The Stranger-Than-Fiction True Story Behind Netflix’s New 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” became common in therapy or celebrity analysis, Charles Guiteau was a failed lawyer, aspiring preacher, and self-proclaimed political influencer. He believed he was responsible for electing Garfield.
When the White House ignored his handwritten letters demanding an ambassadorship to Paris, Guiteau took his obsession to a deadly extreme. 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 perhaps the nation.
If this sounds like the premise of a darkly humorous prestige miniseries about obsession, ego, and possibly untreated illness, it is no coincidence. Death by Lightning revives this surreal true story of delusion and political chaos, transforming the country’s strangest presidential assassination into a bizarre character study.
Executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, known for Game of Thrones, join forces with Mike Makowsky of Bad Education to explore how one man's desperate craving for recognition and a government job collided with a political system already decaying from within.
"Charles Guiteau took his fandom to its logical, horrifying extreme."
"Guiteau was convinced he’d just saved the Republican Party… maybe even the nation."
Summary: Netflix’s Death by Lightning untangles a surreal assassination story, exposing how obsession and a crumbling political system turned one man’s delusion into historical tragedy.
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