Marilyn Manson will guest star in the upcoming third season of WGN America’s supernatural thriller “Salem,” the network announced Thursday.
Production began Thursday in Shreveport, La., on the new season, which will air sometime this summer.
Four-time Grammy nominee Manson will portray Thomas Dinley, a barber and surgeon in Salem whom residents visit for everything from “a shave and a haircut to being leeched, bled, sliced open or sewn up,” WGN America said in a release.
The one-hour drama, created and written by Brannon Braga and Adam Simon, reimagines colonial America and the 17th Century Salem witch trials. In the world of the series, real witches exist but are not who or what they seem to be.
According to WGN America, the third season begins with “the triumph of the witches’ plan to remake the New World by bringing the devil to earth and making Salem his capital. But the devil is a liar, and instead of a New World free from murderous Puritan hypocrisy, his own plan will bring nothing but death and slavery with the ultimate aim of leading humanity to destroy itself.”
Only one person can beat the devil (Oliver Bell)—his mother, Mary Sibley, played by series star Janet Montgomery. Is Mary dead? Or does that really matter?
The network didn’t say exactly how Manson’s character would fit into either the devil’s or Mary’s plans, but viewers can count on things getting bloody.
Manson previously teamed with composer Tyler Bates to create the show’s theme song, “Cupid Carries a Gun.”
Joining Montgomery and Bell in the cast of regulars are Shane West as Captain John Alden, Seth Gabel as Cotton Mather, Ashley Madekwe as Tituba, Tamzin Merchant as Anne Hale, Elise Eberle as Mercy Lewis, Iddo Goldberg as Isaac Walton and Joe Doyle as Baron Sebastian Marburg.
“Salem” is executive-produced by Braga, Simon, Kelly Souders, Brian Peterson and Prospect Park’s Jeff Kwatinetz and Josh Barry. The series is produced by Fox 21 Television Studios.
