Colin Farrell’s look in the new Penguin series was inspired by Fredo from The Godfather, it has been revealed.
Starring Farrell as the DC supervillain alongside How I Met Your Mother’s Cristin Milioti and Runaways’ Rhenzy Feliz, the new HBO show is scheduled to debut in the US on HBO Max on September 19 and Sky Atlantic/NOW today (September 20). Also joining the cast are Clancy Brown, Michael Zegen, Michael Kelly and Mark Strong.
Farrell is unrecognisable as gangster Oz Cobb in the series, having undergone lengthy make-up and prosthetics to turn him into the villain.
Speaking about the inspiration for the look of the character, director Matt Reeves said The Godfather was something they spoke about ahead of filming.
He explained: “We talked a lot about Fredo. We talked about John Cazale in The Godfather, and the idea of maybe trying to give him a penguin nose, or doing something to kind of mess up Colin’s face to get the sense of somebody who’d been overlooked, somebody who had this ambition inside of him but who was mocked and who had been looked down upon,” Reeves told Deadline.
He continued: “All of a sudden one day [prosthetics designer] Mike Marino said, ‘Let me show you what I’ve been working on.’ Mike is an incredible artist, and he did this sculpture. I’m telling you, the sculpture was exactly the way that Oz looks right now. It’s incredible. And I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ We had never said, ‘Let’s just take Colin and turn him into something that we’ve never seen before.’ I said, ‘This is Colin Farrell. I got to now tell the studio he’s not going to look like Colin Farrell.”
Recently, Farrell said he was relieved when filming for the project was finished, such was the time spent in make-up and wearing prosthetics.
When asked about reprising his role for a second series, he told Total Film: “I don’t know, man. Don’t get me wrong – I loved it – but it got in on me a little bit. By the end of it, I was bitching and moaning to anyone who would listen to me that I fucking wanted it to be finished.”
He continued: “I tried to remind them that I had ‘grumpy gratitude.’ I was still grateful, and still honoured – I grew up watching Burgess Meredith [who played the role in the ’60s TV series], and then Danny DeVito [in Tim Burton’s 1992 film Batman Returns] was my Penguin – so being a part of the lineage of that storytelling, I really did feel privileged. But by the end of it…”
Farrell explained that he needed a break from the role and taking up it again for another series would be in part up to showrunner Lauren LeFranc.
He said: “Lauren said, ‘Look, if I could find a way that makes sense, would you talk about it?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely.’ And maybe in a year I would. But when I finished I was like, ‘I never want to put that fucking suit and that fucking head on again.’”
Despite his reservations, Farrell will return as The Penguin in the forthcoming The Batman 2, according to director Matt Reeves who recently confirmed that the series will serve as an “entry point” to the second film.
The sequel was originally scheduled for an October 2025 release, but delays reportedly caused by last year’s SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes have meant that the movie won’t be hitting screens until October 2 2026, pushing its release back a whole year.
In a four star review of the new Penguin series, NME said: “…What carries The Penguin is the richness of its characters and the complexity of its storytelling. Cobb could be a mere archetype – a mafia man who loves his mum – but the roots of his ambition and seething resentment at the world are gradually teased out, forging a compulsive narrative.”