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 “parasocial relationships” were widely discussed, Charles Guiteau—a failed lawyer, aspiring preacher, and self-declared political influencer—believed he was responsible for Garfield's rise to the presidency.
Frustrated that the White House ignored his handwritten letters demanding an ambassadorship to Paris, Guiteau’s obsession took a dark turn. In the summer of 1881, he confronted Garfield at a Washington, D.C. train station and shot him in the back, convinced he was saving the Republican Party and perhaps the nation itself.
“He’d just saved the Republican Party… maybe even the nation.”
This bizarre sequence of events, which sounds like a plot from a prestige miniseries about obsession and ego, is brought to life by Netflix’s Death by Lightning. The series turns one of America’s strangest presidential assassinations into a compelling and darkly humorous character study.
Executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, known for Game of Thrones, teamed with Mike Makowsky of Bad Education to examine how Guiteau’s twisted craving for recognition intersected with a political system already decaying from within.
“How a single man’s warped need for validation and a cushy government gig collided with a political system already rotting from within.”
This miniseries highlights the perilous consequences of obsession and delusion in politics.
Author’s summary: Netflix’s Death by Lightning vividly dramatizes the bizarre true story of Charles Guiteau’s deadly obsession and its impact on American politics in 1881.