Matt Reeves’ first followup to The Batman has descended upon us like a Gotham winter. HBO’s excellent new series The Penguin takes place in the immediate aftermath of the Riddler’s assault on Gotham and The Bat in the aforementioned film, chronicling the rise to power of Oz Cobblepot (Colin Farrell) against the opposition of Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti). In a press conference composed of Reeves, series writer Lauren LeFranc, and the cast, they walked us through the series’ origins, the extensive preparatory work that went into crafting Oz and Sofia Falcone, and more.

The Penguin Grew From A Desire To Show The Power Vacuum Following The Batman

The origins of The Penguin, Reeves discusses, stems from the origins of all Batman’s most notorious foes: it’s all a consequence of the Bat himself. “When we were making The Batman,” he explains, “the idea was to do a, not an origin tale, but the early days of a young Batman.” With the Bat comes the Rogues Gallery, because “in the comics, those characters are inspired by the presence of Batman in this place,” and thus Batman’s “coming to being […] was in a weird way an origin tale for those characters.”

Reeves’ vision included an “HBO-style show” that focused on a member of the Bat’s distinguished Rogues. Casey Bloys and Sarah Aubrey were excited about the idea, and requested it focus on a “marquee character.” With Oz Cobb’s story set to be continued in the second film, Reeves “pitched them that idea that it was kind of in the wake of Carmine Falcone’s assassination, there was a power vacuum in Gotham,” the kind that a deeply ambitious character like Oz can ruthlessly rise in.  “We went and looked for a writer who felt like they could really take that and make it their own and to really dig into this character examination,” he explained, “and we found Lauren.”

Colin Farrell in The Penguin
Photo Credit: Macall Polay/Max

A Tale About An Ambitious Boy-Turned-Gangster… and His Mother

Developing the finer details of the narrative was intuitive for LeBlanc, thanks to the detailed work that already went into the character’s creation for The Batman. “I had the benefit of already having Oz Cobb, and thanks to Mike who created this incredible prosthetic that just makes it so seamless, and what Colin already did in The Batman was amazing.” Within these guidelines, her process involved digging into Oz’s deeper motivations to get at the narrative. “When I start thinking about characters, I ask myself a lot of questions,” she explains, “what does Oz want? Who is he, where does he come from?” 

Her goal was to ground Oz’s ambitions in something real. “I wanted to make sure that in this rise to power story that there was something greater behind that [ …]  I don’t think people seek power just to seek power, I think they seek power because of a deeper want or deeper void inside of them.” As Freud would say, it all goes back to Oz’s mother. “I thought about this idea that Oz wants to make his mother proud, and he needs her love and affection and she’s withholding,” she explains, and the rest of his arc (not to be spoiled) emerged from that foundation. “I also wanted the relationship to be weird and twisted, a little bit verging on Oedipal to understand Oz in a deeper way, too, to have just some form of distorted relationship.”

Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone and Colin Farrell as Oz Cobblepot in The Penguin
Image Courtesy of HBO

For her part, Deirdre O’Connell felt connected to Farrell’s Oz as soon as she saw him in full makeup. “There was something about the second I saw you in your full regalia,” she explained. “I felt like oh, oh, game on, there’s my boy. I felt complete… it just dropped something in for me that I don’t think you can always expect will happen.” The makeup created an instant intimacy, “there was a weird magic that I felt hit by that.”

Developing These Characters From The Ground Up

LeBlanc’s work greeted a groundswell of details to expand Colin Farrell’s already stellar portrayal of the Penguin in The Batman. “I had the script, and then I had started in with Lauren and her team of writers created it from the ground up,” he lauds. “They took just a seedling at best, which was what we did in The Batman film, and they created this whole world of these complex characters, inhabited by DeeDee as Francis and Rhenzy as Victor and Cristin as Sofia.” He was drawn to how “it’s not just The Penguin Oz show, it’s all these human beings that are so complex and multifaceted and I just knew that we were going to get to look into the engine of this guy personally in an interesting way.”

Cristin Milioti and Colin Farrell in The Penguin
Image Courtesy of Max

Cristin Milioti was thrilled to carve a slice of Gotham’s underworld. “I’m also a very life-long Batman fan,” she explained at the junket. “I’ve been dreaming of this since I was very little,” she explains of her stunning turn as Sofia Falcone, “as an actor I was like, ‘oh my god,’ I would read each script, and I would like pinch myself when I would realize what I was going to get to do.” Crafting Sofia Falcone’s arc in a unique way was a priority for LeBlanc. “It’s something, as a storyteller I want to do for every single character on our show, but I did want to make sure that this world was peppered with very complicated, interesting, flawed women just as much as oftentimes in the past they’ve been given to men,” she explained.

The approach created a strong grounding for Milioti to connect with and explore Falcone. “I watched Batman Forever a lot as a kid,” she notes. “I know that’s not one of the more beloved ones, but I really loved it, and when I would play in my backyard, I would pretend to be The Riddler, because the woman in that is a psychologist who walks around in lingerie.” As any young girl with dreams of Gotham domination would do, Milioti connected to different characters. “I was like, alright, but ehhh, what about the guy who gets to explode everything, and Two Face, who gets to, like, hang from the helicopter? I would also always pretend to be the men… no disrespect, it just was… those were the ones that are the most exciting, and we didn’t have to like prance around in short shorts.” In the hands of Milioti and LeBlanc, Sofia Falcone became a formidable enough antagonist to match Colin Farrell’s stellar portrayal of the Oz who becomes the Penguin.

The end result of a stunning set of performers and smart writing is one of the years’ best series, a worthy successor to Reeves’ excellent work in The Batman, and a stunning bridge to the film’s sequel.

Audiences can watch The Batman on HBO, or stream it on Max.

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