[This story contains spoilers from The Penguin season finale.]
The Penguin may be over — for now — but Matt Reeves‘ Batman Epic Crime Saga has just begun. The Batman director and The Penguin executive producer has overseen a rare feat — making an acclaimed blockbuster movie that spawned an acclaimed hit TV series (one that already has plenty of serious Emmy buzz). Below, Reeves gets into all of it: The Penguin finale (including the one story beat that changed), how the show has impacted his upcoming The Batman Part IICristin Milioti‘s breakout Sofia Falcone, Colin Farrell‘s total immersion into Oz Cobb and what’s next for the TV franchise.
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Obviously, showrunner Lauren LeFranc did an outstanding job with this show. Is there a creative choice she made that particularly surprised you along the way?
In the beginning, I had conversations with Lauren and showed her parts of [The Batman] and then talked about the ambition for what I wanted this to be. She went off and said, “Let me dig into what I think I would want to do in that vein.” And she came back and pitched the shape of the pilot. The thing that I fell in love with immediately was this idea of meeting this character, Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), who was in absolutely the wrong place at the wrong time. And then the entrance of Sofia, and the relationship between Oz and his mother (Deirdre O’Connell). When she talked about the shape of the season, the other thing that really got me was that I really wanted to direct it. I wasn’t able to, I was doing all this other stuff. But when you have that feeling as a creative person when somebody’s pitching you a story, it’s very exciting. I told her it was very important this also fit with the next movie — that there needed to be a gang war that would lead to the Penguin becoming the kingpin.
So I wasn’t surprised, because it was all exactly what made me fall in love with Lauren’s pitch. The one thing that was slightly different was [regarding how] Vic died. In the initial pitch, she envisioned how Vic was supposed to protect [Oz’s mom] Francis, and that had gone wrong. And in the struggle between Sofia and Oz, that Sofia was able to manipulate things in such a way that she turned Oz against Vic. And that would be this tragic thing. I thought that sounded great. But then, as we got deeper and deeper in, and she wrote the scene, she had changed her conception slightly, but in a critical way that I think made it even more powerful — an idea that was truly horrendous, but also profoundly tragic, which was that Oz needed to kill Victor because he couldn’t bear that level of vulnerability.
Oz had kept him at arms distance and was using Vic as a pawn. It was all about his ambition. But he had allowed this person to get so close to him that he couldn’t bear that closeness and that had to be snuffed out, that it could make him weak, and being weak was impossible for him. So that was the thing that surprised me and it made the scene even more powerful.
I also talked to her about how Oz will never be sated in trying to achieve power, and a thing in the movie which we cut out — where Oz clearly had these feelings for Selena, and when he realized she didn’t return them, he tells her, “One day, this city’s going to be mine.” And he said it in a very unsettling way. Colin was incredible. The whole idea was that we he was like “then you’ll wish you were with me, that everything is transactional, if I can do this, then you’ll want me.” And the truth of the matter is that Oz will never get what he wants. So that’s just the longest answer ever.
So speaking of never feeling sated, now that HBO has seen the ratings for this, they’re going to want more, of course. Does it make more sense now that everyone’s seen the finale for there to be a Penguin season two, given he’s now where you want him to be for the next movie? Or does it make more sense to do a Sofia limited series, given what a breakout she’s been?
Everything is on the table. But at the end of the day, we feel like there are more stories to tell in this world. So me and Lauren and [producer Dylan Clark] and Colin are talking and we’re trying to figure out whatever it is, it has to dig into this in a way that feels earned the way this was. I wasn’t ever interested in starting this thing to go, “We just want to do stuff with the Penguin.” What can we do that feels fresh? This idea of introducing Sophia was specifically about the way she was existing in this patriarchal world and in a way that makes you surprisingly start to root for her even though she is the antagonist to Oz. Then you realize, oh, they’re both so messed up. This whole world is messed up. And Cristin is so incredible. That was so personal to Lauren’s vision that digging into [Sofia’s story] further is a very exciting prospect. But where it will go, truly, we don’t know yet. I’ve found that when you take on projects, they start to have a life of their own. You discover certain things within them. We knew the way Cristin realized the character was incredible as soon as the dailies started coming in.
