Penny Dreadful: City of Angels was inspired by Donald Trump

Penny Dreadful, John Logan’s opulent Showtime series, burned brightly but briefly from 2014 to 2016, thrilling fans with its take on Dracula, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein and other figures from Victorian horror fiction. The show ended abruptly after its third season, and there are still questions about what exactly happened, fans can take solace that the series is coming back for another go-round…kind of.

The new show, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, is completely separate from the old, featuring a new cast of characters and moving milieus from Victorian London to Los Angeles in 1938, on the eve of World War II. Nathan Lane plays a hard-boiled detective, Game of Thrones vet Natalie Dormer plays the demoness Magda, Star Trek: Discovery’s Ethan Peck will play a German-American high up in the ranks of the German American Bund, a prominent real-life pro-Nazi organization from the time…there are a lot of characters, all of them playing out a story with figures drawn from Mexican-American folklore. It all sounds pretty ambitious, and it wouldn’t have happened if not for Donald Trump being elected President of the United States.

So says Insidious star Lin Shaye, who plays a glamorous older woman and a friend of Lane’s character. “We’re Nazi hunters,” she told io9. “I’m dressed to the nines with my hat, the outfits are spectacular…And I just got [the script for] one of the later episodes, and I’m like, ‘Oh my god! Look where I was! Look what I did!…I’m just like a pig in doodoo. I’m very excited about it.”

UNIVERSAL CITY, CA – SEPTEMBER 10: Actress Lin Shaye arrives at the premiere of FilmDistrict’s “Insidious: Chapter 2” at CityWalk on September 10, 2013 in Universal City, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Clearly, Shaye is psyched to be on the show, although I have never heard the phase “like a pig in doodoo” before. Is it just me? Is that a thing?

Anyway, Shayne’s most interesting comment may have been about what inspired Logan to come back for Round 4:

"They wanted him to do a fourth season because it was very successful, people loved the show, and he said he just didn’t have anything further to say about that—until Donald Trump became president. And then, he had some things he wanted to express."

Okay, I’m not going to speculate too much about how President Trump may have inspired the show, because this is the internet and I’d rather not be mobbed today, but some thoughts do arise. Hispanic immigration has been a big focus of Trump’s presidency, so the choice to draw inspiration from Hispanic folklore seems deliberate. Then there’s the notion of homegrown organizations like the German American Bund being supportive of tyranny, an accusation that’s been lobbed at President Trump more than a few times. “It’s about the evil that grows in Los Angeles at that time,” Shayne said.

Not saying that’s accurate or fair, backing away slowly, hands in the air. Please don’t GamerGate me.

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In any case, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels looks like it’s shaping up to be an ambitious show of substance. I don’t know when it comes out, but I want to watch it.

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