If you were young and beautiful, would you sell your soul to stay that way forever? Not Reeve Carney, 31, who plays Oscar Wilde’s mesmerizing, seductive and ever-youthful Dorian Gray in Showtime’s new gothic thriller “Penny Dreadful,” which premieres Sunday, May 11.
“Can you imagine the loneliness that you’d feel?” says Carney. “That’s one of the first questions I asked myself when I tried to put myself into Dorian’s shoes. If you struck a deal like that, there would be so much loneliness. You’d be forced to watch everyone you loved die.”
The title of the series comes from the name given to cheap, sensational stories published at the turn of the 19th century. Creator and executive producer John Logan says he was inspired by the classic Universal horror flicks of the 1940s and 1950s, “where all of a sudden they would start mixing and matching the [monsters]. And I thought: I wonder if there’s a way to do that now and to take the characters seriously?”
As a result, “Penny Dreadful,” which was shot over a six-month period in Dublin, Ireland, promises to be a real monster mash. Along with Gray, the eight-episode series features such iconic figures as Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein. But the show presents them in such a way that these characters walk the darkest corners of Victorian London like anyone else, wrestling with their own inner demons.
The show stars Timothy Dalton, Josh Hartnett and Eva Green. Dalton plays Sir Malcolm Murray, a renowned explorer who is looking for his missing daughter while a crime spree grips London. Murray recruits sharpshooter Ethan Chandler (Hartnett), Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) and Dorian Gray (Carney) to help him.
For Carney, “Penny Dreadful” marks his second occasion playing a supernatural creature. He spent the last three years on Broadway as the hero, Peter Parker, in “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”
Now he’s being called upon to go deeply into the dark side. His character’s whole reason for being is to indulge in a hedonistic sensuality. Is he a bad boy in real life?
“No,” says Carney, who is single. “I’ve always been a bit ornery, as my mom would say. I’ve been pretty mischievous and a bit of a prankster, but I wouldn’t consider myself a traditional bad boy.”
Carney is a native New Yorker who comes from a show business dynasty. His great-uncle Art Carney starred as Ed Norton, Jackie Gleason’s sidekick on “The Honeymooners.” Reeve spent the first 10 years of his life summering with his great-uncle in Connecticut, calling him “one of the funniest people who ever lived.” And Reeve’s grandfather, Jack Carney, was the producer of Arthur Godfrey’s “Talent Scouts,” among other programs. “Sometimes people ask me how I got into the business,” says Carney. “It’s almost as if my family were a long line of electricians or carpenters. For me, it was just the family business.”
Carney’s immediate family moved to Los Angeles when his younger brother, Zane, landed a role in the 1990s CBS comedy series “Dave’s World,” starring Harry Anderson. The brothers were both talented musicians. Zane is now lead guitarist for John Mayer. And Reeve spent his high school years at Hamilton Academy of Music and graduated from USC’s Thornton School of Music.
He uses that musical education to inform his acting. “As humans we have all aspects of humanity — good and bad — within us. I relate it to music and frequencies. The lowest end of the frequency spectrum is about 20 hertz, and then it goes up to 20,000 hertz, for the average human. It’s all about which frequencies are more prominent in your character, and which ones you are trying to accentuate. For acting, I think: Where does that exist within me, and how high do I have turn it up?”