WARNING: This interview includes spoilers from The Penguin episode 1.The Penguin TV show, featuring the return of Oz Cobb as the iconic Dark Knight foe. The HBO drama takes place directly after the events of The Batman movie from 2022, as The Riddler put Gotham City into its biggest chaos yet.
The Penguin story explores Oz now looking to rise his status in the criminal underworld now that Carmine Falcone is out of the picture. However, the road to his power growth will be easier said than done, with major players like Sofia Falcone entering the game. The Penguin, which is set to be a limited series, will also lead into The Batman - Part II, which will feature Farrell back as Oz.
Will The Penguin Season 2 Happen? Everything We Know
The release of The Penguin Season 1 may have fans wondering whether a second season with Oz Cobb is on the cards - here is everything we know.
Screen Rant recently sat down with Zobel for an exclusive interview to go through the major spoilers from The Penguin episode 1, "After Hours." Zobel, who is an executive producer on the series, directed the first hour of The Penguin, as he detailed how he boarded the project and what elements he wanted to add to Reeves' franchise. Zobel also opens up about how the Hollywood strikes in 2023 impacted The Penguin and what viewers can look forward to in episode 2.
Director Craig Zobel Breaks Down The Penguin Episode 1
Screen Rant: Before you got attached to work on the show, what were your impressions of The Batman world?
Craig Zobel: I saw The Batman opening weekend. I happened to be in LA and I saw it at the Chinese theatre and I loved it so much. I went into that movie, it looked like a good idea, like 'Oh, Se7en, but with Batman, it's a great idea!' but I liked it so much that I actually looked back and I had been on an email chain with some other people that Matt had been on before, and I was just like, 'I'm just going to write him!' because directors don't get to talk to other directors very much. I was just so impressed by it that I wrote him afterwards, 'Hey, I just want to let you know that was the superhero movie I wanted right now. That was the Batman I wanted right now.'
That was the look of the world that I thought was cool. I thought it was grounded. I thought the whole idea of Paul Dano's character and Colin's character were so smart and kind of what a modern villain was. I just gushed to him, with no agenda, just other than it was like, 'Hey, I don't say this very much to people,' I just don't get to talk to their directors very often. But it was great. That was my first impression, I really liked it, so when the opportunity to maybe talk to him again about The Penguin came up, then I was just very excited!
When this was being filmed, this was right ahead of the strikes coming up. How much did you guys have to readjust things during the production of the first episode because of the strike? Where was this in the timeline?
Craig Zobel: Yeah, we had a few days. We shot the first three episodes kind of all as a very large chunk in a way. So when the strikes happened, we had about, I believe, 10 days left of stuff, and we moved forward without. At that point, Lauren couldn't really be involved, but we moved forward with the things that we could shoot for a few days and got it to a place where we could basically close the whole shop.
There were certain things that was like, 'If we can, we should shoot these things because that location won't be the same.' They're putting a scaffolding up or there were a lot of logistical elements, but we basically got to a position where we were like, 'Okay, this is where we have to stop,' and we're able to do that within a few days of the strike starting. That was kind of the story, and while we were doing that, it was certainly a thing that we were aware. It was way before the actor strikes happened. It was in the very, very first days of it.
Craig Zobel On Expanding Matt Reeves' Gotham City With The Penguin
You guys got to film in New York, which is always one of my favorite cities for Gotham to be filmed in. What was something that you wanted to really add to this version of Gotham City? Because we're really getting a more intimate exploration of Gotham City in the show, especially in this first episode.
Craig Zobel: I guess what was the opportunity I felt like I saw in the show compared to the film was that, because the theme of the show is class disparity, which is a thing that it's harder to talk about with Batman because he is Batman, he is a billionaire. The fact that this Penguin wasn't, [he] used to be [in] the old and classic version of him in the comics, [where he] is this guy with a top hat and the monocle, and he's an aristocrat.
But this version of him was so different and Lauren had really found a way into talking about class inside of the world there that what became exciting to me was to not shoot in New York and go shoot in the downtown or the midtown. The things that places that often are the reason to shoot in New York, but rather to go into the boroughs and anywhere specifically looking for elevated trains. That was essentially my chase. I was just chasing anywhere that had elevated trains and seeing what we could show of a part of Gotham that you're not going to see in the next Batman movie was kind of the idea.
Craig Zobel On Alberto Falcone's Sudden Death In The Penguin Episode 1
Was there ever a version of the premiere where Alberto doesn't die? Because I was really not expecting that conversation to go the way it did.
Craig Zobel: It was always the plan for Alberto to die. It was an addition, I would say, to Colin's Penguin. With Oz in the movie, you don't see this as much just because there's not as much time, but here we get to see him in a [new] scenario. In my mind, the thing that's interesting is that Oz is a guy who, in order to try to win people over and do things, puts his foot in his mouth a lot. Some part of his brain makes a rash decision that pushes him into action.
