Actor Colin Farrell back for more villainy in spin-off series The Penguin

SAN DIEGO – In The Batman (2022), the hit superhero movie starring Robert Pattinson as the caped crusader, nightclub boss Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot – nicknamed The Penguin – was just a minor villain.

But Irish actor Colin Farrell delivered one of the film’s most memorable performances, disappearing into the role with a thick Brooklyn accent and extensive prosthetic make-up to create the baddie’s brutish, scarred face.

And the character did so well with fans, he now has his own spin-off, The Penguin.

Debuting on HBO and HBO Go on Sept 20, the eight-episode crime drama picks up where the movie left off, with a power vacuum in Gotham following a devastating attack on the city. 

It co-stars American actress Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, the psychopathic daughter of deceased crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), who fights the Penguin for control of Gotham’s criminal underworld.

At San Diego Comic-Con, a fan event in California earlier in 2024, Farrell says he jumped at the chance to reprise the role, which follows the Penguin as he rises through the ranks of the criminal elite.

“He’s just a tasty character,” says the 48-year-old star, who joined a panel of his co-stars and the show’s creators via Zoom. “He’s a disaster.”

Farrell – who was Oscar-nominated for the black comedy The Banshees Of Inisherin (2022) – admits he had a few misgivings when he was first offered the role in The Batman, because he had only six scenes and was unsure how the character fit in.

But “the lore of this world held such an attraction for me, and I was just really excited that I could be in the world of Gotham”, says Farrell, who grew up watching the 1960s television series The Batman, which saw the late American actor Burgess Meredith cast as the Penguin.

“The idea of playing the Penguin sounded like an amazing opportunity and I said ‘I’m in.’”

When he signed on, Farrell – who became a Hollywood heart-throb after his breakout role opposite Tom Cruise in science-fiction blockbuster Minority Report (2002) – had no idea he would be wearing so much make-up that he would be unrecognisable.

Then he was shown a sculpted mock-up of the Penguin’s face made by American make-up artist Mike Marino, who went on to earn an Oscar nomination for his work on the film.

“I instantly had a sense of character, place, history, violence and pain,” the actor recalls. “There was so much that was etched on the face of the character.”

Farrell vividly remembers the day they did his first make-up test for the movie, which he describes as one of his all-time best experiences as a performer.

“There was somebody there taking care of the eyebrows, somebody taking care of the teeth and somebody doing the bodysuit – and we were all in this studio for eight hours.

“And I had done about two months of dialect work before that and it just came alive.”

When the dust settled on the film, Farrell was pitched the series.

The idea was to explore the Penguin’s life “and how broken it was, and the depth of ambition and greed and the consequences of certain events that took place in Oz’s childhood with his mother”.

“And I was just baffled by how brilliant, complicated, dark and painful it was, and also funny in turns,” the actor says.

“It really was something that I was chomping at the bit to get back to, and we had a blast doing it.”

Farrell also tips his hat to Matt Reeves, the show’s executive producer.

The 58-year-old took over as writer-director on The Batman after fellow American film-maker Ben Affleck – who had played the title role since Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice (2016) – left the project.

It was Reeves who rebooted the franchise and launched this new version of the Penguin, Farrell says.

“This all came from Matt’s creation of this universe.

“It leans into the genesis of this whole world and it pays homage, in subtle ways, to all the iterations that came before.”