Meet Natalie Dormer’s shape-shifting demon Magda.
Penny for your thoughts? How about a Penny Dreadful.
Penny Dreadful: City of Angels‘ first trailer has officially descended upon us, bringing with it a battle for humanity’s very soul. On one side is Game of Thrones‘ Natalie Dormer as shape-shifting demon Magda, who believes humans will always succumb to their more monstrous temptations. On the other is Magda’s sister Santa Muerte, the Holy Angel of Death played by Knock Knock‘s Lorenza Izzo, who believes in their inherent goodness. Who will be proven right?
“All mankind needs to become the monster he truly is, is being told he can,” Magda says in the footage. “And when this world is burned, there will be no one… no one but you and me, sister.”
Penny Dreadful creator John Logan sees City of Angels as a spiritual descendant to the first series, which starred Eva Green and concluded in 2016. The main story at play here follows Tiago Vega (Daniel Zovatto), the LAPD’s first Chicano detective in the 1930s, during the construction of the Arroyo Seco Parkway that displaces Tiago’s family.
“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,” Logan previously told EW. Being that this is a Penny Dreadful, there’s also a murder connected to Día de Muertos that kickstarts this saga.
Glimpsed in the trailer are three of Magda’s human forms, which we’ll meet in season 1 of City of Angels. It’s through these guises that she stirs the pot of human affairs.
The series will premiere Sunday, April 26 at 10 p.m. ET on Showtime.
Watch in higher resolution in the video archive.
Natalie Dormer will play a supernatural demon in creator John Logan’s ‘City of Angels.’Natalie Dormer is ready to get her demon on for Showtime.
The Game of Thrones favorite has been tapped to star in the premium cable network’s Penny Dreadful revival, City of Angels.
Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, which will feature all new characters and storylines, opens in 1938 Los Angeles, a time and place deeply infused with social and political tension. When a grisly murder shocks the city, Detective Tiago Vega (Daniel Zovatto) is embroiled in an epic story that reflects the rich history of Los Angeles: from the building of the city’s first freeways and its deep traditions of Mexican-American folklore, to the dangerous espionage actions of the Third Reich and the rise of radio evangelism. Before long, Tiago and his family are grappling with powerful forces that threaten to tear them apart.
Dormer will topline the series as Magda, a supernatural demon who can take the appearance of anyone she chooses and who manifests in a number of guises throughout the story. The character is a dangerous enemy and invaluable ally. Dormer joins a cast that also includes Jessica Garza (The Purge) and Johnathan Nieves (New Amsterdam).
Dormer spent six seasons as Margaery Tyrell on HBO juggernaut Game of Thrones. The Penny Dreadful role brings the actress back into the Showtime fold after she starred as Anne Boleyn on the cabler’s The Tudors. Her credits include Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Scandalous Lady Woman and Elementary. On the feature side, her credits include starring and co-writing In Darkness, The Forest, The Hunger Games franchise and Captain America: The First Avenger.
Series creator John Logan and his Desert Wolf Productions banner, Michael Aguilar (Kidding) and Neal Street Productions duo Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Skyfall) and Pippa Harris executive produce the series; James Bagley co-exec produces. Paco Cabezas (Penny Dreadful, The Alienist) will direct multiple episodes. Production will begin this year. A premiere date has not yet been determined.
Dormer is repped by UTA, United Agents, Untitled Entertainment and Jackoway Austen.
Actress and writer, Natalie Dormer is expanding her relationship with the global producer and distributor, Fremantle by signing a with a multi-year first-look deal. The new pact that will see Dormer create a slate of drama projects which will be exclusively co-developed with Fremantle.
Dormer, Fremantle and Mainstreet Pictures are currently developing Vivling, a series based on the life of legendary British actress Vivien Leigh. The story will follow the highs and lows of the much-loved starlet who conquered Hollywood and give audiences a glimpse into the complex mind of the creative genius. News on further projects is to follow.
Natalie Dormer said: “I am absolutely thrilled to be partnering with Fremantle. Their impressive slate reflects a dedication to the highest quality storytelling and the strength of their reputation internationally.”
Christian Vesper, Fremantle’s Executive Vice President and Creative Director for Global Drama commented: “Natalie is a true talent both as an actress and producer. Her great ambition and taste for compelling entertaining projects is a perfect mix to add to the Fremantle family. We’re excited to be working with Natalie and to announce further new projects soon.”
Helena Bonham Carter and Keegan-Michael Key have joined as well.
Last year, Netflix and The Jim Henson Company announced that a series based on Jim Henson’s 1982 film The Dark Crystal was in the works, and now Netflix has revealed the series’ impressive voice cast. Called The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, the show takes place many years before the movie’s events, and it centers on three Gelfling who discover a secret about the evil Skeksis’ power. They then set out on a battle to save Thra.
