The first time of year of American Gods teemed with great introductory scenes that made you want to know more about its beguiling theatrical role . And no one got a better intro than Bilquis , the love goddess played by Yetide Badaki .
When we first meet Bilquis , the goddess ’ awkward internet date turns into a hallucinatory ritual sacrifice that defies belief . But belief — and the hunger for it — is what make up Bilquis ’ all - encompassing sex act possible . Bilquis ’ journeying over the course of American Gods ’ first season turned out to be one of the most surprising , largely due to the revelations shown in the stopping point episode .
I talked to Yetide Badaki after the finale aired about how she got into the headspace to make Bilquis amount alive , and how her own immigrant taradiddle clear form on American Gods so meaningful to her .
Hanging With the Dream King
The woman play the Queen of Sheba has been a Neil Gaiman fan for a long time , and had to work on not geeking out too hard during her audition .
Yetide Badaki : I was a giving buff of The Graveyard Book ; it ’s just a beautiful report . Beautiful and that coming of age affair was just so well depicted . And then , of course , Neverwhere and then the collaborations with Terry Pratchett . From there , I startle looking to just his reflexion . I feel like anytime Neil frame pen to paper , something beautiful happens . He might just be writing about what he ’s seeing out of his window at the moment , and it ’s always poetic and interesting and deeply evocative with the human experience . So , yeah , I have pretty much all of his writing .
I read American Gods in 2001 when it came out . I tell people I ’m a oddball but , they do n’t seem to get how much of a eccentric person I am . I intend right now , I ’m watching [ the young ] Mystery Science Theater 3000 . If you neglect the whole season , at least watch the one call Starcrash . It ’s just brilliant . And you will shout laugh . And as far as books , I ’m doing a re - read of more Gaiman . I love skill fiction and phantasy .
Anyone who ’s an doer in Los Angeles know February is part of pilot season . So it ’s a disturbed time for everyone in the industry , because it ’s tons of auditions and people trying to parse all kinds of dissimilar universes . And there were all these auditions coming in and you go through and you read , you get excited , but you learn to leave it behind , because you live — it ’s pilot season . But I recollect hold back when I realize that invitation come in via email and my affection jumped . “ Wait , how did I not have it away this was in development ? ! ”
And it was about managing my prospect as well because , being such a big buff , the danger is walk in and just freaking out , which I ’ve done a couple of time . This fourth dimension , all that get-up-and-go was able to be focus , which is part of the understanding I cerebrate the headliner were aligned . Because , very quickly after that , they forebode me back in to do a producer session with Bryan [ Fuller ] and Michael [ Green ] . And Bryan was just incredible with doing the redirection there .
Before that I was render not to plunk into all the article , because — again , contend expectations . But as soon as I heard I would be play Bilquis , then I read all the articles where they were discussing about bringing this to life and all the multitude who were already involved , and it sense like , weekly , more and more gold was supply to this gem thorax of people being announced , like Gillian Anderson , Crispin Glover , Ian McShane — it was unbelievable .
Love Queen and Dead Wife
Badaki says that she bang early on that thing were rifle to be dissimilar for Bilquis on the show .
Badaki : It was after I had the contract bridge register to me . I did n’t know that I was looking at series regular . And when my agent was record all this information , and I ’m like , “ series steady ? ” She gets like , two scenes in the Christian Bible . When I raise the embargo on myself and looked at all the interviews and information that was already out there , I saw Bryan was talking about require to expound the distaff characters , Laura Moon and Bilquis , in peculiar .
Finding Godliness in Humanity
When we first meet Bilquis , she seems like the ultimate cosmic seductress , one who feeds off multitude and absorbs them whole . I asked Badaki how she got into the headspace of trying to make that feel physically tangible .
Badaki : Hmm . Well , first of all , for me , I think it was about the headspace of “ how does one diddle a deity ? ” And the answer came back , surprisingly quickly and surprisingly well , even as far back as the auditory modality . In approaching that aspect , what jumped out at me was that deep - seat motivation for the human link . And it straightaway pointed out to me that , yes , they may be Gods , but they are human concept . And that they have in many means very human deprivation and needs .
Not that everyone needs to devour mass . That ’s a little unlike . But thing like attention , which we may refer to as “ worship . ” Things like connection , being needed , being seen and sympathise and interact with . These are recondite human needs . What lay out itself was : to play a God , just dive into the deepest human experience .
Then , because I ’m a geek , there was also a lot of fun research . That commove me . Looking into the Queen of Sheba and witness all the gap , historically , that occur in her stories . And then , fill up those gap with other thing I find . I record this really wonderful clause about these girl goddess in Nepal . And they ’re these female child — these young fille are brought in fundamentally to try out for the part of human embodiment of the goddess . And so the one that ’s pick then lives as the goddess . However , that article was absorbing to me because of what happens after that — they hit puberty . And they can no longer be the goddess . And so they ’re now try out to live like workaday people — that was so captivating to me . How do you go from being a immortal to an everyday person ?
Lots of fun inquiry present itself this way . I also looked at studies about present - solar day intimacy and what ’s fall out with the millennian generation and them having less intimate connections than in the past . Both physically and figuratively . And their grandparents . And their parents before them . This was all very topical . Really relevant . These are all issues we ’re dealing with now . So it was a pot of fun to be able to use all the different pieces of the fretsaw teaser in research to build this goddess .
Been Here for Eons
In the finale , viewers see how temptress Bilquis face another kind of seduction — using Technical Boy ’s online dating app — just to make it . Badaki talked about how she was able to think with this plot point .
