Dominic Sherwood on accomplishing ‘Penny Dreadful’: ‘It was a no-brainer’

British actor Dominic Sherwood is no stranger to the supernatural.

His profession has involved vampires (“Vampire Academy,” 2014), angels and demons (“Shadowhunters,” 2016-2019), and now Showtime’s “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels,” an ensemble period piece drama about murder and the occult established in 1938 LA, with Natalie Dormer co-starring as a condition-shifting demon.

Sherwood’s character, Kurt, is a frequent human — while the show (Sundays at 10 p.m.) has revealed that he’s an American member of the Gestapo with shadowy motives.

When he’s not in fantasy tales, Sherwood, 30, has also rocked out enjoying a youthful Mick Jagger (in the 2012 film “Not Fade Away”) and has starred in a 2015 Taylor Swift music video clip (for the pop star’s strike “Style”).

Sherwood spoke with The Publish about “Penny Dreadful,” shelling out his quarantine executing archery in his backyard and extra.

What attracted you to “Penny Dreadful?”

I wished to extend muscle groups that I hadn’t definitely stretched before. When “Penny” hit my desk, it was a no-brainer. At the time, I understood Nathan [Lane] and Natalie [Dormer] ended up attached — two excellent, planet-renowned actors, and the prospect to get the job done with them was priceless. And of class Lauren Sarner John Logan as nicely. The guy wrote “Gladiator.” What more requirements to be stated? I wanted to arrive on and discover as a lot as I could and take up every thing close to me.

I’ve also by no means truly played type of a terrible guy, adequately. So the notion of doing that was exciting. Kurt is this duplicitous character that could be in fact very smooth and gentle and heartfelt, but is also this sort of an evil man or woman in his bones — he definitely does have a amount of intolerance that is so disgusting to view and be a element of as an viewers.

Because you’ve now performed various supernatural projects, is this a style that passions you?

It is far more of a coincidence. I adored becoming in the supernatural entire world there’s a thing actually particular about having what’s totally imaginative and throwing that to an audience in an classy and spectacular way. That currently being stated, it was anything I needed to stray absent from when my last demonstrate “Shadowhunters” came to an conclude. It was awesome, and I had a actually excellent time accomplishing it, but I had just completed it for four years. When this came about, the interesting portion for me is that as significantly as Kurt is aware, he by no means interacts with the supernatural. Of system, we know as an audience that he does but for me, as an actor, I’m managing [this role] as within just realism, due to the fact he’s totally unaware that the supernatural exists.

What type of preparing did you do?

I did a substantial amount [of research], primarily with a ton of the way the Gestapo had been educated and why they would have been sent back to America. So significantly of what our story is is based on surrealist actuality. A whole lot of this stuff happened. There had been Nazi American sympathizers in that time [and] it was form of Hitler’s strategy to try and infiltrate Los Angeles. I didn’t know that the German American Bund would have marches all about America, and I assume that is simply because heritage is written by all those who gain the wars. Something that’s clearly quite uncomfortable is variety of penned out. I’m not guaranteed that’s anything I concur with — I assume history is some thing that we need to have to learn from, so we do not make individuals mistakes all over again.

Despite the fact that the display at first helps make it seem to be like Kurt may well be German, he’s discovered to be American. Did you design your accent off of any one in specific?

John [Logann] and I have been talking about the iterations of what an American accent in the 1930s would have been. It is kind of like a quasi-mid Atlantic.

How are you spending your time all through the quarantine?

I have a tomato plant which is not performing excellent, if I’m becoming fully truthful. I have a doggy and a cat — it’s a extremely bizarre phenomenon when a doggy is bored of going on walks right before the human is. The canine is like, “Ah, seriously, do we have to? We just arrived back again from 1!”