The three Gelfling will be voiced by Taron Egerton (Kingsman), Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch) and Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones). Other Gelfling characters will be voiced by Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones), Theo James (Divergent) and Helena Bonham Carter. Among the cast voicing the Skeksis and Mystics are Andy Samberg (SNL, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Jason Isaacs, Mark Hamill, Keegan-Michael Key and Simon Pegg, among others.
“To match the stunning visual world of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, we knew we had to entice some incredible voice talent to add dimension to the exquisite artistry of the puppeteers who bring the characters to life,” Netflix VP of original series Cindy Holland said in a statement. “I am proud to say that this may be one of the finest casts assembled from the world’s favorite TV shows and movies, and I am now even more excited for fans to come back to Thra with us, and for new viewers to discover this world for the very first time.”
The series will use classic puppetry and “cutting edge visual effects” to reimagine Henson’s world and it’s set to debut next year. You can see the rest of the announced cast below.
Gelfling:
- Caitriona Balfe (Outlander)
- Harris Dickinson (forthcoming Maleficent 2)
- Eddie Izzard (Ocean’s Thirteen)
- Toby Jones (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
- Shazad Latif (Star Trek: Discovery)
- Gugu Mbatha-Raw (The Cloverfield Paradox)
- Mark Strong (Kingsman)
- Alicia Vikander (Tomb Raider)
Skeksis and Mystics:
- Harvey Fierstein (Torch Song)
- Ralph Ineson (Game of Thrones)
- Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (True Detective)
Aughra will be voiced by Donna Kimball (The Happytime Murders).
“I’ve turned down roles involving sex because I’m terrified of perpetuating that clickbait image.”
Natalie Dormer is not on Twitter, Instagram or any kind of social media – and that’s becoming a bit of a problem.
“I have been misquoted and taken out of context quite regularly on the subject of sex on screen. I don’t have any immediate redress to counter it,” the actress tells me, sitting at the other end of the sofa, but leaning towards me and watching how her words land. “How absurd to go, ‘Should I just tweet to say that journalist took my words completely out of context?’ It creates another story.”
It’s clear the events of 2015 have left Dormer very wary of how her words will be interpreted – or misinterpreted – online. The episode concerned Dormer’s comments about her Game of Thrones character, Queen Margaery Tyrell, seducing a 12-year-old boy. The character, King Tommen, was played by actor Dean-Charles Chapman, who was actually 16 at the time of filming; but the scene was the subject of immense interest, and came up in every interview she gave at the time.
Dormer’s comments on the scene were later twisted online to imply that she condoned having sex with underage children. She released a statement to website GossipCop.com (the original can no longer be found through googling), explaining that she considered Tommen to be “a naive 17-year-old” and “wouldn’t have played the scene if I believed different”. She also made it clear that she does not “condone, in any shape or form, sex with a minor. That is child abuse. A serious criminal act.”
Natalie Dormer has said that before that she knows how Game of Thrones ends, but appreciates she’ll be “sued” if she shares her intel. What she will say is what she hopes will happen were she given script-writing duties.
“I would like humanity to be saved please,” she laughs. “It’s really just that in a nutshell – that humanity was saved against the White Walkers. I’m hoping for a continuation of humanity in Westeros if possible.”
The British actress, who played queen Margaery Tyrell in the popular show, assumes another regal role in her latest project, featuring as a queen in a new satirical Nespresso advert with George Clooney. She admits that, along with her love of coffee, working with Clooney was a big draw. The two traded notes on Berkshire, where she grew up and where the actor now lives with wife Amal and his twins.
“He is as delightful, witty and intelligent as he appears to be in his interviews,” she says. “It’s lovely to meet someone who matches the positive public profile that they have. He’s a generous human being and has time for everyone. His work catalogue speaks for itself and then there’s his humanitarian work. He’s very grounded, which is refreshing to find of someone of his fame or profile. It was a delight to spend a few days with him.”
After starring as Game Of Thrones’ fiery Margaery Tyrell and rebel Cressida in the Hunger Games franchise, it’s safe to say actress Natalie Dormer has proven to be quite the on-screen chameleon. So it’s hardly a surprise that her new role in BBC2’s adaptation of Picnic At Hanging Rock – based on Australian writer Joan Lindsay’s 1967 mystery novel of the same name – was offered to her outright.
“The reason I took the role is that [the show’s director] Larysa Kondracki wrote to me and said, ‘I need an actress who can be terrifying but also bring vulnerability. I think you can do that,’” Natalie, 36, explains.
Natalie stars as Hester Appleyard – a draconian headteacher who has fled her enigmatic past to start afresh in Australia. But when a group of girls from her boarding school go missing under mysterious circumstances during a picnic at Hanging Rock, everyone else’s lives begin to unravel – and her past catches up with her.
Natalie explains: “She’s run away from a past life and constructed herself as something else. But when a massive tragedy, like the girls’ disappearance happens, you realise how flimsy that is.
It’s like Joan Lindsay herself said about the novel; it’s like dropping a stone into a pond and watching the rippling effect, as everyone becomes destabilised.