Badaki : One of the great affair that ’s laid out already for us as actors and performers is that these are old gods . Time is experienced very differently . If you subsist for eons , a affair of hours or Clarence Shepard Day Jr. is nothing . And I like betoken out that ’s a groovy apposition of the erstwhile and the young in that museum scene with Bilquis and Technical Boy . He was all words , and quick , and his pace was just go , go , go . Meanwhile , Bilquis ’ movements are slow and calculated . There ’s a deal of space and strain between Holy Scripture .
I feel like if you dug further under the corpse of Lucy , you would incur paintings on the paries of Bilquis . So , as far as motivation and what seems to be come about at any given consequence with the old Gods , I think it ’s great to remember that they ’ve been around for awhile and that their chess game is very different . And it ’s play very otherwise . And it ’s played for the long streamlet . And they ’re survivors . I mean , they ’re old Gods for a reason . They ’re pretty scrappy . So , I did n’t feel that it was necessarily an inversion , but I do feel it is part of a long plot .
Dancing Deity
The 1970s flashback was the most elated Bilquis - centrical scene in the first time of year and Badaki got into the heart .
Badaki : It was a blast . They enjoin , “ Hey , we ’re hold up to put you in a fro and a Grace Jones urge outfit with dancing music created by Debbie Harry . ” You ca n’t help but celebrate ! And that was one of the thing that actually our costume designer want to make certain that there was no limitation of cause in it . She want it to be expressed that this was a clip of absolute exemption .
Everything that her giving present — joy and free making love and connexion — was there in the form of a party . And It ’s a matter of dish that we get to see her still at her acme even after eons have passed .
If you look back historically before that sentence , Iranian charwoman had a very unlike experience , which was closer to what we lean to call the Western norm in the present day . When the rotation occurred in 1979 , all that agency was removed . It was a lot of merriment to be able to act that joyous moment before , to be wholly free , to fundamentally substantiate this jubilation of an incredible radical of people . And it was just nice to see Bilquis well-chosen .
A Third-Culture Goddess
As someone who was born in Nigeria and incite to London and back before come to the United States , Badaki says the show ’s themes of immigration resonate deep with her .
Badaki : I was really born in Nigeria . From three to six weeks old , I was lend to England , briefly . But then I act back to Nigeria and stay there until I was 12 . And around that time there was political unrest . We had had the same president , Babangida , from the time I was born up until the nineties . He had make out in through a military coup .
He would still hold election but he was count on our divisiveness because we ’re made up of several dissimilar cultures , different tribes , and the three master ones , the Igbo , Hausa , and Yoruba — there ’s all kinds of anecdotes about how we do n’t get along . And so he would always just kind of throw out a result saying , “ Ah , y’ all did n’t agree on anyone . ”
But one yr , there was someone everyone just fell in love with . He say the final result again and mass just lost their minds . There ’s only so long people can be repressed before they ’ve had enough . Things got really vivid . I remember being in school and we ’re look out and we ’re seeing , “ What is that ? ” We bring in we ’re catch smoking come from all around , like skunk clouds . Literally , people were cut things in the street . And I think of somebody hail to our schooling and told the headmaster that they should institutionalize the fry home because they would n’t be responsible for what happened to us .
This was before cellular telephone speech sound so there was a rush of hoi polloi try out to reach family . I commend that sidereal day my brother and I did what we call in the Long Walk — in honor of Stephen King — we walked home on the back roads . I have to give so much gratitude and erotic love to my blood brother because I was still quite young then , but he made what was a terrifying spot into an escapade . We got family fine , and all of that fermentation went on for a while .
I remember even being with my mummy in the car another day , and people had stopped up the street . It was like Walking Dead . I watch that show now and I ’m like “ flashback . ” But it was just all these bodies push against the car . The thing I get now , is that they were n’t furious at me , or my mammy or my brother . There was just so much pent-up anger . It was volcanic . Just this unfocused furor . So , to make a tenacious news report short , we did forget at that metre because my begetter had been offered a job at World Bank , but he wanted us to grow up in Nigeria . But what had come about unquestionably interchange things , so we displace to the States .
That ’s why American Gods come across on so many level . [ In the novel ] Neil public lecture about what happens when multitude move to a new kingdom , “ What are the thing they leave behind ? What are the thing they take with you ? ” My only matter that I have from then is my passport , which looks like a book now , with pictures of six - year - old me , but it ’s the only thing I have from my puerility .
I was also just enrol my teens . I was in a new place . I did n’t quite fit in . Also , after a couple years , I could no longer distinguish as specifically Nigerian . There were also unlike ideas I had . Many years later , it was marvelous to run into the conception of TCK , the Third Culture Kid . It ’s a term that is for multitude who fare from one culture into a new culture and are not needfully name with either , which then create a third finish . Literally .
It ’s something I often think about , being Haitian - American . I live in Austin now , which is aside from the Caribbean hubs that I grew up around . How do I send this sense of culture I ’m still so proud of to my daughter without any tangible mention ?
Badaki : But that ’s where history follow in . Storytelling . There have been so many paper written about storytelling , its significance for extend on ideas and acculturation and belief . That ’s why I became an actor , going back to that tradition . Representation matters . We take to see our stories reflected back at us . In a multitude of way . Not just one mode . We need to see the intact experience .
This is the last consultation in the Conversations with God series where I talk with worker from American Gods . you may read the previous entrieshere , hereandhere .
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