The CW

Actions

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow casts Billy Zane as P.T. Barnum

Posted at 2:54 PM, Jul 14, 2017
and last updated 2017-07-14 14:54:31-04

The end of Legends of Tomorrow’s second season created an entirely new set of problems once the team defeated the Legion of Doom and ended the Spear of Destiny arc. During the Season 2 finale, Sara Lance and her team of heroes had quite literally broken time itself. Picking up some time after the defeat of the Legion, Season 3 will follow The Legends as they face off against their former mentor Rip Hunter – who has formed a new version of the Time Masters known as the Time Bureau. The result of this showdown will be a battle of ideology, as the Legends and the Time Bureau will fight over which organization’s methods of safeguarding the timeline yield better results in the long run.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will be leaning heavily into historical figures in season 3! What does that mean?

Well, to start we can reveal that Billy Zane has been tapped to play P.T. Barnum on the CW super series.

Executive producer Phil Klemperer has offered up a detailed description of the role that also offers insight on what’s in store for season 3:

“Obviously, we couldn’t resist putting Victor Garber and Billy Zane back on screen for the first time since the TITANIC.

“But I’ve wanted to bring Billy onto LEGENDS ever since I saw him in a friend’s comedy pilot. I’m not sure that people know how funny Billy is, although we cast him as P.T. Barnum because we knew that he would be able to find the soul beneath the larger-than-life showman. Truth is, Barnum never said ‘there’s a sucker born every minute.’ He was less a conman, more the father of modern advertising. A guy who made things ‘go viral’ before that was a thing. Sure, in one sense, he’s the villain of our story, but in another, he’s just a guy who wants to put on a good show. Anyone who works in TV can relate to that, right?! Anyway, Billy seemed like the perfect guy to get that duality.

“The thing about history books is that they turn famous people into 2-D characters. This season on LEGENDS, we want to meet other famous figures from history, people like Barnum, people we think we know, so that we can find the aspects of them, the parts of their story, that the history books left out — we want to bring history to life by infusing it with heart, humor, and total absurdity (often at the same time).”

By now it is no secret that Legends of Tomorrow loves to toy with different guest stars from different eras within the DC timeline. The episodes focusing on these newcomers have consistently been the most entertaining entries in the Legends of Tomorrow canon, so it would make perfect sense for the series to double down on that idea and continue to bring us new heroes.