Right now, most people will know Rory Kinnear best as Nicol Trowbridge in Netflix’s Emmy-winning political thriller “The Diplomat.” A good 12 years before he played the foul-mouthed Prime Minister of the UK, however, he brought one of literature’s most famous monsters to life in an acclaimed gothic horror TV series.
Showtime’s dark fantasy drama “Penny Dreadful” wove classic literary monsters into the dark underbelly of Victorian London. The series premiered in 2014 and ran for three seasons, ending with a total of 27 episodes. Kinnear starred as part of an ensemble cast led by Eva Green, Timothy Dalton, Harry Treadaway, Josh Hartnett, Billie Piper, and Helen McCrory. Across all three seasons, Kinnear delivered a haunting performance as Victor Frankenstein’s reanimated creation, known as the Creature, Caliban, and later John Clare.
Whatever you do, though, don’t refer to the Creature as “Frankenstein.” During an interview with SciFiNow, Kinnear set the record straight on what to call the character. “A lot of people say Frankenstein or Frankenstein’s Monster, but in the book it’s the Creature,” he told the outlet. “You will quite quickly get to know, in this series, that the monster side of him is put upon him by other people.”
Rory Kinnear loved exploring the psychology of the Creature
In the same interview, Rory Kinnear opened up about bringing a legendary horror figure to life. He revealed that “Penny Dreadful” showrunner John Logan drew most of his inspiration from Mary Shelley’s classic novel after connecting with “that sense of otherness and being different and feeling on the margins of society, and our need to integrate.”
Kinnear has a working history with Logan, as the two had worked together on the 2012 James Bond film “Skyfall.” It was that past connection that paved the way for Kinnear’s role in “Penny Dreadful.” “He rang up and said, ‘I’ve written this part with you in mind, would you like to do it?'” Kinnear recalled. After reading the scripts, he was immediately sold on what he called Logan’s “poetic sensibility.”
Discussing the physical challenges of playing such a character, Kinnear admitted that the hardest part involved getting up at 4 a.m. and spending hours in makeup. Once in costume, though, he relished sinking his teeth into the complex psychology of such a unique character. “It was a pleasure to be able to get my teeth into something this juicy,” he said, “and get into the psychology of someone who has only been alive for a couple of years but at the same time has the body and soul of a 36-year-old man.”