Meet the human forms of shape-shifting demon Magda.

When EW spoke with Natalie Dormer last year to get the goods on her new role… well, roles in Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, the Game of Thrones vet promised Magda, her shape-shifting demon persona, will take three different guises that she’ll use to manipulate humankind in 1938 Los Angeles. “The audience will discover who those identities are as they continue to watch the show,” she said at the time.

In a brand-new sneak peek, which EW can exclusively debut, we see these different forms and learn more about how she’ll use them over the course of season 1.

First things first, this is not Penny Dreadful season 4. City of Angels is more a “spiritual descendant,” as creator John Logan once put it, to the original series, which placed actress Eva Green in a gothic London setting.

“The continuity from the first iteration of Penny Dreadful to this one is the supernatural element in which monsters are present but the main monsters are within the characters,” explains Rory Kinnear, who played Frankenstein’s monster in the original and now returns as a German Nazi living in America as a physician.

Magda is what makes City of Angels a Penny Dreadful story.

As the sister of Santa Muerte (Lorenza Izzo), who is the Holy Angel of Death and ferry woman of souls to the afterlife, she is an agent of chaos who believes humankind is inherently evil — and she’ll use her changeling powers to prove that point. The video, shown above, sees Magda taking on various forms as she speaks of a “time when nation will battle nation, when race will devour race, when brother will kill brother.”

At the center of it all is Tiago Vega, played by Here & Now‘s Daniel Zovatto. The first chicano police detective on the L.A.P.D. force, Tiago works to solve a case seemingly linked to Día de Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations, while the planned construction of L.A.’s Arroyo Seco Parkway threatens to displace his family and neighborhood. Zovatto calls it “a roller coaster of emotions” as Tiago grapples with racism, Nazism, police brutality, and demagoguery.

“It’s intense,” he says. “I mean, it is dreadful.”

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels — also starring Nathan Lane as a Jewish detective and a mentor figure for Tiago — premieres this April 26 on Showtime.

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The actress has had many memorable roles, but her next projects are set to make the biggest impact yet. And that’s by design

It’s the eve of Natalie Dormer’s 38th birthday, and the thesp is cozied up on a beige suede sectional inside a private home full of retro flair that’s tucked away in Granada Hills, an hour outside of Los Angeles. The star of the upcoming television series Penny Dreadful: City of Angels had spent the better part of the day there shooting our cover.

“I’m an Aquarian. What are you?” she asks in her charming British lilt.

“Scorpio,” I reply.

“Ah, Scorpio,” she says with a smile as she leans against a furry cream-colored pillow with a bottle of Trader Joe’s spring water in her hand. There is a disarming warmth about her—a calming quality—and an innate, introspective wiseness of someone who has learned through what she’s lived through. When Dormer speaks, she looks right at you, and when she’s discussing her passions, her blue eyes sparkle with intensity as she rakes her platinum-blond locks off her face.

Her motivational mantras, which she shares throughout our chat, make me want to snap my fingers as if I were in the midst of a poetry slam.

“This is very Buddhist of me,” she says with a laugh as she talks about the many lessons she’s learned in Hollywood and why she launched her own production company, Dog Rose Productions, in December. “It’s that old saying that if you wait to feel ready, you’ll be waiting forever,” adding that that was also one of the biggest messages instilled in her while working alongside costars like Jennifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Banks, and Julianne Moore.

“I think women, we sometimes feel like we have to be 100 percent sure that we can achieve something before we dip our toes in the water,” she says. “It’s like it’s socially innate in us. It’s not that we’re not risk-takers, because I think women are courageous, and they’re brave, and they are risk-takers. But sometimes we’re naturally too modest. I think what I’m increasingly learning, especially about the industry, is you’re going to learn on the job. That’s how you get your Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours, is doing it, and it’s the trial and the error. And that is how you learn. And that is how you grow and jump in, sister. What’s the worst that can happen?”

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Murder, Los Angeles, Satan, the Third Reich, anti-Mexican bigotry, an Aimee Semple McPherson-style evangelist and Nathan Lane with a Tommy gun – the new trailer for Showtime’s Penny Dreadful: City of Angels packs quite the wallop.

Billed as a “spiritual descendant of the original Penny Dreadful story,” the new series, kicking off next month and mixing historical reality with the supernatural, opens in 1938 Los Angeles with a grisly murder shocking the city (we see the mutilated, Joker-looking corpse in the trailer). Detective Tiago Vega (Daniel Zovatto) and his partner Lewis Michener (Nathan Lane) investigate the crime, getting drawn into a tale that encompasses the building of L.A.’s first freeways, the city’s traditions of Mexican-American folklore, Nazi espionage, and the rise of radio evangelism. Before long, Vega and his family “are grappling with powerful forces that threaten to tear them apart.”

In addition to Zovatto (Here and Now) and Lane, the new Penny Dreadful stars Natalie Dormer, Kerry Bishé, Rory Kinnear, Adriana Barraza, Michael Gladis, Jessica Garza and Johnathan Nieves. Tony winner (for Red) and three-time Oscar nominee John Logan, the creator, writer and executive producer of the original Penny Dreadful, continues in those same roles. Michael Aguilar serves as executive producer, along with Sam Mendes and Pippa Harris, both of Neal Street Productions. Logan’s Desert Wolf Productions produces, and James Bagley serves as co-executive producer.

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels premieres Sunday, April 26 at 10/9c on Showtime.

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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.

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Hello loyal visitors,

I just wanted to take a moment and explain what is going on with the media archive. Some may have noticed it looked strange when visiting. This is because when we moved hosts I forgot to move the theme and as a result I lost all the styling. So I am at present working on re-creating the theme and as such the media archive won’t work as well if you try to view any videos.

I am sorry for any inconvenience caused and I will update you all once it is functional again. In the meantime, more photo and news updates are to come, so watch this space.

We have returned to our original domain Natalie-Dormer.com.  For those who have been following the site since it opened on May 4, 2011, you will remember this was Captivating’s original home. When I closed the site after leaving fansites behind for a period I sold the domain. While I don’t regret my reprieve from fansites because it helped me tame my fansite addiction, I did regret selling the domain. This is partially why we moved from nataliedormer.org to natalie-dormer.net, no home has ever felt quite right. So we have no come full circle and I couldn’t be any more excited.

Please note that Captivating can still be reached from both nataliedormer.org and natalie-dormer.net as both domains redirect to the .com.

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