Python interactive shell combined with wxPython GUI app?

Question

I'm developing a wxPython-based GUI app, but would love to interact with it using an interactive shell. The app is targeted at developers and will be run from a command line.

I know about wx’s own wx.py.Shell, but want to ask if it's possible to stick with Python’s own interactive shell as invoked by python -i script.py, because it's more familiar to the users.

The problem is that the GUI app will block the shell process until quit, which defeats the purpose of the interactive shell. Running the GUI in a separate thread or process seems to be impossible, too.

Any idea how I can run app.MainLoop() and still have an interactive shell afterwards?

Thank you.