“The Penguin” star Colin Farrell on the metamorphosis of his character
Colin Farrell plays Oz Cobb in HBO’s The Penguin and talks about the character’s ambition, pain, power and possible Batman projects.
Batman had a lot movies and TV shows with his name on them. The Joker even has a few solo movies under his belt. Now it’s time to turn the spotlight on a Gotham City menace who knows how to deal with bad guys.
“If you asked Oz if he was happy to have his own show, he’d say, ‘It was about time,'” says “The Penguin” creator and writer Lauren LeFranc of her titular gangster in the new HBO crime drama.
Transformed by makeup and prosthetics, Colin Farrell introduced a new version of the Penguin two years ago in director Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Rather than focusing on Robert Pattinson’s Dark Knight detective, the eight-part spinoff series “Penguin” (premieres Sept. 19 at 9 p.m. EDT/PDT on HBO and Max, weekly Sundays starting Sept. 29) follows Farrell’s gangster Oz Cobb as he makes major moves to rule Gotham City’s underworld. (Pattinson and Farrell will face off again in “The Batman: Part II,” which begins filming next year.)
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The new series is set one week after The Batman. Crime-ridden Gotham has been devastated by flooding and is in a struggle to fill the power vacuum left by the death of mob boss Carmine Falcone. Ambitious Oz, a lower-level henchman of the Falcones, is looking for a way to control the city’s drug trade and pit the Falcone and Maroni families against each other with the help of his young right-hand man Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz). But the return of convicted serial killer Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) after a 10-year stay in Arkham Asylum threatens this rise to power.
Farrell says Oz was intended as a “diversion” in the first Batman film – “He was a behaviorally troubled guy, he was kind of the cock of the walk” – but the series “looks at his psychology as a man and how far he’s willing to go. And it also goes into some really painful details of his upbringing through flashbacks that don’t justify, but kind of describe why he is a version of the man he is.”
“The Penguin” explores the childhood of a Batman villain to tell his origin story
“The Penguin”: Colin Farrell gives the legendary Batman villain a mafia look
A realistic version of the Batman villain: Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) is an ambitious gangster who seeks control of Gotham City in the crime drama “The Pengion”.
Oz is a far cry from the delicate, feathered finches played by Burgess Meredith and Danny DeVito. LeFranc wanted this penguin’s origin story to be rooted in family and an outsider — that’s why he’s called Oz Cobb in the series rather than the more famous Oswald Cobblepot. In DC Comics canon, this is a wealthy Gotham family and “his name means something,” LeFranc says. She didn’t want Oz to have that because he would be “so desperate to achieve something if he started from a place of nothing.”
Farrell adds that Oz’s drive was “born out of the pain he experienced in his formative childhood years. His ambition hardens over the years and over the eight hours of this story’s telling, he becomes darker and more sinister, and he becomes more relentless in his pursuit of his dream of having absolute power and making his mother proud.”
When Oz isn’t committing crimes, he’s taking care of his beloved mother (Deirdre O’Connell), and LeFranc thought she should also say who he is. “I wanted him and his mother to have a very twisted, unusual, slightly Oedipal relationship,” LeFranc says. Plus, “he would respect someone like Sofia Falcone more than other people because he has a mother who has so much dignity and who showed him how powerful women can be.”
Cristin Milioti celebrates her “pretty awesome” villain era
Of all the characters in The Penguin, Sofia most resembles a classic Batman villain. She served time in the legendary Arkham Prison after being nicknamed “The Executioner” and came out a deranged version of her former self. “She sleeps in her closet and scratches her neck every night,” Milioti says. Her father Carmine (played by Mark Strong in the series) told Sofia she was the rightful heir to the crime family until she went through something “unbelievable,” the actress adds. But rather than escaping a bad situation, “it made sense to me that she would come back and say, ‘OK, I’m going to get this power and move on.'”
Oz looks like a ghost when he sees Sofia’s return: There’s a long history between them and also a betrayal that causes serious friction. “They’re such formidable adversaries for each other, but they’re also related,” says Milioti. “She obviously sees through all his bullshit. Especially in the first few episodes, you think, ‘If they could actually work together, they could probably do some pretty awesome and sinister things.’ But then it’s so much nicer that they become adversaries. The way they fight each other is so deep and psychological and hurtful. And you can only do that with someone you know really well.”
Colin Farrell’s Penguin finds a young orphan to help him with his cause
With his scarred face and waddle (due to an injured foot), Oz looks like a penguin, but he also has charm and the charisma of a storyteller. “Oz says and does what he wants,” says LeFranc. “It’s fun to write someone who’s crazy and a jerk and a little mean and a little weird and breaks the rules.” And when he gets into trouble, Oz leans on Victor, an orphaned teenager the gangster takes under his wing.
“He sees that Victor stutters and was bullied as a child because he is physically disabled and different from everyone else,” Farrell says of Oz, who stands up for Victor when others don’t treat the boy with respect. “He wants Vic to become the strongest version of himself.”
“But one man’s care is another man’s cruelty. Just because Oz cares about you doesn’t mean you’ll ever be completely safe in his company. He will literally do whatever it takes to get ahead in life.”
