Exclusive: Jenna Coleman Cast As A Gender-Swapped Constantine
Jenna Coleman is the first female Constantine.
This article is more than 2 years old
Jenna Coleman is about to provide audiences with a version of DC sorcerer Constantine that they have not seen before. Thanks to a bit of legwork from one of our trusted and proven inside sources, Giant Freakin Robot can exclusively report that the actress will be playing a gender-swapped version of John Constantine in the upcoming Netflix series adaptation of The Sandman.
With this bit of casting, Jenna Coleman will be bringing to life the first on-screen female take on the character of Constantine. Up until now, all adapted versions of the character have been male and follow closely enough to the comic book version of the character that was created by legendary comic book writer Alan Moore. Whether it is the modified Keanu Reeves version in the underappreciated 2005 film Constantine or the popular Matt Ryan take that has appeared in his own television series and the CW’s Arrowverse, the character has always been a fairly faithful adaptation of the base tenets of the character. And, of course, he has always been a man.
Jenna Coleman is getting the opportunity to bring some very new riffs to the character. We assume her first name won’t be John, but it will be intriguing to see what kind of a relationship she will have with other characters in The Sandman. Will her change in gender modify how she relates to Morpheus a.k.a. Dream? Will the change to her gender affect her character’s backstory? There are certainly a lot of interesting avenues this could take with the character, and Coleman is going to get a lot of attention since she is the first woman to take a stab at the character of Constantine.
Most fans will recognize Jenna Coleman from her time on Doctor Who as Clara Oswald, but she has also headlined the series Victoria as the notable Queen Victoria. She certainly has the acting pedigree to deliver a very intriguing and new take on the qualities that have made Constantine such a fan favorite over the years. It will be intriguing to see just how grimy and two-fisted the character will be as those are qualities that have often gone hand-in-hand with Constantine in countless iterations. Jenna Coleman will certainly be a way to gauge just how well the character of Constantine can translate into different variations through different mediums.
We don’t know just how prominent Constantine will be in The Sandman – the comic series spans millennia and is often told through vignette stories – but suffice to say that nabbing an actress like Jenna Coleman hopefully means she will be seen quite a bit in the series. With such a talent on board, one would hope the show finds a way to regularly utilize her and that she is not going to be a glorified cameo.
The Sandman will assuredly be a must-see adaptation of a game-changing comic book, and it is great to know that Jenna Coleman will be a part of this monumental project. The series is set to premiere this year, so we are betting we are going to be seeing a lot more about it in the coming months.
