Maxance Vincent
The Penguin is arguably one of the darkest television series DC has ever produced, more so than The Batman, which was the foundation upon which the show was built. It shows a different version of Gotham than audiences are usually accustomed to, and, according to Hair Department Head Brian Badie, who spoke to Awards Radar on Zoom, it was reflected in the hairstyles, knowing that “this was a specific world from Matt Reeves and Dylan Clark. I didn’t want to lose that feeling and that edge that the film had. Everything I was doing as far as design, I was making it appropriate for the world of film, even though this would air on HBO Max. But in my mind, I was making it like it would be a part of The Batman.”
Designing a character like Oz Cobb didn’t feel like a challenge for Badie, who says that “it takes a tremendous amount of creativity” to reinterpret the character for this world:
“In a way, it could be easier, because you have total autonomy on the design. For example, if you’re doing a biopic, it could be more difficult to design a character, because the world knows who that is and you have to recreate this specific person. That could sometimes be more difficult than creating an original character. However, The Penguin is an original creation, and Mike Marino is super creative. The same can be said for Sofia, who is a new character for this show. She was a clean slate, and I could incorporate what I felt was best for this character to help bring her to life. I didn’t find it to be very difficult to create her looks and other people in the show, because everybody was original.”
In terms of evolving Sofia’s look throughout the series, Badie explained that “her original look was like a mask. It was a costume that she was portraying this innocence in order to disarm everyone. It was a very calculated thing for her to make her hair traditional, demure, unassuming, that type of thing, to throw everybody off their game. Pre-Arkham, she was like daddy’s little girl. That was showing her innocence prior to being put in this asylum and all the trauma she went through inside. When she gets out, she puts on this mask because she’s been plotting the whole time.
So she had to come out and make everyone think she’s healed or play the role that people thought that she was. However, she was ready to unleash all her evil, which takes us to the other haircuts. The first one would be a wolf cut. That was a little bit of her starting to reveal herself slightly. When it comes down to the mullet, which is the final look, that was her saying, “To hell with it. I’m going to be 100% true to myself, burn down everything, and unleash all my evil.” Her story, her hair had a personality of its own, and it was definitely a part of her character.”
Of course, there was also much more to discuss, including the importance of rooting each design in some form of reality, even if the series is set in the world of The Batman, the process that went into creating the designs for Victor, Carmine Falcone, the Maronis, and Oz’s younger version.
Listen to the full conversation below:
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
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