Arseface: How ‘Preacher’ Gave A Guy A Butt For A Mouth

AMC’s new Sunday night drama Preacher combines comedy and drama, God and grossness in equal measures. No where is this dance of contradictions more apparent than in the character of Eugene Root, or “Arseface.” The sweet, sad character has a heart of gold and a face that looks like a butt. And he’s already caused a minor debate in Decider HQ.

I think he’s kind of cute — you know, in a “sad kicked puppy” kind of way – whereas my esteemed editor Mark Graham finds him disgusting.

I told Preacher star Dominic Cooper about this divide and the actor was thrilled about it. “That’s so good!” Cooper enthused. “That in itself — that exact discussion you had with your boss — I think is just brilliant. That for me is exactly what people are going to be doing.”

Garth Ennis, the brilliant writer behind the show’s source material, the graphic novel series Preacher, sees Arseface a bit differently. As he bluntly put it, “To me, Arseface was always pure comic relief.”

“In the show, they’ve done something quite interesting,” said Ennis. “They’ve given him a little internal conflict all his own. As it goes on, you’ll see that Arseface’s backstory, and the kind of conflict he has within himself, will start to come to the fore in quite an interesting way.”

Ennis was also quick to point out that the show has made pains to make the character less grotesque than he is on the page — for practical reasons. “They’ve had to give the actor, Ian Colletti, a bit more expressiveness. If they had what you see in the comic, he’d have been acting with one eye — if he was lucky! At least this way, this,” Ennis said while pointing to the lower half of his face,” is all gone, but he still has his eyes.”

However, creator Seth Rogen told a room of journalists that the decision to put Colletti in a prosthetic wasn’t a creative choice, but a practical one.”[It was] mostly because of budgetary reasons,” Rogen said.

Rogen explained that a lot of the show’s stylized practical effects only exist because they couldn’t trust the CGI that their limited budget allowed. “It probably would have been a lot easier to just paint six old dots on a kid’s face and not have him in this fucking thing all day!” Rogen laughed. “I know Ian would have preferred that. But just from a budgetary level, it would have looked, for a TV show budget, it would have looked a little weird.”

Rogen also revealed that he originally gunned for the role back when it was being developed as a film by director Sam Mendes. He said, “I actually found the email. I sent it to Sam Mendes in 2008. He was the director [attached at the time] and I was like, ‘Hey! Can I audition for Arseface?’ And he was like, ‘Sure, when we get there.’ And then it just fell apart before then.”

Rogen also told the crowd of reporters that he thought the reason no one else was able to adapt Preacher before now was that they overlooked the importance of comedy. “I think that as we looked at other versions of it crumbling from afar, that seemed to be the one element that they were missing,” Rogen mused. “And I say that having not read any other version of the script. That’s my own assumptions about what was wrong with a process I know nothing about.”

Preacher will eventually land on Hulu, but for now you can buy or rent it on VOD. Alternatively, you can stream it on AMC if you have Sling TV. For more on Sling TV, click here.

[Where to Stream Preacher]

[Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/Sony Pictures Television/AMC]