Natalie Dormer rules the City of Angels in Penny Dreadful pics

Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer (Margaery Tyrell) stars as the shape-shifting demon Magda in Showtime’s Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, a followup to the original cult hit debuting at some point in 2020. The show takes place in 1938 Los Angeles, as a “grisly murder shocks the city.” There’s social and political tension, Mexican-American folklore, the Third Reich, radio evangelism, and of course, the supernatural.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Dormer described her character as a “delicious, multi­dimensional thrill,” an “agent of chaos” who can “sow the seeds of disorder. The audience will discover who those identities are as they continue to watch the show.”

"There was an opportunity to get in the dressing-up box and play a range of iterations. You have a number of characters all under the guise Magda morphs into for the price of one. Every good protagonist needs an antagonist. We can heighten the life and death and the violence by using a supernatural figure within the storytelling. She brings the sauce, basically, is what I’m telling you."

Dormer, of course, lit up the screen as Margaery Tyrell on Game of Thrones. As Magda, it looks like she’s going a good deal darker:

“[S]he’s fundamentally a skeptic of humanity,” Dormer continued.
She says in the first episode, ‘I give human beings a choice, but they choose time and time again to be seduced by the more baser, selfish roles.’”

Magda also has a sister named Santa Muerte (Lorenza Izzo). The yin to Magda’s yang, Santa Muerte is “a force of benign common goodness,” according to creator John Logan. Naturally, that sisters have “a very combative and complex relationship.”

Good lord, can Natalie Dormer wear the hell out of an outfit.

Logan sees City of Angels as the “spiritual descendant” of the original Penny Dreadful show starring Josh Hartnett and Eva Green. The first show “came from a very personal response to romantic poetry,” Logan said. City of Angels, on the other hand, “is about the social and personal cost that goes into making a great modern metropolis and how the various forces at play in 1938 are the very forces that are playing now.”

"One hundred years before our show, Los Angeles was Mexico. I wanted to tell a story about a Latino family under pressure because of all the forces at play—not only in freeway building but also in crime, law enforcement, and immigration policy."

The show will also star Nathan Lane, Daniel Zovatto, Kerry Bishé, Amy Madigan, Brent Spiner, Lin Shaye, Rory Kinnear (Frankenstein’s monster in the original show), Piper Perabo, Adam Rodriguez, Thomas Kretschmann, Michael Gladis, Dominic Sherwood and Ethan Peck (Spock in Star Trek: Discovery).

Penny Dreadful was beloved by fans but never got the attention it deserved. By the sound of it, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels will be a worthy followup. The show is set to hit Showtime in 2020, which hopefully means we’ll get an official release date soon.

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