‘The Penguin’ reimagined

HEAD: ‘The Penguin’ reimagined

BLURB: Tymon Smith chats to the team behind HBO’s new limited series about mob henchman Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot’s fight for the top spot of the Gotham underworld.

Following his almost unrecognisable cameo as villain The Penguin in Matt Reeves’s 2022 film The Batman, Oscar-nominated actor Colin Farrell returns to star in  HBO’s new eight-episode limited series The Penguin. Written by Lauren LeFranc, directed by Craig Zobel and with a support cast that includes Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz and Diedre O’Connell, it tells the story of mob henchman Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot and his fight for the top spot of the Gotham underworld. Farrell takes the spotlight in the impressive prosthetics created by makeup artist Michael Marino.

What attracted you to the idea of a 'Batman universe' show in which there’s no Batman and everything is focused on the story of The Penguin?

Colin Farrell (Oswald Cobbelpot): In The Batman, I had five or six scenes and with the makeup that Mike designed, I thought it was an extraordinary opportunity that was not fully realised. With the show, there was an opportunity to get into the psychology of the character.   

Craig Zobel (director): I was just so impressed with The Batman. I loved the concept of it. In my brain, it was like, ‘What if Batman was a detective in David Fincher’s Se7en?’ It was a very smart, targeted idea. So I was excited when I was asked to be a part of this. Lauren had found such an interesting way in: instead of the traditional way that The Penguin’s been portrayed in the past, as an aristocrat who comes from money, this was the opposite direction. He comes from blue-collar beginnings and he’s pulling himself up by the bootstraps. That was just a cool way to reimagine the character.

The transformation of Colin into The Penguin is a major talking point. What was the inspiration for the look? What’s it like to inhabit the costume and what’s it like to direct and work with an actor in such an unrecognisable getup?

Mike Marino (makeup artist): I had already done makeup on Colin and so I understood his face. The question was how to take this beautiful man and make him look like an intimidating, crazy, dangerous person? I took inspiration from gangsters and birds and the shape of things subconsciously.

Farrell: The day we did the first makeup test for The Batman was one of the most magical days I’ve ever had as an actor. Everyone was feeling mad pressure, knowing that we were trying to reinvent this character who had been honoured through decades of comic-book lore, film iterations and TV iterations. It was just one bit and another bit, and then the bodysuit went on and another, the hair and then the this and then the that. And all of a sudden, I looked in the mirror and I wasn’t looking back anymore. It was a totally different creature. And it was so exciting.

Zobel: Mike did such a great job that [the makeup] told a lot of the story – you look at him and you know what kind of a guy he is. To do a TV show where your main character has to be in three, four hours of makeup every day is crazy.

What opportunities did the show offer to expand the look and feel of Gotham City and what does the bottom-up nature of the story add for Batman fans?

Zobel: Every Batman movie is always from the point-of-view of one of the richest guys in Gotham, so it was fun to be able to look at what the city is like and where this crime is coming from, and where the disparity is. I tip my hat to Lauren for finding this class-struggle story. We also spent a lot of time thinking about what places are like after a disaster, which superhero movies don’t do very much.

Deidre O’Connell (Francis Cobb): The show is about class in some ways: the people who do the dirty work, who keep the world working, who keep the glamorous mob world working and the underneath of the underneath of the underneath of their lives.

What are you most excited for viewers to take away from The Penguin?

O’Connell: A lot of Batman movies have to do with people rising up with huge resentments about how they were raised and what they didn’t have. This one is very particular in that it’s a mob story and it’s also a story about class. It’s about what it’s like when the flood finally brings everyone together on an equal footing.

Rhenzy Feliz: There’s a chess game that’s going on in the show that Oz is playing with the characters. That’s one of the things I was most excited about when I was reading it – to see the moves that he’s trying to get to. It’s not easy to get to the top of this world and to watch him: left turn, right turn, up, down, diagonal – whatever he’s got to do to continue on that path. That’s what I’m excited for people to watch — the chess game.

Cristin Milioti: This show always felt like an opera to me. It goes to such highs and they’re real and they’re grounded but that allows you step out of your own life, while also feeling the things that these people are feeling — even though they’re feeling them at like a 12 out of 10.

Farrell: The show is dark but it’s also very grounded. That’s an overused word but it’s the best we have for something that is trying to be reflective of a certain aspect of the human experience and not reach too far, if at all, into the realms of the fantastical.

• The Penguin is now streaming on Showmax. New episodes are available on Fridays.