Gotham’s underworld, plagued by drugs, gangs, and violence, faces a power vacuum left by the death of Carmine Falcone in 2022’s The Batman. This is where The Penguin opens: The city is ravaged by the Riddler’s flooding, the people are left homeless, and the Falcone empire, the mob running the city, is in crisis. Oz Cobb, known as the Penguin, reckons with where he stands in his world.
It was evident from the first episode of the series, which premiered September 19 on Max, just what viewers were going to see: Building off of the world created for Matt Reeves’ Batman, this iteration of Gotham is gritty and marred with pain, but real. Now, over halfway through the show’s first season, the Executive Production team, Lauren LeFranc, Dylan Clark, Craig Zobel, Bill Carraro, and Daniel Pipski, continue to bring us a phenomenal experience — so much so that the series averaged 1.8 million U.S. cross-platform viewers during its most recent episode.
It’s no surprise that the series is breaking viewership milestones week after week. Throughout the series, the Penguin finds many enemies and a protégé that he sees as a kindred spirit. But the audience also begins to understand his origin story, building a conversation of heroes and villains, family and loyalty, and finding your place in the world.
Colin Farrell, the Penguin himself, reprised his Batman role in a bigger spotlight, allowing for his fantastic performance to shine through. Mike Marino, the SFX makeup designer on the show, took hours to transform the actor into Oz Cobb, a disfigured man. Though Farrell has described how fed up he was with the process by the end of it, he has also explained the “liberation” he felt it gave to his performance.
“When you get that submerged, that hidden, it kind of gives you freedom,” he told Good Morning America. “You would think it’s limiting. But it’s not. It’s utterly liberating which is good because the character is super dark and the show is a descent into psychopathy.”
Beyond the prosthetics, Farrell created a thoroughly convincing penguin-like limp and defined his character with an exaggerated, New York City-esque, mobster Gotham accent.
Working with dialect coach Jessica Drake helped set the groundwork for the character that Farrell said just “came out” of him when working on The Batman.
According to his castmates, Farrell became unrecognizable as the Penguin — and not just to the audience watching him on-screen — helping his colleagues bring their own characters to the screen.
“Up close, it’s so real,” co-star Cristin Milioti said in an interview on the Tonight Show. “And so when I see him outside of that, it’s very jarring, because Oz is more of a real person who I’ve spent more time with than Colin and it feels like someone has Freaky Friday-ed or body swapped — it’s like something is wrong, it feels when you’ve been riding a bicycle all day and then you get off the bicycle ‘woah.'”
All of these physical pieces and Farrell’s performance brought Cobb, the Penguin and Gotham back to life.
Though the series is called The Penguin, Sofia Falcone, played by Milioti, steals the show. She brings a fantastic boss-bitch energy to the personality of Falcone, rivaling the power brought by Penguin.
From her first few minutes on screen, it was clear that Falcone embodied a deeply powerful woman, who also channels a touch of crazy, well-suited to potentially take control of her father’s empire and get what she wants.
Beyond Sofia Falcone’s star powers, the series highlights more female power, like from Billie Peña as the leader of an all-female gang. Adrienne Acevedo Lovette, the actor who plays her, gushed about the opportunity to play this female role, something she feels isn’t highlighted as much in the DC Universe. The role gave her the “pretty cool” chance to represent women and Latinas on screen.
Other notable performances include Rhenzy Feliz, playing Victor Aguilar, the Penguin’s protege, Michael Zegen as Alberto Falcone, Carmine’s son and potential heir to the empire, and Deirdre O’Connell as Cobb’s mother Francis.
Aguilar and Penguin unexpectedly join forces and allow a different side of Cobb — a lighter, almost comedic and parental side — to be shown. Feliz brings him to life with a stutter and the two have a shining rapport.
Zegen portrays Alberto Falcone, the playboy-like, confident and paranoid heir-apparent to the empire. His taunting pushes Cobb to snap, setting off the action early in the season. Zegen, who grew up with Batman, said that walking into Gotham was “magical.”
“I grew up a comic book fan, and a Batman fan, specifically,” he told Just N Life at the premiere in September. “So it was really cool getting to do a scene, not just with Colin Farrell ’cause that was cool enough, but with the Penguin. … All of it was very cool.”
O’Connell allows for the relationship between mother and son to come front and center. Her tough performance shows kernels of Cobb’s life, infusing not just tough-love but also deep caring and adoration for her on-screen son.
Emily Meade, who plays O’Connell’s younger self, talked about working alongside the veteran. They hadn’t met in person before filming, so O’Connell became something of “a ghost living in [Meade’s] world.”
“She was really kind and she recorded my lines in her voice,” Meade said, explaining her relationship with O’Connell. “I worked with a dialect coach and I got fake teeth made because I have a gap and she doesn’t. I was listening to her voice over and over again and mimicking her voice. I was like actually feeling quite close to her. She’s so cool and kind.”
Others cast members shared how they created their characters:
While creating The Penguin, it was difficult to forget the massively legendary universe these creators are adding to. The cast acknowledged that, whether or not they grew up with Batman or superheroes, many actors and other creatives, expressed their gratitude to work on something so iconic.
The actors spoke to us about their experiences on the show, especially working with Farrell and the rest of the cast.
And of course, people working on a comic book adaptation had a lot to say about comic book characters:
The Penguin is an absolute must-watch, if not for the characters, then for the stellar performances. And if not for the stellar performances, then definitely for the Penguin’s sparkly, purple, Maserati Quattroporte.
New episodes of The Penguin air Sunday nights on HBO and Max.
What's Your Reaction?
