Johan logan, award-winning screenplay writer of Star Trek, Skyfall, Hugo and Gladiator, talks about challenges of writing for the small screen
What is a penny dreadfulIJ
The title came to me very quickly because penny dreadful’s, as you know, were periodicals, Victorian periodicals that came out sort of weekly or monthly and they mostly dealt with the supernatural or grizzly crimes and the Victorian public could not get enough of them because, like us, they loved the Grand Guignol and a good bloody crime story or vampire story was very exciting to them. But the reason I thought it was appropriate for this show is because this was the era before television and radio and cinema, it was the first time that horror actually went into people’s homes. People would go to their news seller, they’d spend a ha’ penny, they’d buy this little pamphlet of horror stories and bring it home and read it in their bedrooms, which I assume a few people will be watching Penny Dreadful in their bedrooms.
What are the challenges of writing for televisionIJ
I wrote the entire first season, you know, just to see, is this what I want to do, would it work, would the characters be fascinating enough to meIJ Because, you know, if you’re writing Skyfall you’re like, okay, I have James Bond, I have M, I have them for two hours and I know how to build that story and I know how to make them fascinating and I hope interesting for that journey. But with these characters, with Vanessa Ives or Ethan Chandler or Dr Frankenstein, it was a question of creating characters that were fascinating enough that they would keep interesting me most of all and keep unveiling themselves to me and keep being mysterious in a way for hours on end. So I wrote all eight hours and I just had the greatest time doing it because it was liberating because I’d never done it before, I’d never written anything like that before and as I say, I’m a dramatist, not a prose writer, but Penny Dreadful is as close as I’m ever going to get to writing a novel, so there is a particular kind of satisfaction to it.
How do you plan to develop these characters throughout the seriesIJ
It’s a through-arc through the first season, which is eight hours. And my ambition going into it as a writer was to essentially write a novel, but I’m a dramatist, I only write lines for actors and it’s all I’ve ever done, all I’ve ever wanted to do. But there was something about this idea that I’ve lived with for a very long time that the complexity of the characters was so interesting to me, I thought, well, this is a story I want to tell over time. So you meet the characters in the first two episodes and then it’s a continuing story, continuing arc through the first season.
Who is EthanIJ
Ethan is unique in the show in that he is our American, he is our eyes into it. And in a way, he sort of represents my eyes into this world, because, you know, I’m not British, I don’t live in 1891 and I wanted the audience to have an accessible character to follow into this story. So in the first episode, we follow Josh. As he meets the characters he is drawn into this very dark, strange and frightening world that the other characters inhabit.
What does Josh Hartnett bring to his role as EthanIJ
Josh, what he brings is incredible sincerity. You know, you look in his eyes and they convey absolute pain, absolute passion, and he is an amazing actor to work with. Smart as a whip as well.
What does Timothy Dalton bring to his role as Sir MalcolmIJ
It was a joy when the idea of Tim came for Sir Malcolm, because I conceived Sir Malcolm as sort of a combination of Sir Richard Burton and Stanley Baker and a collection of those sort of rapacious Victorian explorers and I knew I needed an actor with swagger, with a real sort of mischievous swagger and danger. And Tim has all of that in spades. He can look at you with a twinkle in his eye and charm you to pieces so you melt in front of him and he can also give you a steely look, the same steely look, you know, an African explorer would give an uncharted tributary of the Nile. I’m delighted to have him.
Why was Eva Green chosen to play Vanessa IvesIJ
I sort of envisioned the part with her playing it, because she is the fulcrum around which all the other characters orbit. And I knew I had to have an incredible actor to play that part, who had sincerity, who had incredible passion and commitment, because Vanessa Ives, the character Eva plays, goes through a very difficult and dangerous journey and I needed an actor who is fearless. And I’ve seen Eva’s work over the years. She is nothing if not fearless, so I began the process of wooing her for about six months, you know, to play the part and discussing it and sort of trying to convince her to do it and we teased it out together. We read the scenes together and I can’t imagine anyone on Earth doing Vanessa Ives. She is my touchstone for the show.
How would you describe the show’s aestheticIJ
Sam Mendes is a great filmmaker and when he and Juan Bayona and I talked about the look and feel of the show, you know, what we came to is granular reality. We didn’t want it to look like a pastiche. We didn’t want it to look like a Hammer horror movie or a Universal horror movie or anything else. We wanted it to have it’s own granular reality because, you know, Juan said very early on to me for something to be frightening it has to be true. So that’s what we’re trying to do.
More on creating the show’s aesthetic...
It’s creating our own unique version of 1891 london, because we don’t want to be photo-realistic, we wanted to have a dramatic version of what that is. So working with all the department heads, we had to define what we think our world is and what it should look like, what it should smell like, what the texture should be. And thankfully, working with Gabriella Pescucci on the costumes, Jonathan McKinstry on the art direction, you know, was an absolute pleasure because they’re visionary artists and they embrace the idea of what the show is. And what was great about all of them is they work from the inside out, you know, what the characters have to express. So when Gabriella and I met to talk about what Eva should wear, what her clothes should be, we talked about her character, we talked about how she is an austere woman, but she has great emotion within her. So the palette that Gabriella created was dark to suggest the sort of sinister demons within Vanessa with these shots of plum or red, which shows sort of the passion, you know, that’s also bubbling under the surface. And so all the department heads have worked from that perspective and I think because this is our first year and we’re all just making it up as we go, I think everyone has a sense of shared authorship about the show. Because I don’t think it is my show, I think it is ourshow and that’s as true for the cast as it is for all the designers.
What are the advantages of shooting the series in DublinIJ
Originally we thought we were going to shoot the show in london, but we realised that to find Victorian london architecture we could more easily find it in Dublin. It is also the home of Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker.
So we went to Ardmore Studios, took over the entire studio, had all the sound stages we needed to build these rather massive Victorian-era sets. And also my parents are from Belfast, so for me it’s sort of a bit of a coming home actually, working in Ireland.