Penny Dreadful exclusive Q&A - Production Designer Jonathan McKinstry

10 October 2014

Responsible for putting together some of the fantastic sets you see onscreen in Penny Dreadful, Jonathan McKinstry has to work together with a team and come up with awe-inspiring locations that can provide backdrops for venues included in the series.

At times, new sets have to be built from scratch, and in this exclusive Q&A with Jonathan we discover just a little bit more about what went into making Penny Dreadful a reality.

In creating the world of PENNY DREADFUL, did you begin from a historical or fantastical standpoint?

The historical side was an important starting point for me. Having read the first script and knowing the amalgamation of stories, I felt that the more real I could make the design, the more believable it would be. I wanted to get back to as much reality and realism as possible.

What was your inspiration for recreating The Grand Guignol Theatre?

We saw a lot of locations around London to get a feel of places that might work. John instantly fell in love with Wilton's Music Hall in East London and it fixed in his mind. Nothing quite fit the bill as our theatre in Dublin. So we decided to build the theatre from scratch in a studio. B stage, where we built the theatre, was originally occupied and suddenly the show that was in there finished early and so we redesigned the set and fitted it in there. A full working theatre! So much of the action was happening backstage or under the stage that we wanted that to have an authentic feel as well, because that played such a big part of the theatre. The auditorium was background to what was happening backstage. It was the backstage that was the most important thing.

How did you create Dr. Frankenstein's Laboratory?

Frankenstein was a doctor and surgeon - not an engineer - and I wanted it to feel as if he had cobbled things together being an intelligent man, but not being a professional in that world. I felt that he was down on funds, obsessive with his work and probably disowned by his father. He didn't have a lot of money, so everything he was spending was what he could scrape together. I wanted it to feel as if he lived in a "beg, borrow and steal" world, rather than a fantastical laboratory.