Here’s the First Look at an Actor Doing Double Duty onAmerican Gods

We ’ve known for a while that Emily Browning , who meet Shadow Moon ’s ( Ricky Whittle ) semi - devoted wife Laura , would be show up as another persona later in the time of year . Now we ’ve got our first look at Browning as the young and pretty thief , Essie .

In the book , the theatrical role ’s name is Essie Tregowan and she appears in one of the Coming to America vignettes as a thief sentence to “ transportation ” to the Americas as punishment . Her story in the show seems to be pretty much the same , but her name is now Essie MacGowan .

This double - molding does something that , in a book , would be much more labored . It ’s hard to convey that two fictitious character count almost identical without belabour the peak . However , the visual in idiot box and moving-picture show is a well - established way of life of conduct either a genetic relationship or a thematic one . It ’s not a Brobdingnagian bounce to link up Essie — a thief who turn every reversal into a win — to Laura ’s ambition and desire to have more than she is reach .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

Watch the clip and savor the rendition of “ Runaround Sue ” that scores it :

In a pastinterview with io9 , Neil Gaiman pointed to Essie Tregowan / MacGowan ’s arrive to America sketch as a test balloon for something they require to repeat in season two . “ We did one long [ get to America ] as an experimentation . to begin with we ’d just done them like five , eight minutes long . ” Essie ’s history will take up half an episode , intercutting with the main plot . “ So Bryan [ Fuller ] is now live on we could do more of these big one , ” Gaiman say .

There ’s a lot of experiment in this : the two-fold - casting and the longer Coming to America . We ’ll see how well both work this Sunday .

William Duplessie