The Stranger-Than-Fiction True Story Behind Netflix’s New Star-Studded Historical Miniseries

The Stranger-Than-Fiction True Story Behind Netflix’s New Historical Miniseries

Netflix's Death by Lightning retells the shocking assassination of U.S. President James Garfield. This event involved Charles Guiteau, a failed lawyer and self-proclaimed political influencer who believed he was solely responsible for Garfield's rise to power.

When Guiteau's demands for an ambassadorship in Paris, expressed through handwritten letters and calls to the White House, were ignored, his obsession took a deadly turn. In the summer of 1881, he shot President Garfield in the back at a Washington, D.C. train station, convinced he was saving the Republican Party, and perhaps the nation itself.

The story reads like a gripping miniseries about obsession, ego, and possibly untreated mental illness. Netflix’s Death by Lightning brings this bizarre chapter of American history to life, blending dark humor with a deep character study of delusion and political decay.

“Netflix’s Death by Lightning resurrects this real-life fever dream of delusion and democracy gone off the rails, turning the country’s strangest presidential assassination into a bizarre, darkly funny character study.”

Executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, known for Game of Thrones, collaborated with Mike Makowsky of Bad Education to examine how Guiteau’s craving for recognition and a government position intersected with a political system already deteriorating from within.

Author’s summary: The miniseries portrays the chilling true story of Charles Guiteau’s fatal obsession and how it exposed the fragility of 19th-century American politics.

more

Collider Collider — 2025-11-07

More News