[This story contains spoilers from The Penguin season finale.]
Reports that Colin Farrell is finished with The Penguin have been greatly exaggerated.
The Irish actor made a comment a couple months back that sounded like he was fed up with the Batman villain role and its grueling daily ritual of three hours in the makeup chair. (“I never want to put on that fucking suit and fucking head again,” he told Total Film.) But that was before the acclaimed crime drama premiered and received an outpouring of adoration from fans, with strong ratings for HBO that have grown week after week (as well as generating plenty of awards buzz for Farrell and his castmates).
“If there’s a great idea [for season two], and the writing was really muscular and as strong or stronger on the page than it was the first season, of course I would do it,” Farrell tells The Hollywood Reporter.
It was the fan response that helped evolve his mindset, the actor says.
“For me, the bar for success is not very high. It’s, ‘Do most people like it?’ — just the simplicity of that. I love being in things that are critically approved — it’s much better than the alternative — but I’ve been around long enough [to know] that it’s the audience who are really the most important critics.”
Across eight episodes, The Penguin chronicled underworld boss Oz Cobb’s brutal rise to power. The show originally was devised as a limited series intended to simply bridge creator Matt Reeves’ 2022 film The Batman with his forthcoming 2026 sequel The Batman Part II. But the massive success has Reeves and showrunner Lauren LeFranc in talks with HBO to continue the project. (They wouldn’t be the first to follow this recent arc: HBO’s The White Lotus and FX’s Shogun both shifted from limited runs to ongoing shows after they scored with audiences.)
Yet for Farrell, a return to Gotham City would still come at a cost. The issue isn’t just the laborious makeup, but transforming into an obese gangster with a New York accent and a pitch-black state of mind. To make that shift, the actor took a bit of a Method approach, remaining in character his entire time on set. Just as Penguin fans on social media have said they forget Farrell when Cobb is onscreen, some of his co-stars have said they barely met the real-life Farrell — he even wore a ski mask when not in makeup to hide his face.
“Colin is a really beautiful, empathic person,” Reeves tells THR. “And so to live in that darkness, and then on top of that, to have all that latex put on day after day, I know that as much as he loved the role, it was also a kind of hell at the same time.”
THR spoke to Farrell via Zoom at his hotel room in Dublin (where he had just demonstrated how unlike the Batman villain he is in real life — running a marathon in four hours and pushing his friend with a rare skin disorder in her wheelchair during the race’s final two miles). He talked about going deep into Oz Cobb’s psyche, his favorite scene from the season and what fans can expect from The Batman Part II. (Late watchers, take note: Some spoilers from the finale below.)
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You’re not really known as a Method actor, but your castmates have talked about the lengths you went to on set to stay in character. What made it so important to maintain that level of illusion off camera?
My hand was forced, in a way. If you put your hands over your face and push onto your face — that’s what it felt like all day. So I was constantly aware of that, and the only way to accept that awareness to the point where I became unaware was to do a version of staying in character. Talking in my own accent felt like a greater effort and artifice than to just (briefly covers the Zoom camera with his hand and switches to Oz Cobb voice), “Hey, how ya doing? Morning, good to see you.” That felt more natural, and I became very obsessed by the role. It was so dark.
This isn’t a “poor me” — people will hear this and go (switches to surfer dude American accent), “You’re an actor, get over it.” I get that. I’d probably deliver that slack myself if I wasn’t an actor. But if you come out of watching a film for two hours, and it’s a horrific film, and if you’ve seen cruelty take place that’s disturbed you, you’ll come out and your mood will be affected. So if you’re going into something as an actor and it’s really well designed and you feel connected to it, it can affect your mood — of course, you’re doing it 14 fucking hours a day! It doesn’t mean you go home and you don’t know who you are. But it got in on me in a way that I feel [acting] should sometimes.
I find it funny that even doing one line in Oz’s voice for a Zoom interview where we’re not recording video, you still covered up the camera.
