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

The Big Picture

The HBO series ‘The Penguin’ centers on Oz Cobb and Sofia Falcone in Gotham’s underworld, post-‘The Batman.’
Oz Cobb’s mother, Francis, (Deirdre O’Connell) plays a significant role in shaping him, adding emotional turmoil.
Deirdre O’Connell discusses the prosthetics on Colin Farrell, the appeal of grounded comic stories, and her inspiration for Francis.

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) at the center of Gotham’s criminal underworld. At the same time, Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), mob boss Carmine Falcone’s daughter, is 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 or whether they can work together, she’ll find out soon enough, as she vies for control of her late father’s empire.

At the center of Oz’s world is his mother, Francis Cobb (Deirdre O’Connell). If Oz loves anyone, he loves his mother, but she also knows more about him and his past than anyone else. She’s had a strong hand in shaping who he has become, but there is an emotional turmoil at the core of their bond that could ultimately make Oz even more ruthless.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, O’Connell talked about why The Penguin needed his own TV series, how the heavy prosthetics made her feel like she never actually worked with Farrell himself, how she found herself identifying with this character, where she took inspiration from in bringing Francis to life, what Francis thinks of Sofia, and the mother-son dynamic and whether this woman really loves her son.

Collider: You’ve previously dabbled in this comic book world before, doing Daredevil with Marvel, which was also much more grounded in reality than some other comic book stories have been. Was that part of the appeal of doing something like this, when it comes to these sorts of stories? Do you feel like you connect more to them when they are rooted in real life, as opposed to superpowers?

DEIRDRE O’CONNELL: I do, but I also like the idea of being able to do a big mythic, epic story, so it’s that combination. It’s that combination of something that has so much metaphor in it and that is so huge, but at the same time, it feels very lived in. You can smell it, you can eat it, you can taste what it’s like to be in those rooms. You’re never feeling like the acting is cartoony. You’re always feeling like you’re living it. And this one was such a high wire act because of the amazing prosthetic, which was the root of the series. The work that Colin did in The Batman was so vivid that we didn’t want it stop. That was the seed of this huge thing. The question was, “What could possibly be worthy of that amazing performance? Okay, well, we’ll make this eight hours of television and see if we can keep up.”

‘The Penguin’s Deirdre O’Connell Feels Like She Never Really Worked With Colin Farrell
Image via HBO

Colin Farrell is a great actor, but he’s in all those prosthetics with his full transformation, different physicality, and a different voice. What is that like, as an actor, to work with?

O’CONNELL: A lot easier than it would have been. I would have been so intimidated if I had to be with that beautiful Irish Colin Farrell, who I was such a huge fan of, every day. It was so much easier. I highly recommend it. If you have to work with some movie star who you’re intimidated by, have them wear a big prosthetic. Really, I never had to think about that. I met him one time for 10 minutes, way before we started shooting, and was just like, “Hello, how are you?” And then, I never saw him again until [the press junket]. The whole year that we were working together, he was always full-on in the prosthetic because it took three hours to put on. So, I was blessed that I never actually had to deal with any embarrassment I might have. I never had to get over any self-consciousness, so I recommend it highly. I was just with this big character guy from New York, who had stumbled onto the good luck of getting his own series, called The Penguin.

Related This Side Character Has Honestly Become My Favorite Part of ‘The Penguin’ It’s not who you think.

It’s such an interesting thing, as the viewer, because your brain keeps trying to find Colin Farrell in the prosthetic while you’re watching.

O’CONNELL: Can’t be done. It cannot be done. I’m still trying to understand how his eyes worked. Everything about his face was so alive. I never had to make any adjustment. When you watch prosthetics, you can be really filled with admiration, but you’re also going, “Oh, I see it.” And with this, I never had to do that adjustment because the prosthetic is so seamless, and his face was so fluid and able to move inside of it. I don’t know how they did it. I really don’t. Someday I’m gonna sit and watch him do that makeup because I wanna know, but as it was, it was perfect not to know because I just believed he was the guy. He was my kid. He was my big bull of a boy.

Deirdre O’Connell’s ‘The Penguin’ Characters Was Inspired by a Particular Type of Woman
Image via HBO

When it came to this character, what did you find yourself most connected to? Was it something specific about her? Was it something about that mother-son relationship?

