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a Dream comes true at the world’s end

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A person who follows me on Tumblr expressed some lovely and positive things about my performance in Act III of Audible’s The Sandman.

I don’t know if I’ve talked about that here, so here’s what I said to them.

The work I got to do in Sandman Volume 3 for Audible was a dream (ha Dream) come true for me.

I have been a Sandman fan since day one. I got it the day it dropped (still have that issue) and never looked back. When I was in my teens, I hoped so hard that I would somehow get to be part of the Sandman universe someday, but I honestly didn’t see how it would ever be possible. I’m the wrong age, I’m American, and when I looked at the map of my potential future, I just couldn’t find a place on the road that even got me close to Neil’s world.

And then, literal decades after I made the wish, it came true. Neil emailed me and asked me if I would voice Brant in The World’s End.

You know that moment in the movies when someone wins a thing, and they have to look back at the telegram or the bingo card or whatever, many times, because they can’t believe it actually happened? It was like that.

So I said yes, did my best to play it cool and not slime Neil with my excitement, and about a month later, I was in the booth.

The World’s End is one of my favorite parts of The Sandman. I love a good retelling of The Canterbury Tales. I haven’t listened to it, yet (I’m still in Act 1 as a listener) but it was some of the most satisfying acting I’ve done in a long, long time. I just remember how completely and thoroughly I enjoyed it. The words coming out of me, the feeling of them resonating in my chest before they came out of my mouth … knowing that my body was an instrument I was playing to bring music Neil wrote to life … wow. It was so much more than I expected, and it was something I’d been dreaming about (there’s that joke again) for over 30 years.

I can’t say more without spoiling the story. What I will obliquely refer to is a moment when a lot of important characters take a walk, and Brant tells you about it. That is in my top three moments of my entire career to this point.

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29 December, 2022 Wil

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2556 days → ← up and at them

7 thoughts on “a Dream comes true at the world’s end”

  1. Dwight Williams says:
    29 December, 2022 at 2:16 pm

    Congratulations on this, Wil.

  2. David Goldfarb says:
    29 December, 2022 at 3:50 pm

    I’ve listened to Act III in its entirety and I thought it was great, and you were great in it.

    My one quibble here is, isn’t it much more like Bocaccio’s Decameron than like the Canterbury Tales? The Decameron has a bunch of people in Italy holing up in the countryside while their city is being ravaged by plague: like the people in the reality storm, they are waiting out a disaster; whereas the people in the Tales are passing the time on a chosen journey.

    (My headcanon is that Neil knows this, but used the Canterbury Tales comparison because that would be much more familiar to his listeners.)

    1. Wil says:
      29 December, 2022 at 3:56 pm

      Since this is the first time I’ve ever heard of The Decameron, which absolutely sounds more comparable, I think Neil made the right call.

  3. irishmansdiary says:
    30 December, 2022 at 2:23 am

    There doesn’t appear to be a ‘like’ button on the new (RETRO!) theme so I’ll just have to comment to say how much I enjoyed this post! Amazing to have a 30-something year dream come true, and to get the ask from Neil himself was just a bonus! (See what I did there?)

  4. Mixhael M. Mayer says:
    30 December, 2022 at 9:00 am

    I haven’t read, watched or listened to any version of The Sandman despite being a huge fan of Neil Gaiman’s novels. Because you voiced Brant, I am diving in. You brought me to The Sandman (not Neil). Thank you for continuing to put yourself out there.

  5. Anthony says:
    30 December, 2022 at 10:08 am

    Hey Wil, loved your performance in The World’s End. It is one of the most fascinating parts of the Sandman stories. It inspired me to get Just a Geek and Still Just a Geek. Having started reading Still Just a Geek, I wanted you to know that you and Wesley helped me accept who I am,a bit nerdy and gay.
    Thank you for your talent, and for your (at times painful) honesty.

  6. Sally Schwimmer says:
    5 January, 2023 at 4:58 pm

    I love the old theme. Makes me feel nostalgic.

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