[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for The Penguin.]

The Big Picture

The eight-episode HBO series ‘The Penguin’ explores Oz Cobb’s rise in Gotham’s criminal underworld, after ‘The Batman.’
Sofia Falcone, played by Cristin Milioti, enters the boys’ club of organized crime, vying for control of her late father’s empire.
The deep emotional dive into the character, Colin Farrell’s portrayal, and the prosthetics design are key aspects.

From executive producer Matt Reeves, the eight-episode DC Studios/HBO series The Penguin, which takes place after the events of The Batman and prior to the upcoming sequel, places Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) in the center of Gotham’s criminal underworld. At the same time, Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), mob boss Carmine Falcone’s daughter, free from Arkham Asylum and wondering what comes next for her in a boys’ club of organized crime that’s not welcoming her with open arms. Unsure of where things stand between her and Oz, she’ll find out soon enough, as she vies for control of her late father’s empire.

The Penguin’s story began in The Batman, where he was not yet the crime lord of Gotham that he eventually evolves into. But the wheels were set in motion for him to continue down a path that would get him to that very place. Because The Batman had a lot of ground to cover, the character’s time in his story was just far too brief, so this TV series was born out of that, to fill in some blanks prior to the sequel.

During this interview with Collider, Farrell and prosthetics designer Mike Marino talked about the process of fine-tuning the character’s appearance, where they drew inspiration from for the final look, the deep psychological and emotional dive into character for the series, and getting to know Oz, inside and out.

The Prosthetics Design for ‘The Penguin’ Directly Influenced Colin Farrell’s Portrayal of Oz Cobb
Image via HBO

Colin, this is obviously a rare opportunity to more deeply explore a character that you’d already played. What impression did you get from him, from doing The Batman, that made you feel like you just had to explore him deeper? Were there things you wanted to tweak that you couldn’t have done in the movie?

FARRELL: Yes. The deep psychological and emotional dive that (showrunner) Lauren [LeFranc] and her team of writers, guided by Matt [Reeves], were able to do for eight hours of television on HBO was going to be just much more detailed, and it was going to be much more violent, and it was going to be much more honest and nuanced. My purpose in the film was to be a red herring, more than anything else. He was a bon vivant and a club owner, and he had a stride to him. It was fun. I thoroughly enjoyed doing the film. But the thing that made me wonder what we could do with a longer runway was [Mike Marino’s] work, to be honest with you. It was so extraordinary, what Mike created, and it was so full of history, and it was so full of life, and it was full of pain, and it was full of violence, and it was full of regret and shame. When I saw his design for Penguin, the first time I saw it on Matt Reeves’ laptop computer in London, about six months before we started shooting, I just got all this information from what he had created. I got all these feelings from what he had created.

Related These Are the Comics That Inspired ‘The Penguin’ Season 1 It might be gritty and grounded, but ‘The Penguin’ does have roots in various Batman comics.

It was a case of, surely we didn’t do all this just for five scenes. I got greedy. I was so thrilled to be a part of The Batman, but it was about the second month of shooting that I said to (producer) Dylan Clark on the set, “We should do a show. We should do eight hours of this.” And then, I didn’t do anything about it, by the way. I’m not saying I created this. I stepped away, I went back to life, I did another job. And then, about a year later, Matt and Dylan called and said, “Look, we’ve talked to HBO, we’re thinking of doing a Penguin show,” and that was it. I just knew that we’d be able to get in the weeds with this fella and really find out what makes our iteration – Matt’s iteration, Mike’s iteration, mine, Lauren’s, Dylan’s – of this time-honored character tick, and what makes him as violent, and as grotesque, and as tender, and as loving, and as fearful, and as bold as he is, and as psychopathic by the end.

Everything From ‘Rogert Rabbit’ to Real Penguins Inspired the Final Look for ‘The Penguin’s Oz Cobb
Image via HBO

Mike, what is that like for you when you take on something like this, that is such a famous character in a world that everybody knows? I would imagine that it’s also famous to you, so how do you figure out how to put your own stamp on that? Did you immediately know that this is what you wanted him to look like, or did you spend a lot of time thinking about it?

MARINO: I’ve been a fan of the comic books since I was a little kid, so I really knew the Batman world from the older comics. I collected so many comic books from the seventies and eighties. There were so many cool stories that were coming out in the nineties. There was one where Batman was giving up, and he’s taking drugs and all this stuff. It was such a cool character to explore. I’ve always been a fan. The Penguin in the comic and throughout Batman, with the 1966 show and Burgess Meredith, and 1992 and Danny DeVito’s creation of that Penguin, which is so different, and I think Matt’s world was also very different, in tone and the script was different. It was unique. Since I knew Colin before – we had worked on a previous job about a decade earlier – I knew that he could take a makeup. He has a great face for makeup and I knew he’d be able to endure it. So, I just had fun with it.