O’CONNELL: It’s interesting to try to reverse engineer it and remember how it started. There’s a world that (showrunner) Lauren [LeFranc] was trying to capture that reminded me a lot of my grandma who was a Ziegfeld Follies girl. She was a showgirl in New York, and there was a toughness to the women on that side of my family that was mixed with a glamor puss quality. I also always loved those gangster movies and mob movies. I loved Gloria, the movie with the late, great Gena Rowlands. There was a movie called The Pope of Greenwich Village that I really liked, which Geraldine Page did an amazing turn in and she got nominated for an Academy Award. It was a two-scene part, but she just captured this toughness. It’s those kinds of tough broads that do all the dirty work and have this ferocious spirit and smarts but are disregarded. I was real connected to the idea of Francis’ smarts and how smart she was. She must have been a great bookkeeper, not just a good bookkeeper. She must have been one of those people that could have run the whole world if she hadn’t been a woman and she hadn’t been in the place that she was in the world. I feel like that’s a lot of what this series is about. It’s about the people who wanted to and could have run the world, and the ferocious fire that is suddenly unleashed by this flood. All of a sudden, all the flotsam and jetsam of the world is just floating on the top there.

Related ’The Penguin’s Cristin Milioti Has Been Preparing To Take Over Gotham Her Entire Life Milioti also reveals which music artists were on her playlist for Sofia Falcone.

It’s the upstairs/downstairs story of Gotham.

O’CONNELL: Yeah, we’re downstairs. And for Francis, you have to go down the stairs again. You have to get out of your fancy car, get on a train, find your other car, and then drive to her house.

What does she think of Sofia?

O’CONNELL: I think that she thinks that Sofia is a spoiled brat, but I also think that she can’t help but admire the glee with which Sofia is getting her revenge. It’s a combination. Just on the page, when I first was working on that scene with Sofia, I was seeing the fact that she was gonna tear Sofia a new one and she didn’t have a whole lot of respect for her. But I gotta say, as soon as Cristin [Milioti] walked in the room, Francis had some respect, just for the sheer wardrobe alone and the chutzpah with which she wore her wardrobe and the pleasure that she took in her power, right at that moment in her life. I think Francis can’t help but be like, “Oh, this little girl.” But Francis is not a girl’s girl. She likes men.

9:35 Related Colin Farrell Loves Getting Lost in ‘The Penguin’ Prosthetics Prosthetics designer Mike Marino also talks about his ‘Batman’ inspirations and why Farrell has such a great face for makeup.

There’s something so interesting about this mother-son dynamic because Francis has known Oz her whole life. She knows more about him than we think she does, and even than he thinks she does.

O’CONNELL: She knows more about him than he knows. She knows everything.

Oz Cobb’s Mother Knows Exactly What She’s Unleashed on the World of ‘The Penguin’

Do you think that she loves her son? Does she see him as a failure? How does she actually really view him?

O’CONNELL: I think it’s so complicated. I could never get away from loving him, just because of the chemistry that I felt with Colin in the situation. I just love him. But underneath that, on top of that, all over that, and the veins through that, there’s a lot of fear. I don’t think she’s afraid of him, but I think she’s afraid of what she has wrought and what she has let loose on the world. She knows that she’s let someone who has no moral center, who has no empathy, and who actually is truly cold-blooded into the world, but he keeps turning this warm/hot love onto her. It’s complicated. I think she thinks of him as her weapon. I think she also hates the fact that, at this time in her life when we meet her, she’s so powerless and she’s so dependent on him.

Probably, for a woman like her, being dependent on someone makes you her enemy. You just hate the person you need the most. But knowing what she knows, I think she made a pact very early that she would keep him alive and that she would let him live. Part of that pact is to get her the hell out and get her in a state of comfort and power where they’re not dependent on anybody and where no one could possibly disregard them, and he hasn’t quite accomplished it yet. It’s not because she wants stuff. It’s because she feels so disregarded in the world. It’s like every single one of these characters in this whole goddamn show. It’s so interesting, it’s all about being disregarded and disrespected. If you disregard and disrespect any of these characters, “Oh, my God!”

It follows the transformation of Oswald Cobblepot from a disfigured nobody to a noted Gotham gangster.Release Date September 19, 2024 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 Expand

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

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