Almost a month before its official August 30th debut, Amazon’s Carnival Row, has been renewed for a second season on the streaming network. Actors Cara Delevingne and Orlando Bloom both play the series’ two co-leads in the historical fantasy drama.
Although now primarily produced through Amazon Studios and Legendary Television, the series is based on Travis Beacham’s feature script A Killing on Carnival Row, which first appeared on the 2005 Blacklist— Guillermo del Toro was on board to co-write, direct and executive produce the project at the time. Both Beacham and Bloom serve as executive producers on the series in partnership with Marc Guggenheim, René Echevarria, and Jon Amiel.
Set in a quasi Victorian fantasy world where mythological immigrant creatures, such as fairies and Minotaurs, have their homelands invaded by the British empire. As the increasing population struggles to coexist under British rule, fairy Vignette (Delevingne) and human Philo (Bloom) both struggle to rekindle their love affair despite an increasingly intolerant society.
“It really looks at the fear that people have. I think there’s so much fear in the world today about immigrants, migrants, how are they going to come into our society,” Bloom said during the recent Amazon’s Television Critics Association press tour. Delevingne added “that fear is from the government,” and the show will feature fictionalized debates about immigration and will hugely reflect modern discussions.
Despite Delevingne and Bloom’s relationship being the series’ main focus, the British actress further commented on the sexuality of her faerie character. “I’m a pansexual faerie,” Delevingne mentioned during an interview at Comic-Con adding that:
All faeries generally are [queer]. They don’t see gender. It’s all about who they are and their hearts. A lot of the things that weren’t written in the script, we made them so. Obviously, I didn’t say, ‘I want to be a pansexual faerie,’ but it made sense that all faeries kind of just love who they love. It’s really talking about immigration and refugees and classism and sexism, racism and elitism.
Carnival Row‘s other supporting characters include: David Gyasi as a wealthy faun named Agreus, who moves into an affluent human neighborhood despite protests and Karla Crome as the witty faerie Tourmaline, who writes poetry about her war torn homeland.
Actor Indira Varma plays Piety Breakspear, the cunning matriarch of the powerful family that that is in charge of the city The Burgue, with Jared Harris as Absalom Breakspear, the nefarious Chancellor of the Burgue, and Tamzin Merchant as Imogen Spurnrose, a young woman who plans to seduce Agreus in attempt to secure more fortunes for her family.
Below the official trailer can be viewed: