Rory Kinnear on Nazis, isolationism, and the tiny people who live in your trunk

Set in 1930s Los Angeles, Showtime’s new Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels finds the city in turmoil. Religious evangelists are stirring the pot on the radio. Callous councilmen are destroying whole immigrant neighborhoods in an attempt to lay down a highway the city doesn’t really need, and German-American members of the Nazi party are stomping all over the place trying to keep America out of WWII. Penny Dreadful veteran Rory Kinnear plays Dr. Peter Craft, a member of the latter set of rabble-rousers, and he’s bringing a level of knowledge about American isolationism at the time that a lot of actors couldn’t. The A.V. Club sat down with Kinnear earlier this year to talk about that sentiment, as well as what mystical creatures gave the actor the heebie-jeebies when he was just a boy.