'Preacher' Casts The Vampire Cassidy

The producers of AMC's Preacher pilot seemingly haven't fully locked the actor who'll play Jesse Custer, the title character, but the rest of the major cast is slowly being shown to the public. Ian Colletti plays the disfigured young man Eugene Root, aka Arseface, while Ruth Negga plays Tulip, the woman whose fierce love for Jesse is matched only by the ferocity she unleashes on anyone who crosses her.

Now the third person in the primary friendship triangle will be played by British actor Joseph Gilgun (This Is England). In this case, "person" is being generous, as Cassidy is a vampire, and a particularly voracious one at that, if not exactly in the traditional blood-drinking sense. (He does that, too.)

Deadline says the show's version of Cassidy is described as,

...the most wild-ass, bestest "bro" you'd ever want to meet. He may be 100 years dead but no one's more boisterously alive than Proinsias Cassidy. An incorrigible mischief-maker, Cassidy's up for anything — joyriding, bungee-jumping, bank robbing, peyote dropping. He's also a relentless conversationalist with opinions on everything from religion to politics to pop culture to theories on why people are better able to tolerate the odor of their own flatulence.

That, like descriptions of other characters in the series, sounds somewhat like the Cassidy comics readers know, or at least like a selective take on the guy. I can't say I would describe the comics version as likely to bungee-jump (he'd more likely talk trash about it and drink from the sidelines while Tulip jumped just for the thrill of the dare) but close enough, I guess. Maybe there's a bungee-jumping moment in the comics I have conveniently forgotten, or perhaps the characters are just changing a bit on the road to television, as you'd expect them to.

(And it's better than the early description of the guy as "a friendly vampire who seems to prefer a pint in the pub to the blood of the innocent.")

As for the Preacher himself, Jesse Custer, who gains an incredible power and sets off on a journey to find God, Dominic Cooper has been working on a deal for the role. Whether he'll be cast or not remains to be seen.

The Preacher pilot comes from Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg, Sony TV and AMC Studios based on the comic book series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon.