Maxance Vincent
After seeing Matt Reeves’ The Batman and being offered an opportunity to work on its HBO television spinoff, The Penguin, production designer Kalina Ivanov, who spoke to Awards Radar on Zoom, began to feel a bit daunted by the prospect of working on such a series:
“After I put the phone down, the fear started. What did I agree to do? How do I live up to the movie? [laughs]”
However, after discussing the series with Matt Reeves and Lauren LeFranc, the intent became quite clear:
“I met with Matt, and we really hit it off. He’s a wonderful guy. I also met with Lauren, and Matt explained that the inspiration for The Penguin was the movie The French Connection. I could run with that because we are in New York, and they shot the film in Liverpool and London, so the architecture was a little different. That lends itself to a different interpretation. I used the idea of arches as the overwhelming design theme. Arches are everywhere, and we were very true to The French Connection in the end result.”
Ivanov also spoke to The Batman’s production designer James Chinlund to better understand how he established the world of Gotham for the film, so she could build upon it for the show:
“We had a wonderful conversation about everything and anything The Batman, and how it would relate to The Penguin. I had a lot of questions about the Iceberg Lounge, because we were particularly intersecting there and Arkham Asylum. Those were the two locations that we had to follow in his footsteps. In general, he explained how he looked at the history of Manhattan. And New York. Different cities influence different directors. Chicago significantly influenced Christopher Nolan [for The Dark Knight trilogy], but New York influenced their movie, and I wanted to honor that.”
The inspiration for the designs was closely aligned with “Matt’s vision, but I did read Batman: Year One, which came out [in 1987]. I didn’t look at anything else, because Lauren said that it has to be very grounded. They wanted it to feel real, and for people to really feel that they’re in this tale. It’s not a comic book tale in her mind. I absolutely love that, and I honored it with every frame of the show.”
As you can see, there was much to discuss regarding Kalina’s incredible work on The Penguin, and we had a wide-ranging conversation on a variety of topics, including how Gotham was created as its own character within the series, how the designs reflected the show’s overarching darkness, and some of the more significant challenges that arose in making it.
This will also not be her only project in the DC Universe, as she has lent her talents to the second season of Peacemaker, which will be released on HBO Max this August!
Listen to the full conversation below:
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
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