The Stranger-Than-Fiction True Story Behind Netflix’s New Star-Studded Historical Miniseries
Netflix's Death by Lightning tells the shocking true story of the assassination of U.S. President James Garfield. Long before the concept of a “parasocial relationship” entered popular discourse, there was Charles Guiteau—an unsuccessful lawyer, aspiring preacher, and self-proclaimed political influencer. Guiteau believed he had personally helped elect President Garfield.
When his handwritten letters demanding an ambassadorship to Paris went unanswered by the White House, Guiteau’s obsession escalated dangerously. In the summer of 1881, he confronted Garfield at a Washington, D.C. train station and shot him in the back, convinced he had saved the Republican Party and possibly the nation.
If that sounds like the plot of a gripping prestige miniseries about obsession, ego, and possibly untreated mental illness, Netflix’s Death by Lightning delivers just that. The show revives this bizarre tale of delusion and political chaos, turning the strangest presidential assassination in U.S. history into a darkly comic character study.
Netflix's Death by Lightning “resurrects this real-life fever dream of delusion and democracy gone off the rails.”
Executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, known for Game of Thrones, have partnered with Mike Makowsky of Bad Education to explore how one man’s desperate quest for recognition collided with a corrupt political system.
Author’s Summary: This miniseries explores how Charles Guiteau’s obsession and distorted sense of destiny led to one of America's most bizarre assassinations, exposing deeper flaws in 19th-century politics.
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