Gotham is expanding.
HBO Max’s “The Penguin” served as an extension of “The Batman,” Matt Reeves’ 2022 film in which Robert Pattinson dons the cape and cowl as a young, particularly brutal version of the Dark Knight. In the series created by Lauren LeFranc, Colin Farrell reprises his role from Reeves’ film as the title villain, a disfigured kingpin named Oswald Cobb who’s working his way through Gotham’s sordid criminal underbelly.
“The Penguin” earned 24 limited-series Emmy nominations, including three acting nods: lead actor for Farrell; lead actress for Cristin Milioti, who plays crime scion Sofia Falcone; and supporting actress for Deirdre O’Connell as Oz’s damaged mother, Francis. All three are new to the Emmy race.
How do you feel as first-time nominees?
Deirdre O’Connell: Happy. It’s one of those things where, if you really, really love doing something, you think that’s enough. I felt so happy doing it that all this is just maraschino cherries and icing and chocolate sauce on the cake.
Colin Farrell: Maraschino cherries. It makes me think of “Some Like It Hot.” Remember the little party they had on the train carriage? It’s icing on the cake. The cake was more than enough. I mean, we had such a blast doing this. It was a joy, but it was an adventure, and it was such a collective experience. We shot for three months. Then the strikes happened, so that was six months we were laid off, and then we came back for three months. That was probably the greatest victory of the whole experience. Coming back after such a long layoff for everyone involved was such a huge win. But all this stuff is really, really lovely. That the show was received by the public in the way that it seems to have been is such a reward.
Cristin Milioti: I feel great. And also I’m so thrilled for our show. Honestly, to get that many nominations and to see all of our departments honored in that way, it’s incredible.
And it’s not a foregone conclusion that a show will get acting nominations.
C.F.: Brother, it’s not a foregone conclusion that it’s going to be (appealing) to anyone.
D.O.: Yeah, it was just our adventure. We got to have it and we were very happy with that.
C.F.: That’s it. You leave it all in the ring. And you know that there are so many factors that need to come together, the most significant one probably being the edit. The scripts were fantastic, the cast was extraordinary, the experience was a dream. But then there’s so many factors that have to coagulate, come together to make something work, and then the audience, ultimately, they’re always your greatest critics. It’s nice to get favorable responses from critics. But you’re not making it for those people; you’re making it for an audience. Especially with something like this, which is a genre piece and has such a history already and level of awareness from people, including me. I grew up watching (reruns of) “Batman” from ’66 and I had Tim Burton’s two films, and then Christopher Nolan. I have my own relationship to Gotham. So you know that the people are going to put their eyes on us, which is both fucking nerve-inducing and exciting. For it to have worked? It’s just extraordinary.
C.M.: It’s miraculous. Lauren, I can’t sing her praises enough. All of our directors—it was just such a fabulous group that really, really believed in this show and gave it their all.
What surprised you about the show?
C.F.: Usually, my presence in something ruins the whole thing for me. I get squirmy and squirrelly and self-critical to the nth degree, but I had a little bit more objectivity with this, because I’m so hidden. The whole thing felt really personal, because it’s a really big story—like, it’s a vast story, it’s a huge world, but among the vastness of it all and the scale of it all, it feels like a very, very personal thing from every character’s backstory and all the emotional connections that each of us have. Everything is grounded in the personal, in emotion. Even though it is, or could be, classified as a genre piece, it felt like a very personal story about very damaged people and how they interconnect.
C.M.: So much of it—and this is really rare—when I watched it, I was like, Oh, that is what it felt like to make it. That it somehow preserved the feeling of making it. Sometimes things will feel really amazing and locked in, and then you’ll watch a final cut and it’ll be scored differently and cut differently and everything’s different. It’s confusing because you’re like, Well, that’s not how it felt on that day. That day was so special. This felt very true to the experience of being there. It was very special.
D.O.: The show had this combination of this operatic, stylized, rich vibe and this switch to hyper-realism. I had expected it to stay operatic, and that was so great to me. I really didn’t see (the realism) coming.
Colin, you’ll be back in “The Batman: Part II,” and Cristin, at the end of “The Penguin,” Sofia gets a letter from her sister, who we know is Catwoman (played by Zoë Kravitz). What can you say about a potential return to Gotham?
C.F.: I’ll be getting into the script, I think, this week, and I’ll be there for however long. I don’t have many scenes, I don’t believe, but I’ll be there for whatever. Matt Reeves is so brilliant. I don’t know what the story is yet. I just know that obviously Matt has slaved for a few years now to really make something special. And he holds a very high bar for himself. He’s so meticulous; he cares so deeply about what he does.
C.M.: I would really love to revisit her. I want to play her again.
This story first ran in the Down to the Wire: Drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the Down to the Wire: Drama issue here.
