Penny Dreadful: City of Angels creator: It's "unnerving and eerie" seeing the themes of our show echoed in George Floyd protests

Entertainment Weekly

"It's been unnerving and eerie because so many of the themes of the show are being echoed in the streets outside my window," says John Logan, in discussing Sunday's Season 1 finale. "In our last two episodes, we have a person of color being lynched by the police force and then a peaceful protest march turning into a race riot. But this show was always meant to be about 2020, whether it's set in 1938 or not. It is so distinctly, inescapably about this moment now that, in a way, I'm glad we're speaking to the moment and to people who are living in this world." Logan adds: "The show was always intended to be about the complex racial and political landscape of Los Angeles in the period, and it was a period where, if you were Mexican American or Latino, you were considered less than human. Restricting housing covenants meant you couldn't live where you wanted, the freeways came along and bulldozed your neighborhood and your churches and your businesses, and Latinos were being hung on lampposts in 1938. So, talking with the writers, particularly the Latina and Latino writers, it was important to try to present that with as much complexity as possible, but also just to present it brutally because it's a brutal world and these are brutal issues. There's no way to dance around them, if you will. We spent a lot of time talking about that (lynching) sequence in particular and how difficult it was to write, how difficult it was to film, and what the impact would be. We were aware that, if you show a person of color being lynched by the police force, you're making a very bold and provocative statement about what the world is, what the world was then, and sadly what the world is now. We took it seriously and very methodically."