Preacher star Mark Harelik dishes on literally playing God

Preacher’s Mark Harelik tells Hidden Remote what God has in store during Preacher season 4, and why portraying God is the best job he’s ever had.

God is taking things up to eleven in Preacher season 4, as the AMC series builds toward a confrontation with Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper). But what does God actually want in the final season? And what’s it like for an actor to portray him?

Mark Harelik is Preacher‘s man behind the beard, and joined Hidden Remote before Sunday’s new episode to talk about what’s going through God’s mind in season 4. (Is he really drinking buddies with Herr Starr?)

He also talked about how he approached the character, and why he’d consider Preacher the best job he’s ever had in his long and impressive career, which includes some talents you probably don’t know about!

Learn more in our Mark Harelik interview below, then don’t miss him when the next Preacher season 4 episode airs this Sunday on AMC at 10 p.m. ET/PT!

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Hidden Remote: You not only play God on Preacher, but you’ve portrayed an actor posing as God—who was named after you—and as we’ve discovered over four seasons, God is a bit of a jerk. How did you even start to wrap your brain around this character?

Mark Harelik: I started with the Bible. The original [Preacher] comics also make reference to God created man in his own image, so I take that literally to mean that God is a guy. He’s a guy who is has created all of creation for a reason and Jesse Custer has gotten it into his mind that he wants to find out the reason that God created everything, especially humans.

So if we take it literally, which I do for purposes of Preacher, God created man in his own image and God is a guy. Human beings are needy and short-sighted and they’re always trying to game the system for their benefit. I’m just taking it as Biblical fact that God would do the exact same thing.

Even though God can play a much longer chess game than anybody, and he can also create and destroy at will, he’s basically a guy trying to game the system to his advantage. And whether or not he succeeds, or how he may or may not succeed, is the story of the fourth season.

HR: What’s God’s opinion of Jesse Custer in Preacher season 4? Has his perception of Jesse changed after watching him over the course of the series?

MH: God never forgets for a second that Jesse has Genesis living inside him. And Genesis exists on the quantum level, which means there’s no telling what Genesis can do. We saw in the first season that Genesis had lodged itself into three people that we know of, who did not have something about them that could contain Genesis, and it blew them to smithereens. Genesis has found a home inside of Jesse, and he’s not letting go of it, and Genesis is not moving on and Genesis is not destroying Jesse.

So this has really captured God’s attention, because why? Why is Genesis so comfortable inside Jesse? What is it about Jesse? God’s got to give a good close look to Jesse—and what he sees in Jesse is both the best and worst of mankind.

Jesse is the son of a very devout preacher; he’s a preacher himself. But he’s got a temper that he can’t control and he’s got violence he can’t control. And I think that God is looking at Jesse like this could be my model human being. And if Jesse is my model human being, who happens to present this power of Genesis inside him, what am I going to do with him?

A number of people, major characters, God is leading them along to develop a final confrontation with Jesse.

HR: In Preacher‘s season premiere, we saw God having drinks with Herr Starr (Pip Torrens). So what was up with that, and are there other characters we’ll see God with?

MH: God will eventually have some kind of encounter with every major character. Since we’ve gotten a sneak peak at Starr, I can only tell you that God doesn’t have anybody. He’s got nobody, so if he’s with somebody, he’s with that person for a specific reason—and God knows what the reason is and that particular person doesn’t.

The person that God has had the most contact with and the most significant personally in terms of playing a scene is Tulip [Ruth Negga], because Tulip has the same weakness that Jesse does. She is a deeply vulnerable, extremely sincere person who has no control over her temper or her gift whatsoever. And there’s something that I find really charming about that.

I’ve always enjoyed my encounters with Tulip. Whether or not there’s another encounter with Tulip coming up, I’m not at liberty to say. But I can say if there was another encounter, I would be really looking forward to that.

HR: Preacher fans may not know that you’re also a Drama Desk Award-nominated playwright. Does your writing experience help you unravel all the layers in the Preacher scripts?

MH: It does help me, because I’m always aware of what the bottom line is in every scene and what is the longest possible goal that a character can have, even if it’s not spoken about. Any smart actor has a short-term goal in a scene, which is like to punch this guy out or get this guy out of my way. But he also knows what is the long-term goal that the character has, not just in this scene but in the whole episode and beyond the episode in the entire series.

The advantage that being trained as a writer gives me is I’m always aware of what the longest possible game is, and that’s frequently allowed me to participate in the writing process with God, where God is directly concerned. Because sometimes the writers, in an individual episode, they have to take the short-term view; they have to solve scene by scene by scene this incredible chess match that’s being played out. Sometimes I’m able to get in there and restate the long goal and rejigger the scene a little bit.

In my experience working on the show, all of the writers have been welcoming to that and they don’t look at it as an interference. You don’t always find that true in film and television, but in this case it is.

HR: Has working on Preacher changed your individual process as an actor or a writer, with all that the show expects and enables its actors to do?

MH: This is the best job I’ve ever had. The fun of processing this concept of God, and I have to credit [Preacher creator] Garth Ennis—he’s taken quite literally this Old slash New Testament God that has created man in his own image. He’s using accepted scripture to say okay, if you guys want to believe in a God that created man in his own image, you have to do some reverse engineering as well, which means that man has also created God in his own image. That it’s a mirror image going two ways.

And so this character is an all powerful, all knowing, all seeing deity that has all of the foibles of human beings. It’s incredibly fun. And then combine that with the fact that the writers of the show have given God an incredible affection for jazz and for the life that God has embraced, it’s just a ton of fun.

HR: So has playing God in Preacher given you any thoughts on the real deal?

MH: Granted, this is a supernatural comic book and the look of the show is very much a graphic novel brought to life. It’s got the gore, it’s got the sex, it’s got the young man appeal. But do you think that the theology is sound? My answer is a resounding yes. As Western civilization has come to think about God as a personality, the theology in the character of God I find to be totally sound—which, once you see it played out, is a shocker.

Preacher airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on AMC. For more on Preacher and other AMC shows, follow the AMC category at Hidden Remote.