“Monsters All, Are We Not?": An Interview with Julie Grossman and Will Scheibel

Matt Boyd Smith interviews Julie Grossman and Will Scheibel about their new edited volume Penny Dreadful and Adaptation: Reanimating and Transforming the Monster (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), which explores the titular Showtime series (2014-16) and its spinoff, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (2020). The rich and wide-ranging discussion touches on issues related to adaptation, gender, and the implications of the mosaic of references in both the original series and the spinoff (including Victorian literature, Universal horror films, and film noir). Grossman and Scheibel discuss the fascinating contributions made by their impressive array of contributors, and both demonstrate their own expertise throughout: Grossman previously published a monograph on adaptation, Literature, Film, and Their Hideous Progeny: Adaptation and ElasTEXTity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and Grossman and Scheibel collaborated on Twin Peaks (Wayne State University Press, 2020), a TV Milestones volume exploring David Lynch's legendary series and its numerous paratexts. The conversation is a tie-in to the forthcoming New Review of Film and Television Studies special dossier "Women’s Authorship and Adaptation in Contemporary Television," guest edited by Sarah Louise Smyth (University of Essex) and Stefania Marghitu (Pitzer College), which will appear in issue 22.1 (2024).