Amazon’s Good Omens pairs up an angel, Aziraphale (Michael Sheen), and a demon, Crowley (David Tenant), to put a stop to Armageddon by finding the 11-year-old Antichrist that has unfortunately been misplaced. The drama is based on a 1990 novel, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, written by Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett. Gaiman is serving as Good Omens’s showrunner.

Frances McDormand voices the role of God. Who would stand the opposite of God? Why the Devil of course. But who could voice the Devil? This was a head scratcher for Gaiman who wanted somebody to be on the same top-tier level of acting as McDormand.

“Ben was just one of those lovely things of going, ‘we need somebody this good to make this scene work. Oh shit.’ …And it was that thing of going, OK, you know, it’s a small part, but if it doesn’t work, none of this sequence will work and just writing an email to Ben and saying, ‘Would you come and do this please?'” Gaiman explained. “And the lovely thing, of course, is I can mention these guys and Frances and everything and he was there the next morning.”

Thus, Benedict Cumberbatch became a last-minute add-in to the cast and he wasn’t the only one. Nick Offerman, who will be playing the role of U.S. Ambassador, was also included last minute. Another A-lister who joined the show is Jon Hamm. We will see him as the Archangel Gabriel. 

Tennant is excited to see his work come to life on TV very soon. “It’s a massive, epic, sweeping show,” Tennant said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I can’t wait to see the finished product. It’s quite hard to imagine at the moment. They’ve got months of post-production. It’s going to be one of the joys of it, seeing how it all comes together.”

Good Omens will be released on May 31 on Amazon Prime.