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'Preacher' showrunner Sam Catlin: 'This is how we wanted to end it'

'We made a real, real effort to make sure that we would have no regrets and nothing would be left on the table,' Catlin told UPI.

By Karen Butler
Actor Graham McTavish will be seen in the fourth and final season of "Preacher," starting Sunday. File Photo by Howard Shen/UPI
1 of 3 | Actor Graham McTavish will be seen in the fourth and final season of "Preacher," starting Sunday. File Photo by Howard Shen/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 2 (UPI) -- The supernatural saga of Jesse, Tulip, Cassidy and The Saint of Killers is wrapping up with a fourth, and final, blood-soaked season of Preacher, beginning Sunday on AMC.

Starring Dominic Cooper, Ruth Negga, Joseph Gilgun and Graham McTavish, the critically acclaimed action-drama/dark comedy follows a Texas criminal-turned-minister who gains the ability to influence people after he is possessed by the offspring of an angel and demon.

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Along for the ride with Jesse -- on his search to find God after he abandons Heaven -- are his resourceful, hot-tempered girlfriend Tulip and their Irish vampire friend Cassidy.

Determined to keep in check Jesse's gift is The Saint of Killers, a brooding angel of death with a taste for cowboy-style attire.

The show is based on the graphic novels by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon.

"This is how we wanted to end it," show-runner Sam Catlin told UPI in a phone interview Friday. "We made a real, real effort to make sure that we would have no regrets and nothing would be left on the table."

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Catlin said he and producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg worked hard to honor the three main characters whom viewers have grown to love.

"But there are other stories and other people that the audience has, hopefully, invested in, and we want to make sure everyone gets the sendoff they deserve," Catlin said.

"You don't want to let [the audience] down. Invariably, you will," laughed Catlin, who also is a former Breaking Bad writer-producer.

Season 4 of Preacher continues to ponder difficult topics such as faith, law, money, government and romance throughout an epic story that takes the central anti-heroes to the Middle East, Australia and Ireland.

"I think we all felt this year like, 'They're never going to let us do this kind of stuff again no matter whatever job we have in the future, so we might as well get it out of our system,'" Catlin said of the show's signature violence and irreverence, which is ratcheted up in the final episodes.

McTavish, who plays The Saint, acknowledged Preacher is a challenging series for those who make and watch it.

"It doesn't offer easy answers. It's not a black-and-white kind of show. There are not good guys against bad guys," he said, noting everyone other than Ian Colletti's kindhearted and optimistic Arseface is "deeply flawed," yet still relatable.

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Catlin doesn't yet feel a sense of "despair" about the show ending, but suspects that might come in the fall when he ordinarily would be setting up the writers' room for the following season.

McTavish already is missing his character -- a conflicted assassin traumatized by the loss of his family.

"I'm sad to have to hang up the spurs and the boots and the guns and the hat. But everything has to come to an end, eventually," the actor said.

"I grew up in Scotland and England, and I never imagined for a moment that I'd ever be going down a western street, dressed as a cowboy with a .44 Walker Colt strapped to my thighs. That was a big moment for a kid from Britain."

His portrayal of The Saint was born of his obsession with the original Preacher books, as well as his affection for the 1960s and '70s western movies that featured Clint Eastwood.

Also known for his roles in Outlander and The Hobbit trilogy, McTavish soon will be seen playing a priest who isn't what he seems to be in Season 5 of Lucifer on Netflix.

"The irony was not lost on me that I was wearing a less fashionable version of what Dominic gets to wear in Preacher," he said of his Lucifer priest's frock. "It made me laugh stepping into that. And then, of course, I get to play a demon.

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"It's all sort of an interesting Hell, Heaven, priests, demon mix, which was enormous fun."

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