We had a chat with Pablo Schreiber at our roundtables to get the scoop on American Gods’ world’s tallest leprechaun!

This past week’s episode of American Gods dove into the backstory of Mad Sweeney. Sweeney is one of the more colorful characters and we were stoked to learn more about him! Check out what Pablo Schreiber had to say about Mad Sweeney in our chat with him below!

1. If you were a cartoon on a cereal box, you’d be pissed too!

When you found out that Pablo Schreiber was playing a leprechaun, what was the first thing you thought? It’s fine, we scratched our heads, too! The leprechauns of old are not what they are in pop culture today. “The fact that he’s been marginalized and and literally made to be smaller than he is by people’s perceptions is a huge part of who he is.”

This all makes Mad Sweeney, well. Mad. “It’s the fact of turning hundreds of years of culture and civilization into a cereal box that would understandably piss a guy off. If your culture is as deep and historical and has as much history as it does . . . This is not the stuff they left behind. There is no pot of gold, okay? I don’t want to burst your bubble or upset your image but the cereal box is not the real version. What is real is the mythology. But it’s certainly not a cartoon . . . So he has a real Napolean complex, a real small god complex even though he’s a massive man.”

2. Sweeney’s job with Wednesday? It’s because he wants to be with the big dogs.

“He’s a guy who’s never had a seat at the table, so he’s he’s running around being an enforcer for Mr. Wednesday taking care of whatever violence needs to be taken care of, but he’s not an actual god so he’s never had a seat at the table with all the other gods.”
Sweeney was a king. Once. But he isn’t a king any longer. “He’s pissed off at the people who left him behind, he’s pissed off at the man who’s his employer who he’s following around in order to get a seat at the table with the old gods but he doesn’t necessarily respect or like any of them or necessarily want to be there other than to try to have a place of power.”

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3. It seems like Vulcan was able to play ball- Why couldn’t Sweeney?

All these other guys seem to have been able to adapt. Or at least accept what the new gods have to offer them. “So why has Mad Sweeney not been able to accept his role or his version of what people have turned him into? A cereal box cartoon it’s not quite as cool as a gun. It’s not quite as sexy as Tinder. So we all make do with what we’re given, but if you were given the little fighting guy on a cartoon box you probably pissed off too.”

4. All the money in the world won’t make Mad Sweeney happy.

Sweeney’s got unlimited funds at his disposal. But he’s been diminished to inconsequentiality by the time we’ve met him. He’s pissed off at the people who once worshiped him, and he’s even lost his gold coin, or his “spark of life” and creation as Pablo referred to it. This has had a huge impact on Mad Sweeney’s psyche and the way he interacts with the world. “So we see a guy who has all the money in the world at disposal and doesn’t give a shit. He looks like shit, his clothes are shit, he drinks like shit, he doesn’t give a fuck.”

We learned a lot about Sweeney in this episode and that great flashback where we see just what kind of dirty work Sweeney has been doing for Wednesday was nuts! Will Laura find out? Will he be able to take her to someone who can resurrect her? We’ll see on this Sunday’s season finale!

American Gods will air their finale on Sunday, June 18th at 9/8c on STARZ