Steven Prusakowski
It is time to revisit the gritty streets of Gotham as created by Matt Reeves, who captivated audiences with his dark origin story in the 2022 film The Batman starring Robert Pattinson. His new HBO series, The Penguin promises to delve deeper into the city’s criminal underbelly exploring the Rogues Gallery in ways unlike we have seen before. Originally part of the plot for Reeves’ second Batman film, tells the story of The Penguin grabbing power to become the kingpin we know him to be.
The cast and team behind HBO’s The Penguin recently spoke about the new crime series. Showrunner Lauren LeFranc had a vision for the series and this iteration of one of Gotham’s most iconic villains. This iteration of the character features a new story that allowed LeFranc to establish new canon. Significant changes to the character stem from the more grounded approach to the Batman universe, starting with the character’s name. Instead of Oswald Cobblepott, he would be given the more real-world name, Oz Cobb.
In the series The Penguin, the character—previously portrayed by respected actors like Burgess Meredith in the campy ’60s TV show and Danny DeVito in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns—is now brought to life by Academy Award nominee Colin Farrell. Don’t go looking for him though, because viewers may not find him. Thanks to an incredible make-up transformation and a performance unlike anything he has delivered before the actor virtually unrecognizable.
Makeup Designer Mike Marino created this look for the character, drawing from numerous sources to bring the supervillain to life for this series. “Well, it first started with Matt Reeves and the moment I spoke to him for the first time, I knew he was an artist.” shared Marino,” He was trying to describe the tone of the film and the character that he wanted Oz to be, which was a sympathetic person who wanted more out of his life. Similar to John Cazale’s character in The Godfather as Fredo. So, that was a major reference.”
Being a mobster, part of Oz’s look was inspired by real-life gangsters from the 30s and 50s, but the makeup designer drew inspiration from an unexpected source our feathered frinds, actual penguin. Marino incorporated some information into the prosthetics for Oz’s face.
“I found this penguin with this really powerful brow, very angled. I gave a little bit more of an intimidating gesture to the eyebrow and his nose, I gave this subliminal aspect of a beak and the shape of the nostril being like a bird’s mouth slightly. So, all of these things layered on top of one another created this strange new person that doesn’t exist,” explained Marino.
Photograph by Macall Polay/HBO
While the layers of makeup created the look of the character, just as much thought was put into what makes Oz Cobb tick. LeFranc explored the character from the inside out. “I ask myself a lot of questions, and one of them is ‘What does Oz want? Who is he? Where does he come from?’ Those are the many things that I start to think about, What is he afraid of?,” explained the showrunner.
“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,” continued LeFranc. “To me it made a lot of sense to build a mother figure for him and have so much more emotion rooted in that. And so, I thought about this idea that Oz wants to make his mother proud, and he needs her love and affection and she’s withholding. And I started to ask myself, ‘Why she would be withholding?’ and that’s something that we reveal deeper in the season.”
Farrell delivers a one-of-a-kind character, one that is both unqiue but also has some qualities that feel familiar in the best of ways. “Anything, as an actor, anything you ever see, any piece of music you ever hear, it all kind of meets you inside in a place that gets used, gets filtered through every single character you do in lesser or greater ways. it spoke to me so clearly. It spoke with a sense of history, a sense of threat, a sense of violence. Also, there was kind of something sorrowful to the visage as well. It was just so complex,” shared Farrell.
“I mean there’s one incident in his life that’s revealed throughout the show that was probably more consequential anything else in regards to directing him towards the man he becomes,” explained Farrell. “But what led him to that incident predates the incident was something inside of him.”
Throughout the often violent series, Oz channels his inner pain by targeting those who cross him or simply get in his way. Farrell drew inspiration from Oz’s past when portraying the character’s tendency toward anger. “He’s born with a physical limitation that was, and pardon the pun, but really emotionally crippling for him, and psychologically crippling,” said Farrell.
“He felt subjugated by his own limitation and what he was told his limitation was. He was bullied. He was treated cruelly by society. I’m not justifying any act, but more often than not, when somebody commits an act of cruelty in this human experience we all share, you will find out that they had been treated cruelly at some stage in their timeline.”
The transformation of Farrell into Oz Cobb and ultimately into The Penguin occurred when all the pieces came together, the makeup, the backstory, and the performance. “When we put the makeup on first, it was instantaneous. I mean, I had done enough thinking about the script that Matt so beautifully wrote and the character that he designed and had conversations with Matt about the psychology of Oz and how paranoid he was and how insecure he was and how he really wants to be seen and wanted to be seen not as someone who was crippled and not as someone who was less than.”
“But he wanted to have his power being given permission to be expressed on this stage of Gotham City and the underworld. So, I had done loads of thinking about, but when the makeup went on and I looked in the mirror,” he continued. ”I mean, looking back at your reflection, and it’s not what you have seen for 45 years, it’s really, really powerful.”
If you put something on that totally – that 100% changed everything that you are – you would begin to feel differently, and it’ll be confusing at first, but there’d be a stirring inside you. And it’s a little bit strange, but it’s really powerful. And then you just, based on the writing and that makeup, you just give yourself over to it.”
Witness both Farrell and Oz Cobb’s transformation into The Penguin on HBO. The series premiered on September 19th and will continue with new episodes every Sunday through its November 10th finale. For those attending New York Comic Con be sure to check out the panel which will include both series cast and crew on October 17th at the Javits Center in New York.
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