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Tag: Timothy Dalton

  • “Penny Dreadful” Star Talks About Crazy Seance Moment

    Penny Dreadful has promised us dark, gory, sexy times all year, and with the show’s recent debut we learned they weren’t joking. But even on set, while the cast is filming key scenes, there are inexplicable things happening. Star Timothy Dalton spoke recently about a moment in a recent episode (spoiler alert, kind of) where an unexpected guest showed up….to a seance.

    “In the middle of that scene, in a quiet moment, in a pause, I don’t know the name of the butterfly, but it’s a red and black butterfly, maybe a Red Admiral they’re called, fluttered across the stage and landed on the table, silently, whilst we were filming. And then, everyone [was] going, ‘Oh my God. Look at that. It’s a sign. It’s a sign!’” Dalton said.

    As the actor explained, it wasn’t the right time of year for butterflies to be around, but they had apparently been hibernating in the studio and hatched from the heat of the production’s lights.

    “What was actually happening, I believe, is… these studios are big, they’re old. They’d obviously been dark for some time, but now, with the activity and the heat from the lamp… these butterflies were actually hatching out. … [It was] completely the wrong time of year, because we were in the winter, but the warmth of the activity and the lights was doing this and they were just occasionally fluttering around. But in a sĂ©ance, to land on the table like a spirit, that was odd. It was magic, it was marvelous. I loved it. I thought, ‘This is a great sign.’”

    The show is getting great reviews, which is somewhat rare for a show with a horror base. For a recap of the most recent episode–and some spoilers about what may be ahead for the characters–you can go here.

    Image via YouTube

  • Penny Dreadful Series Premiere Shows Promise

    Penny Dreadful, Showtime’s entry into the supernatural category, had a relatively strong formal debut Sunday night.

    Going up against genre heavy weights such as AMC’s The Walking Dead and FX’s American Horror Story, Penny Dreadful attempts to set itself apart “with a combination of literary allusion, fine acting, patience and fearlessness” according to a review in The New York Times.

    The series was created by John Logan, who is known for his Oscar-nominated work on films such as The Aviator, Gladiator, and Hugo. Sam Mendes (American Beauty, The Kite Runner, Revolutionary Road) is executive producer. Logan and Mendes previously collaborated on Skyfall.

    Set in Victorian London, 1891 to be precise, Penny Dreadful stars Timothy Dalton, Eva Green and Josh Hartnett as a mishmash trio of explorers searching for Dalton’s character’s daughter. Classic horror characters such as Frankenstein, Dracula and Dorian Gray are woven into the story line.

    “Penny dreadful” was a term used to refer to dime novels and horror books in Victorian-era England.

    According to The Toronto Star, the series premiere “did a fantastic job at setting the series’ dark, gothic tone while making it accessible to both new and seasoned horror fans alike.”

    Penny Dreadful debuted in Showtime’s 10:00 pm time slot immediately after network strongman Californication and drew in 872,000 viewers. After accounting for multiple plays Sunday night, the total number of viewers came in at 1.443 million.

    Breaking down the stats even further, 895,000 – or 62% – of the 1.443 million were in the highly-sought-after 18-49 age demographic. This made Penny Dreadful’s premiere the best in that younger age group since Dexter’s in 2006, which set a network record of 65%.

    Impressively, Penny Dreadful topped the series premieres of Homeland and Masters of Sex by about 5%.

    Further evidence of the premiere’s success is the fact that the numbers above don’t include the 900,000 Showtime subscribers who watched online when the network made the premiere available two weeks prior to Sunday night’s formal debut.

    Image via Penny Dreadful, YouTube