Since you’ve finished the script and we now know she survives the season, can you say whether Sofia will appear in The Batman Part II?
I don’t want to get into that right now.
This isn’t another way of trying to ask the previous question, exactly. But I wondered: As you saw the show’s dailies come in, without being specific, did that change what you were planning to do with the movie at all?
The movie is very much a Batman movie, so its focus is on Batman and Bruce. It’s very much taking Rob Pattinson through this this next leg and how the Rogues Gallery fits into that. So a lot of that was already in place by the time we were getting the dailies. But there are absolutely certain ways in which it has affected it. It gave us ideas and we’re going, “Oh, we could do this.” But we’re still talking about the bigger picture and the future and what a second season of The Penguin might look like. You go through a process where you do something and have feelings about them, and then you see it go into the world and it’s no longer your baby. It belongs to the audience. To see them connect to Sofia, of course, makes us think, “There’s more there.” So again, I can’t tell you what it is. We don’t know yet. We’re just starting to figure that out.
Cristin has been getting so much attention, and deservedly so. Was there a specific scene that particularly made you realize, “Boy, we have something really special here?”
Right from the beginning. The scene when she was at the lunch with Oz, when she’s whispering in his ear, and when she shows up. It was clear was the moment she walks in and she’s like, “I’ve been rehabilitated.”
Yeah, when she delivers that line, with that look in her eyes, you’re immediately all-in with her character. You also mentioned you’re talking to Colin about doing more, but when Colin said to the press, “I never want to put on that fucking suit and fucking head again,” what was your reaction when you saw that headline pop onto your phone?
Well, here’s the thing. I know Colin and I love him so much. So when I saw that, I knew exactly where that’s coming from — which is the actual strain of putting that makeup on day after day, and then also his exploration of Oz, who is very dark. Colin is a really beautiful, empathic person. So to live in that darkness, and then on top of that to have all that latex on day after day, I know that as much as he loved it, it was also a kind of hell. There were two sides to it. We did talk about it, and he goes, “I know that came out not quite right, it seemed so definitive.” But if there is a compelling way to go back in that really feels like it’s earned, then I know Colin wants to do that, because doing good work is all that matters to any of us.
Colin did things like wear a ski mask when he was out of makeup to maintain the illusion on set. I never really thought of him as sort of a method-actor guy. Was he going that hard when working with you as well?
You can ask him if he considers himself a Method actor, but I will say that he is very instinctual. I didn’t see him outside of the makeup the entire shoot of The Batman. So I knew Oz much better than Colin. Not that it wasn’t Colin under there. He was the lovely person. But he did say to me right from the beginning, he said, “Maybe always just call me Oz.” He was just trying to be in character. He was just occupied with that character all the tim
You mentioned bringing in the Rogues Gallery and finding new ways to tell those stories. Between Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix, does it make it difficult to do the Joker because he’s been iconically portrayed by two Oscar winners in the past many years? [Note: Barry Keoghan played the Joker in a deleted The Batman scene].
Anytime you’re going to approach any of these characters, you have to find a fresh way to do it. So that makes it incredibly daunting. At the same time, this version of Penguin is a version of Penguin that no one had ever seen. The only way to do it is to feel like you’re earning your place because otherwise you’re just doing more, and people are going like, “Well, we’ve seen it, so what do you got for us?” So how can it be the thing we love, but also something we haven’t seen? That’s always the challenge. So with a character like that, that would have to be the bar.
Finally, I don’t know if games are your jam at all, but there are quite a few popular Batman ones. Do you have a favorite?
I don’t know a lot about them. But I can tell you when I was trying to figure out our version of Oz, I was looking at the Telltale game [Batman: The Telltale Series] and there’s a particular kind of Penguin in that story that I thought looked kind of like Colin before the transformation. And there was another I played when I was researching Batman, a VR game, Batman: Arkham VR. That one had a version of the Penguin that looked a little bit like where we ended up — like Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday. That was made me lean into this idea of him being a mid-level mobster. There’s an amazing scene in the VR game where you’re in a cell and The Joker’s there, it’s really scary.
Read THR‘s post-finale interviews with showrunner Lauren LeFranc and star Colin Farrell. The Penguin is now streaming all episodes on Max.
