How will Lily play into all of this?
I just had dinner with Billie Piper two nights ago, as a matter of fact, so Lily is much on my mind. When Lily ended last season, it was in quite a dominant and powerful position, and she continues that this season in a sort of unholy marriage with Dorian Gray: these two immortal beings who have real plans for domination, and, in Lily’s case, revenge upon mankind for the ailments that have been heaped upon her her entire life. And Lily’s story is surprisingly social. It has to do with the empowerment of women. Her version of that, being as warped and demented and power-mad as she is, is an extremely violent version of it, but in I think it’s the second or third episode, we see a suffragette rally, and there’s a lot of talk about the place of women in this society, which is one of the reasons why I wrote this show in the first place. I built it around these strong female characters, like Vanessa Ives or Lily or even the Cut-Wife last year, Dr. Seward this season. And Lily has this acolyte she brings into her world played by Jessica Barden, whose character’s name is Justine. So it’s a surprisingly social mission that she’s on. It has to do with the male-female relationship in Victorian London, but in a uniquely horrific way.

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