That’s certainly the case this season, as he finds himself living in his Bentley (cursed to play nothing but Queen music, forever and ever and ever) and out of the employ of Downstairs, though they won’t exactly leave him alone, despite preventing the literal apocalypse. When Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) finds himself in the middle of a predicament — one that comes in the form of an amnesiac archangel Gabriel (Jon Hamm) — it’s up to the grouchy immortal to join forces with him once again, uncovering yet another divine mystery before something truly terrible happens.

Collider was excited to sit down with Tennant to discuss making the new season, how Crowley’s changed between seasons, and sitting back to let creator Neil Gaiman work his magic to expand Good Omens’ story. During this interview, we also discussed his friendship with Sheen and collaborating with him on Staged, Crowley’s favorite Queen song, and a little bit of what audiences can expect when he returns as Doctor Who himself for this year’s sixtieth-anniversary specials.

Check out the full interview, conducted prior to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, down below.

Image via Prime Video

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COLLIDER: Obviously, when you started making this show, you had the book to go off of, you had a very specific framework to work off of. But because everything for Season 2 is new, did you get to have any input with Neil Gaiman on where Crowley goes from the end of Season 1?

DAVID TENNANT: Oh no, that’s not my job. No, I mean, we’ve got Neil Gaiman, so you just get excited about what direction he’s going to send you in. It wouldn’t occur to me, to be honest, to start giving Neil Gaiman plot suggestions or character suggestions, that would just be limiting his brilliance, I think, if he was trying to sort of contort his ideas around mine. So no, I just sat back and was excited to let a script ping in and find out what was going to happen next. What a treat to get to be one of the first people to read the continuing adventures of Aziraphale and Crowley.

In that vein, how do you think Crowley has changed between the end of Season 1 and where we see him now? Can we expect anything significantly different from him this season?

TENNANT: Well, as you would expect, he’s no longer working for his corporate bosses from Hell, which gives him a certain liberty. He’s more of a free agent, but it does mean that they’ve taken back the swishy apartment that comes with the job. So he’s in slightly diminished circumstances. He’s living in his Bentley in his car with his potted plant and feeling slightly hard done by it, I think. But quite early on, we see him meeting with Shax, who’s his replacement in the job. So he’s keeping his ear to the ground, seeing what’s going on, and giving Shax a bit of guidance as to how to be Hell’s representative on Earth and also how to fix the boiler in the apartment. Yes, he’s certainly as we always knew him, but probably a little bit grumpier.

Image via Prime Video

You mentioned the Bentley, and the Bentley being cursed to play Queen songs forever and ever and ever is one of my favorite parts of the show. I was curious what you think Crowley’s favorite Queen song, is if he’s not so sick of them that he never wants to hear them again.

TENNANT: That’s a very…wow, that’s a difficult question. I need a lot of prep for that. What’s my favorite Queen song? I don’t know. I mean, “Don’t Stop Me Now” is probably the best driving song, isn’t it?

Yeah!

TENNANT: And he certainly enjoys driving at ridiculous, slightly supernatural speeds. I suspect that’s probably the best soundtrack for that, so it’s probably that, or “A Kind of Magic,” I suppose, makes a certain sense for a supernatural being with unearthly powers.

That’s a good answer. But you also work very closely with Michael Sheen, who you not only work with on this but also on Staged, you’re quite close. What’s it like getting to put that friendship dynamic to use? Especially since this and Staged are so completely different.

TENNANT: It’s very nice to get to work with a friend every day, you can’t pretend it’s not. I mean, we did have the pleasure of doing Staged during lockdown, which of course probably wouldn’t have happened were it not for us getting to know each other so well on Season 1 of Good Omens. It wasn’t so long after the first Good Omens came out that we were all locked in our houses for months on end. We managed to come up with this notion of doing Staged and making a show on our laptops, which, really, we did initially just to amuse ourselves, to see if it was possible. Then it ended up becoming more. We just [premiered] Series 3, so between the first season of Good Omens and the second season of Good Omens, we managed to do three seasons of something else together!

What was one of the joys of going back to Good Omens was that we were in the same room because, of course, all of Staged was filmed remotely. But I think that probably helped us hone our banter. I think Michael’s a joy, and it’s great to be on set with him every day. I think we probably have even more to do together in Season 2 [of] Good Omens than we did in Season 1, actually. It was very rare to have a scene that wasn’t with Michael, which could have been awful, but luckily we haven’t fallen out yet.

Image via Prime Video

This show has had such a massive fan response. How much of that are you really aware of? Are you seeing how people are reacting to this show?

TENNANT: Oh, it’s been quite overwhelming. I’ve been to a few Comic-Cons over the last few years, and when I visited them pre-Good Omens, I saw a lot of people dressed up as me from…another show. But that has slowly changed until the amount of Doctors and the amount of Crowleys I meet are certainly neck and neck these days. But what’s lovely about the Crowleys and the Aziraphales is they always come in pairs, so you get to meet people who’ve got all dressed up often with their best mates.

That’s one of the great joys of being involved in this show, that these characters are so beloved. And of course, the great honor of taking on something like that, a character that people are so enthusiastic about, is that the great terror is that you’ll break it, that you won’t be… I think, especially with a literary character, the act of reading a book is such an internal mental spell that you cast, isn’t it? Those characters are almost more vivid than a character that you might see on screen. So embodying characters that have been so loved for so long, not breaking them, not, you know, crushing dreams… The way that we’ve been accepted by those fandoms, it’s been quite humbling, to be honest.

You’re also part of another Neil Gaiman joint, you play Loki in The Sandman audio series. Obviously, that’s a different medium, but are there any similarities between working on The Sandman and working on Good Omens?

TENNANT: The Gaimanverse is certainly its own creation, but Good Omens is always slightly different, of course, because it wasn’t just Neil, it was very much co-created by Terry Pratchett, who also had a very distinctive voice and a distinctive universe. But there’s something very specific about the Good Omens universe, which is where these two very distinct, very vivid authorial voices blend together to create something very specific and quite unique. So, I don’t know how similar it was being part of The Sandman. I mean, it was a great pleasure to be part of it. It was wonderful to make Loki come from Scotland as well. I think Tom Hiddleston should take some notes. There’s nothing better than a Glasgow Norse god. I’m kidding, obviously, he is the definitive Loki, but I did my best to sort of, you know, target his coattails.

Besides Good Omens and Staged, you are coming back to Doctor Who this year. It’s all anybody I know can talk about, but obviously, the spoiler police will come and get me if I attempt to talk to you about too much. So if you could describe what audiences are gonna see in November in, like, three words, what three words would you use?

TENNANT: Three words? Three words?! Three new stories. That’s not very good, is it? That doesn’t give you very much away. Neil Patrick Harris! There you go.

Good Omens Season 2 premieres on Prime Video on July 28.