The Role That Won Dominic Cooper the Lead in Preacher 

Preacher: Why Dominic Cooper Is the Right Pick for Jesse Custer

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Dominic Cooper and Sam Catlin discuss casting the role of Jesse Custer.

Casting the role of Jesse Custer wasn\'t a simple process, but when it came time to consider Dominic Cooper to play the lead in AMC\'s new comic book series Preacher, showrunner Sam Catlin reflects that it actually was a pretty easy "yes."

Cooper is best known for playing Marvel\'s Howard Stark (Captain America: The First Avenger, Agent Carter) and has had recognizable roles in films such as Need For Speed, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Warcraft, but there were two characters in particular who caught Catlin\'s eye. Because of the changes in the casting process, much of the casting for Preacher was done off reels instead of in person. The showrunner said it wasn\'t until he saw Cooper in The Devil\'s Double that casting him as Jesse Custer clicked.

"He plays Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s crazy son, but he also plays Uday Hussein’s double that they would have for security, for protection. He plays this really normal guy who’s caught up in this crazy world, but then he also plays this charismatic sociopath. That’s a lot of what Jesse Custer is," said Catlin. "He’s got those two sides to him, so that versatility was really it."

For Cooper, finding the part of Jesse was unique to what he\'d experienced before with TV. When he wasn\'t finding any film scripts that piqued his interest, Cooper found himself pursuing the Preacher pilot, which he\'d heard about and his friends kept mentioning to him.

"I just thought it was magnificent," he reflected, comparing the script to early episodes of Twin Peaks and the writing of Quentin Tarantino. "I knew, as I’m sure [Catlin and executive producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg] did, that it would be a big challenge for me to play this part. I think that they took a leap of faith in me being able to."

Once he was cast in the role, Catlin found Cooper to be the right actor to ground Preacher at the beginning, before all hell -- or heaven -- eventually breaks loose.

"He’s just one of those rare actors where you want to see him think. You want to see him be quiet," said Catlin. "Jesse’s kind of the Clint Eastwood character in this town, where he’s got all these colorful clowns and crazy people all around him, but he’s the quiet center of the storm, so it had to be someone who really held the screen and was powerful and had this sort of natural cowboy movie star presence. It was a pretty easy decision, actually. He’s fantastic."

Being that quiet center has been a marked change of pace for Cooper. "It is very different, and I am surrounded by extraordinarily colorful characters, more of which I’m used to playing," he said. "I feel very still, almost to the point of boring myself, but I know that I am playing something of a world that I’m only just learning about. It’s just very different for me in every aspect compared to anything I’ve played, and that’s what’s really fun. It’s terrifying."

AMC\'s Preacher is set a short time before the beginning of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon\'s comic series, and because of that Cooper got to start his evolution of Jesse Custer from what he calls "a place of care." ("If I stand away," Cooper admitted, "he\'s a nutter.") Preacher tweaks Jesse\'s backstory slightly so that, in this version of the story, his father also was a preacher. There are hints at Jesse\'s darker past throughout the series\' first few episodes, and it\'s clear that what happened before the events of the pilot have left a huge impact on Annville\'s preacher.

"I hope that that’s what an audience will see. They’ll be compelled by that struggle and the complexity that he has within himself and the fight with himself, and that for me is going to be the challenge," Cooper said. "I hope that people’s expectations don’t influence the idea of who this person is ... Yes, he does some really terrible things, and you need to really, really like this person, be charmed by him or in some way enamored by what he’s trying to achieve. And his backstory and the complexities of his childhood, you need to care hugely because you have to forgive him many, many times."

Preacher premieres Sunday, May 22 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on AMC.

Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.