“Hester certainly becomes destabilised – and that’s fun to play, someone losing their mind. That’s Hamlet, that’s Blanche DuBois – that’s a gift as an actor.”
After being frustrated with the limited roles she was being offered, the actress co-wrote her new film with her partner Anthony Byrne.
In an Earl’s Court apartment block hallway, Natalie Dormer gestures for me to sit down. “Get yourself over to the stairs,” she smiles, “the red Hitchcockian stairs.”
The film she is shooting is In Darkness, a contemporary thriller – as if her nod to Hitchcock hadn’t already given that away – about a pianist named Sofia. Played by Dormer, the visually impaired Sofia gets entangled in a murder case when her upstairs neighbour is killed.
Today’s scene sees Dormer fumbling her way into the building’s lift, white cane in hand, with the creepy Marc (played by Ed Skrein) – who may or may not be the killer – in pursuit.
Dormer, the fiercely intelligent and striking-looking 36-year-old, who rose to fame on The Tudors and Game of Thrones, has spent days with people at the Royal National Institute for the Blind, getting “a crash course in visual impairment” to help perfect her character.
Intriguingly, Dormer is also the co-writer of In Darkness, scripting it with the director – and her off-screen partner – Anthony Byrne.
“There was a drought of intelligent thrillers when we started writing this seven years ago,” she says, when we retire upstairs to chat, sitting at the dining room table on the set of Sofia’s apartment.
“You’re a woman. You’re a sensual creature are you not?” demands Natalie Dormer, fierce blue eyes narrowing. You could imagine Dormer delivering the line as shrewd seductress Margaery Tyrell in Game Of Thrones, or The Tudors’ Anne Boleyn, but here, she’s saying it to an interviewer in an EastEnders-themed room of BBC Broadcasting House. (There’s a replica of the Queen Vic pub sign hanging above the door.)
Dormer has just been asked about the surprising erotic voyeurism in Picnic At Hanging Rock, a six-part adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel about the disappearance of a group of Australian schoolgirls at the turn of the nineteeth century. Adapted by playwright Beatrix Christian and showrun by director Larysa Kondracki, it’s a story largely about women, largely told by women. Why should that fact make the eroticism surprising? Dormer fires back “Why can’t a female story be erotic and sensual?”
“God, it’s overdue to see that sort of storytelling, isn’t it? To see sex and sexuality through a female gaze—female producers, directors, writers—as opposed to coming from a male gaze. For me, for that reason alone, it’s refreshing.”
“We all,” Dormer looks around the room at her half a dozen interviewers, all women save for one man, “all but one” she corrects with a laugh, “—you gentlemen have your own version of it—can remember what it is to be an adolescent girl grappling with puberty and the intensity of the bodily changes and the emotional changes… if you put young pubescent girls, with their hormones going everywhere, in a contained space, that is the reality of the situation.”
Dormer is keen not to put too much significance on Picnic At Hanging Rock being led by writers and directors who are women. On the press circuit for the show here in the UK, in the US and Australia, the focus on its gender provenance has obviously become something of an irritant.
After being frustrated with the limited roles she was being offered, the actress co-wrote her new film with her partner Anthony Byrne
In an Earl’s Court apartment block hallway, Natalie Dormer gestures for me to sit down. “Get yourself over to the stairs,” she smiles, “the red Hitchcockian stairs.”
The film she is shooting is In Darkness, a contemporary thriller – as if her nod to Hitchcock hadn’t already given that away – about a pianist named Sofia. Played by Dormer, the visually impaired Sofia gets entangled in a murder case when her upstairs neighbour is killed.
Today’s scene sees Dormer fumbling her way into the building’s lift, white cane in hand, with the creepy Marc (played by Ed Skrein) – who may or may not be the killer – in pursuit.
Dormer, the fiercely intelligent and striking-looking 36-year-old, who rose to fame on The Tudors and Game of Thrones, has spent days with people at the Royal National Institute for the Blind, getting “a crash course in visual impairment” to help perfect her character.
Intriguingly, Dormer is also the co-writer of In Darkness, scripting it with the director – and her off-screen partner – Anthony Byrne.
“There was a drought of intelligent thrillers when we started writing this seven years ago,” she says, when we retire upstairs to chat, sitting at the dining room table on the set of Sofia’s apartment.She cites films like Guillaume Canet’s Tell No One and Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia remake as rarities in the field. “And then when Denis Villeneuve popped up and did Prisoners, we were like ‘Exactly!’”
With a cast that also includes Joely Richardson and Emily Ratajkowski, Dormer is keen for the film to paint the nation’s capital in authentic brush strokes. “I get frustrated about not seeing the real London on camera. You either see candy box London, if it’s a [Richard] Curtis movie, or you see rough estate gangster [films]… you don’t see central cosmopolitan middle-class London, which is textured.”
For Dormer, creating her own script is a first – well, since her days at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. “Like most drama students I wrote a play while I was at drama school and thought I could write,” she says.
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