That can mean a lot of things, but in this case, the thing that pushes him into action is that he makes a terrible decision of maybe shooting the head of the crime family and then is like, "Now I have to solve this. Now I've got a problem to solve." But what is fun about the show and what's attractive is that you like to see him make a mistake, and then you'd like to see him problem-solve his way out of the mistake. Both are kind of charming in a way. Considering he is a narcissist and a bad human, you still want enough charm to stick with the character and watch him for eight hours.
Craig Zobel On Expanding Oz Cobb's Mythology In The Penguin TV Show
We're picking up right after the event of The Batman, but because of you guys laying this out as a show now, is there a more fleshed-out backstory for Oz written somewhere where it explores things like where he got his scars or just expanding on his little own mythology, almost like a series bible for him?
Craig Zobel: I can say that internally, between Lauren, Matt Reeves, myself and Colin, we knew the answers to a lot of those questions, and it's like, I don't know what is in the show so far. But what we felt was the most interesting stuff to do, we definitely had conversations about it and had a general gist of where he got his scars. I think the general idea, as far as the scars in my mind, something I feel safe saying is that he is not from the world of the Falcones. He didn't grow up rich in that universe, and he had to work his way up into the position that he got in. Some of that may have meant that he got these scars along the way.
His physical performance feels more pronounced than it did in The Batman. Was that a conscious choice to make him suit his name more this time around?
Craig Zobel: I actually say, if you go back and watch The Batman, he does walk with a limp and all of that stuff is kind of there. It's also The Batman, so there was another story happening, and I don't think we've changed anything, but I think getting to see him in different scenarios allows you the opportunity to notice that stuff more. Then we would get to talk about and aim at like, ''Okay, yeah...why does he have a limp?'
I also love some of the smaller touches, for example, when he's carrying Alberto's body down, he realized, 'What the hell? I don't need to!' and then he just throws it down. I love that he gets more, I guess, animated, in a good way!
Craig Zobel: Some of that stuff, like throwing the body thing, I think, in the screenplay, it was that he was walking, it hurt really bad, and that was just kind of Colin on the day [going], 'Wouldn't I just get rid of this? No one's watching! And I was like, 'Do that. That's funny!'
Talking to you as a director, what are some specific challenges of you directing a character who is already established somewhere else, by someone else, and because now specifically you're in charge of him for the first three episodes, what were some of the creative challenges that you overcame with adding more elements to Oz from what we had seen in 2022?
Craig Zobel: I guess my answer to that would be that I didn't feel constrained or hamstrung in any way. I felt more like, 'I want to make sure that whatever I'm doing doesn't mess up Matt's next movie.' It feels like we can kind of go do this and this and this, but sort of just wanting to know what parts of the narrative we're going to end up being important to the later storytelling. But mostly, I also didn't want to know!
I was sort of like, 'I don't want to know what's in the movie because then I don't want to also accidentally play a scene that [Matt] has because I'm chasing that because I know that's going to happen.' It was an interesting challenge in that way, but I would say it was the stuff I thought about before we started making it. And then it was like, 'Oh man, Colin Farrell is amazing. This is so fun. Cristin Milioti is amazing.' We were just chasing what we thought was the best for the scene by the time we started making it.
Craig Zobel On Working with Cristin Milioti In Bringing Sofia Falcone To Life In The Penguin
Speaking of the Queen Falcone, her entire presence in this episode is so delicious because we don't see Sophia very often in media. Can you talk about working with Cristin? What were some important things to get from the page onto the screen while working with her?
Craig Zobel: I had met Cristin before on a different project, and we had expressed that we really wanted to do something. So when this opportunity came up, it was super exciting to be like, 'Yeah, Cristin wants to do it' and she actually does have a love of comics and wanted to be in the universe in a general sense. So it was very exciting to get to do that. To your point though, there isn't a lot of Sofia Falcone [in the media] other than in the comics [like] Batman: The Long Halloween and these [other] Batman comics, there was a blank slate quality, which was cool. We got to build the thing in that way, which was really exciting. I think that she's awesome in the show.
Craig Zobel On Working with Rhenzy Feliz In Creating Victor Aguilar In The Penguin
I want to talk about Victor as well, because this is really the first time we see, in this universe, the perspective of a teenager having to witness all of this. He's an original character, so can you talk about building him up from the ground, working with Rhenzy, and bringing his character to life?