(Blushing) I just don’t want you to see how much overacting was going on.
There was that quote that went viral where you said you never wanted to put the makeup on again.
Some writer took that out of its energetic context. I was bitching to anyone who’d listen to me. It’s the way I speak sometimes — “I can’t wait to finish this” — that kind of thing. I get anxious right now just thinking about sitting in the chair for hours. But I always loved the material, and it was never lost on me the privilege I felt to inhabit a character that’s lived so long in comic book form originally and then through various iterations on TV and in film.
Do you have a scene from the season you’re most proud of?
I have a little bit more objectivity viewing this show than I usually have watching anything I’m a part of, by virtue of the obvious — I’m totally buried beneath three hours and 20 pounds of prosthetics. I don’t quite squirm as violently watching Oz as I do watching other characters I’ve played. Having said that, it’s still hard for me to pick a favorite. But his relationship with his mother [Deirdre O’Connell] was something that drew me to the material more than some of the scenes that might’ve been more entertaining or electrifying. The scene when Oz comes home and his mother is in the bath, her dementia has taken hold, and he’s helpless in the face of it. She asks him to kill her before she gets much worse, but she is the driving force in his life. She is his absolute hero and his inspiration and the source of a love and acceptance that he deeply wants to feel yet he’s never really gotten from her. But as long as she’s alive, he always has the opportunity of making her proud. So the idea of extinguishing the light of her life is something that is horrifying to him. I think it’s the most honest that Oz is in the whole show.
In the finale, what do you make of Oz’s decision to turn in Sofia (Cristin Milioti)?
Oz is someone whose left hand almost doesn’t know what his right hand is doing. He’s so full of trickery. He’s so full of the art of manipulation, and there are moments that cross into honesty. I think he did have feelings for Sofia. I think he was protective of Sofia. In episode eight, I get why sending Sofia back to Arkham, theoretically, in an interesting way, is crueler than killing her [a point showrunner Lauren LeFranc makes in THR‘s post-finale interview]. I understand that argument. I don’t necessarily buy it after the danger and the threat that she’s presented herself to be — which is incredibly impressive and forceful. I think Oz would put a bullet in her head. But that wasn’t what they wanted to do at the end of the show. So I went with it.
I feel like I already know the answer to this, but why did Oz kill Victor (Rhenzy Feliz)?
Why do you think?
I think the moment Victor said he thought of Oz as “family,” he was doomed.
The areas that are gray are the most interesting areas to operate from, and I think certainty is death sometimes. You might have a clear idea on what a scene is about, but the clearest idea you should have in inhabiting a scene is how it may be played. The key word there is “may,” and by adding that word, you’re still open to all the options that you might not have thought about, or that might be suggested to you, or might come up in the moment. So, for sure, right after Oz’s love for his mother was used against him and nearly brought him down, the idea of having somebody close enough that it would make him vulnerable is something he can’t really truck with.
What’s the latest on The Batman Part II?
I haven’t even read a script yet.
Is there anything you would like to eventually experience with this character?
Not really. I certainly don’t expect anything. I signed up for three Batman films, but I didn’t know if I’d be in the second film. Matt Reeves is a brilliant writer and an extraordinary filmmaker, and what I’m most excited-slash-nervous about in the second film is not what Oz does — or what predicaments he finds himself in, or what moments of success he gets to experience — but what his voice is. How is his personality? It was forming and changing in the limited series, and, by the end of the eight episodes, it’s concretized into something else. There is a degree of almost delusion psychopathy present in the last scene. So how is that taken up in the second film? I was told I have five or six scenes. I don’t have any hopes or any expectations. I’m really an open book, and that’s the way I get excited by shit or not. I think sometimes actors, if they have a career that has a certain length of time, they sometimes get to make too many decisions. Which isn’t to say I won’t push back or argue or fight in Oz’s corner — I do believe I know him better than anyone now.
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The Penguin is now streaming all episodes on Max.
This story first appeared in a November stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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