For a guy who grew up loving An American Werewolf in London and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, Colin Farrell loved how he was the subject of a “justifiably glorified magic trick.”
While promoting the HBO limited series The Penguin at the recent Deadline Contenders at HBO Max event, Farrell recalled how The Batman writer-director Matt Reeves first approached him about becoming an unrecognizable villain named Oswald Cobblepot. At first, Farrell had some playful suggestions for the introduction of his Gotham gangster, like how he could maybe present as a skinny scoundrel. Or better yet, why couldn’t he be reimagined as a long and elegant evildoer?
But Reeves and prosthetics designer Mike Marino had something far more drastic in mind.
“I’ve always loved practical things in cinema and film,” said Farrell, who was joined on the Contenders dais with Marino, showrunner/EP Lauren LeFranc, casting director Suzanne Ryan, and stars Deidre O’Connell (Francis Cobb) and Cristin Milioti (Sofia Falcone). “I struggle with CGI, and I know there’s a time and place, but I struggle with the advent of it, the saturation of CGI in certain films. So to know that we were going to do this practically … I had no idea. I remember the day when I was his office in London, and he said he’d been talking to Marino. He said, ‘We’ve been sending each other pictures back and forth, ideas of body shapes and all that.’ And he said, ‘Have you seen what he designed?’ And I said, no.”
Watch the conversation here and see photos from the event below.
“I’ll never forget it,” continued Farrell. “He opened up his laptop and it was Oz in the film. And I went, ‘What the f*ck is that? Really?’ And he said, ‘Yeah yeah yeah. Marino said he can do it. He can do it every day. It’s gonna move and it’s gonna be real, and you’re gonna have freedom in it.’ I instantly got really excited about the possibilities of it. There was a certain alchemy to it. It’s a very powerful thing to know yourself a certain way and then look at a mirror and see this creature looking back at you. You have no experiential reference point for it. It kind of had an effect for me that was counter to what I thought it would have. It was such a liberating experience, thankfully, because Lauren designed such a despicably dark and really psychologically nuanced character. It just gave me so much range of psychological freedom. I mean, I totally got lost in it, willingly.”
Marino especially liked the slow reveal of Farrell’s Oz in The Batman to HBO Max’s The Penguin, which follows the continuing adventures of the villain as he limps his way through the city’s ruling crime family spearheaded by Milioti’s Falcone.
“In the film, we don’t really see Colin so much,” recalled Marino. “He only had six scenes or so which were the best scenes in the entire film. The fact that no one knew that Colin was going to come out and looking that way was just a huge surprise to everyone, even to Matt Reeves and all the other actors. When you’re making something and you’re sculpting it, you’re creating this look … [but] you’re only going so far as to what it’s going to be like. Then you see how Colin acts and moves inside of it and all that, and it becomes something different … When the TV show came around, it really was seen.”
(L-R) Cristin Milioti, Mike Marino, Suzanne Ryan, Deirdre O’Connell, Colin Farrell and Lauren LeFranc
‘The Penguin’ costumes at Contenders @ HBO Max
Michael Buckner
Deirdre O’Connell and Colin Farrell
Michael Buckner
Colin Farrell and Lauren LeFranc
David Jon/Getty Images for HBO Max
(L-R) Colin Farrell and Mike Marino
Michael Buckner
Suzanne Ryan
Michael Buckner
The Penguin received two Emmy nominations this year for makeup. The others — there were 24 in all — included for Outstanding Limited Anthology Series; Outstanding Actor, Limited Anthology Series (Farrell); Outstanding Actress, Limited Anthology Series (Milioti); and Outstanding Supporting Actress, Limited Anthology series (O’Connell). It was the second best Emmy nom showing for a DC series after HBO’s 2019 series Watchmen.
Milioti remembered being blown away by what she read in that first script. “I’ve been a fan of this world for my whole life,” she said. “I love that no one has super powers, that it’s just like their own rage and pain. I love that it’s like a world in which it’s believable. Gotham is New York adjacent. I love that it’s grounded in reality, but heightened and sort of touches on camp.”
It also dives head-first into pits of straight up evil, like when Oz hovers over his mom’s hospital bed in the final episode. O’Connell recalled how Farrell’s acting “took my breath away” in the psychopathic way that he completely dismisses his once beloved mom.
“This guy,” O’Connell said, while gesturing toward Farrell. “I didn’t know how much he was giving me until we were shooting the very last thing on the show where he comes over to the bed and he asks me how I’m doing. I felt Oz withdraw his love from Francis. He took it away, and it took my breath away. And it was a slightly terrifying feeling. I had not known until that moment how much love this guy had been pouring in my direction and how much surrender he had been pouring in my direction. I just thought, you know, I was great! And in the moment [she turns to Farrell] I don’t know if you know what you did, I think you do. He just turned it off. It was a profound, actual thing. I felt a chill. It was really scary.”