Craig Zobel: It was really important to us to figure out and to make sure that the speech disorder was played carefully with care. We even looked for people that maybe had speech disorders at one point, but we encountered Rhenzy and I immediately was like, 'Wow, he's awesome.' We got him together because the important thing, especially in the beginning of the TV show is that it really is Oz seeing something of him in Victor's character that makes him kind of make a different choice. He chose not to kill him immediately because he seems like the kind of guy who would kill him if he could have.
We had to make sure that landed and that became this very interesting experience for both Rhenzy and myself, just in of learning a lot about speech disorders. We had an amazing coach who came on set and would help teach Rhenzy [in] how the process of that works in your mind. He internalized that so much that he truly did it like an accent where he was doing that as an internal thing, which was just a pleasure to watch him put that together and make that work. It's not easy. That was incredibly hard, actually.
Yeah, it doesn't feel like a gimmick at all. It feels very natural as I live with people who have speech impediments, I'm like, 'Yeah, this doesn't feel like he's acting. It feels like it is actually genuine.'
Craig Zobel: Cool, good! What I was the most scared of was I feel, especially maybe in the 1990s, people would represent a person who stuttered with a bit of a shorthand that wasn't real. It was kind of a thing that they just sort of invented and that was what scared me. I was like, 'We can't do that.' A) because that would be inappropriate and bad, but B) because I think that you wouldn't believe it. It needed to be believable that it was like, 'Oh, I see why these two people interact with each other.'
I know it was a big part of Rhenzy wanting to play the character and I hat tip to him about that genuinely. But building him up in a kind of broader way over the course of [the series], to tease, I guess, future things, we will get to see more of Victor's life in a way, was an exciting thing to do. Just to talk about an everyman in Gotham, like a person that's not very rich and not in the world that we sort of normally inhabit in Batman stories, and the effects of things like the Riddler damaging the city, can be seen in this person's life in a realistic way was exciting too.
Craig Zobel Teases Batman Easter Eggs In The Penguin
As someone who is a big comic book fan, I always try to look for Easter eggs and references. Were there any conversations about adding more elements from the DC world, specifically from Batman's mythology, that maybe some of our readers may not have spotted yet?
Craig Zobel: Kind of... I would say that we wanted to have the freedom to say that this is Matt's Elseworld[s], at this point. This is Matt's version of Batman, and we were inside of that, so [I] didn't feel beholden to anything like that. But I would say Lauren LeFranc is very well-versed in the Batman world. So there may be things that might surprise a deep fan within the show for sure.
Craig Zobel Teases The Penguin Episode 2
I'm going to let you tease our readers—what can they expect from The Penguin episode 2 next week on HBO? This is already a very wild first episode with so much happening, but what can they look forward to as we continue Oz's story?
Craig Zobel: In episode 2, Oz continues to sort of be burdened by the bad choice he made at the beginning of episode 1. He's still in a situation where that is very tenuous, and he is trying to cover his tracks and figure out really what the next step is going to be. At the same time, although we've met Sofia Falcon, the real introduction to her in of [where] we get to know a lot more about her and how she fits into the Falcone family and what her point of view is.
About The Penguin
Starring Colin Farrell as The Penguin, the eight-episode DC Studios drama series continues The Batman epic crime saga that filmmaker Matt Reeves began with Warner Bros. Pictures’ global blockbuster “The Batman,” and centers on the character played by Farrell in the film. The first look was revealed today exclusively during Warner Bros. Discovery’s unveiling of the Max streaming service on the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles. The previously announced cast includes Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Deirdre O’Connell, with Clancy Brown and Michael Zegen recurring.
The series is executive produced by Matt Reeves, Dylan Clark, Colin Farrell, Lauren LeFranc, who writes and serves as showrunner, Craig Zobel, who directs the first three episodes, and Bill Carraro. Based on characters created for DC by Bob Kane with Bill Finger, THE PENGUIN is produced by Reeves’ 6th & Idaho Productions and Dylan Clark Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television, where Reeves and 6th & Idaho are under an overall deal. 6th & Idaho’s Daniel Pipski also serves as executive producer and Rafi Crohn is co-executive producer.
The Penguin airs new episodes on Sunday at 9 PM on HBO.
The Penguin
- Release Date
- 2024 - 2024-00-00
- Showrunner
- Lauren LeFranc
- Directors
- Craig Zobel
Cast
Oz Cobb
Sofia Falcone
WHERE TO WATCH
Created by Lauren LeFranc, The Penguin is a crime-drama spin-off television series of 2022's film The Batman. Set shortly after the events of The Batman, Oz Cobb, A.K.A. the Penguin, begins his rise in the underworld of Gotham City as he contends with the daughter of his late boss, Carmine Falcone, for control of the crime family's empire.
- Franchise(s)
- DC Elseworlds
- Seasons
- 1
- Streaming Service(s)
- MAX
- Prequel
- The Batman (2022)
- Avg Episode Length
- 60 Mins
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