I really just had fun with what I thought the Penguin should look like based on what Matt Reeves’ inspirations were. We spent some time on the phone, Matt Reeves and I, and we talked about film and characters, and The Godfather and Fredo, and Bob Hoskins from Roger Rabbit, and Al Capone and some older gangsters in the thirties. I just started doing research, and I was really inspired. I found some great penguin bird photographs – super closeups of big alpha penguins with eyebrows that were sticking up and angled in this very specific way. So, I layered and combined all this imagery and inspiration from our talks, and created a sculpture and a design which I thought would be cool, as a fan going, “What would the Penguin be like in this world?” And Matt really liked it. He responded very well to it. And Colin really liked it. I thought, “Okay, well, here we go. Let’s try this.” So, we tested it. We were in L.A., so we did a test there. And then, we went to London and we did a test there for (cinematographer) Greig Fraser, who filmed such beautiful film with The Batman. He saw the makeup and started changing all the lenses. He said, “Oh, we can get closer. We could use this lens.” He started getting excited, and I remember he was dragged away.

Related ‘The Penguin’s Showrunner on What Makes Oz and Sofia So Similar Showrunner Lauren LeFranc and Craig Zobel, who directed episodes 1-3, also talk about making a comic book series without superheroes.

FARRELL: I remember the director of photography, Greig Fraser, when we did the makeup test in London, and Greig’s a genius and he came up to me going, “I can’t see where [the prosthetic is]. He was trying to see where the join was and he couldn’t. He was baffled, even that close with an iPhone fucking light, he couldn’t see a thing.

MARINO: He said, “Oh, I think I see something here.” And Colin said, “Well, that’s my own skin there.” It wasn’t part of the makeup. It was exciting. It was an exciting time. No one knew who he was on set. He walked around and no one knew who he was, and people were like, “Who is this weird guy looking at me on set?” It really became this dream project to work on, being so inspired and being such a fan of it. And I think Colin’s performance really is so different than anyone’s version. It’s so unique. And here we are, doing this elaborate eight-part series for HBO and Max. It’s just such a great opportunity for a person like me, who’s a special effects nerd and an artist who gets to play with faces. I think it really is going to be something special.

Colin Farrell Knows His ‘The Penguin’ Character Inside and Out

Colin, how different does your perception of the character feel now? You did the first movie, and then you did eight episodes of this series, and you’ll be going into the sequel. How different does your perception of the character feel, from where you leave him at the end of the series?

FARRELL: I suppose it’s the difference between reading a mass card and reading the King James Bible. The film was a mass card. As I said, I was there to be a red herring. I had some great scenes in the film – a great car chase, great scene with Lieutenant Gordon, soon to be Commissioner, and Batman himself. The stuff in the club was fun. It was more fun in the film, but it was just that. I just knew that we were gonna get under that hood of this character. There are some flashbacks to events that happened in his childhood, that articulate in a very clear way, why he is the way he is and why he became what he became. I feel like I know this version of him fairly well, having lived with him, I suppose, for three or four years now, just not all the time. When we were doing this job, it was a year from the time we started shooting until the time we wrapped. There was the writers’ strike in the middle of that, of course, which prolonged it.

Related Will ‘The Penguin’ Get Multiple Seasons? Producer Teases the Show’s Future [Exclusive] “He’s such a great character.”

But I feel like I know the fella, inside out, and it feels very different to Danny’s and very different to Burgess’. I grew up, as a kid, watching Burgess Meredith in Batman ‘66. And then, as a cinema-going youngster, Danny DeVito was my Penguin. I haven’t seen Robin Lord Taylor’s yet because I had history with Danny DeVito and I had history with Burgess Meredith, and I didn’t wanna bring another type of guy in that I’d either try to do something different from, or he would do something that I had thought of doing, but then I wouldn’t do. I didn’t want any of those obfuscations, so I haven’t seen it, but I heard Robin Lord Taylor is amazing in the show Gotham. Across the board, it’s great. These characters are so wonderful. They obviously survive multiple perspectives and iterations, and it was fun to do it through the lens of Matt Reeves’ imagination and his passion as a comic book lover, as well. It was fun to bring this world to life.

It follows the transformation of Oswald Cobblepot from a disfigured nobody to a noted Gotham gangster.Cast Colin Farrell , Cristin Milioti , Rhenzy Feliz , Michael Kelly , Shohreh Aghdashloo , Deirdre O’Connell , Clancy Brown , James Madio , Scott Cohen , Michael Zegen , Carmen Ejogo , Theo Rossi Seasons 1 Showrunner Lauren LeFranc

The Penguin airs on HBO and is available to stream on Max. Check out the trailer:

Watch on Max