The penguin became a huge hit for MAX. The series follows Colin Farrell’s portrayal of the Penguin in Batman, and takes place after the film ends. After speaking with Cristin Milioti at NYCC, I had a chance to talk about Penguin with showrunner Lauren Lefranc.
My first question to Laurent Lefranc was how they made the decision to cast Cristin Milioti. She was quick to praise Milioti. “I’ve been a big fan of Kristin’s work for a long time. Even though we all know she’s so great, she somehow remains an underrated actor and people think she’s… I think she just doesn’t expect what she always does and always delivers. This is shocking to me. She has such range. I mean, she’s first and foremost a stage actor. But I don’t think most people know that. She’s a great singer. She was in Once the Musical. But she has great dramatic chops. She’s been in some great movies and TV shows lately with a dark sense of humor. But I know she’s capable of so much more and is so dignified. I was excited about the possibility of becoming Sophia because I wanted Sophia to be innovative with her humor and bring a level of genuine humor, but also because Kristin is so likable. , it’s more of a surprise in a way. I mean, the darkness inside her. She surprised me on this show. I think people are really starting to understand the tremendous range that she always had. So I’m very excited. We brought her in and we got to see the chemistry between the two of them and it was very exciting. The first episode. We read the lunch scene together, and it was great to see Sophia come to life like that through Christine.”
Lefranc read a lot of Penguin comics in preparation for the show. She explained: “I read all the Penguin comics, but I didn’t really know much about them. I read everything that was Penguin-specific until I dug into it. It was awesome. For me, from all these bits and pieces… Trying to find that tone and atmosphere was an inspiration. The Long Halloween inspired Matt[Reeves]and a lot of people who took on Batman because of its noir nature. It’s obvious that
Like Cristin Milioti, Laurent LeFranc is a long-time comic book fan. She drew from that when conceptualizing the show. Lefranc explained: “I love manga and grew up reading them. Sometimes I look back and think, ‘That was a shame.’ That’s a terrible metaphor” or “That’s very offensive.” They could do better, especially when it comes to the villains. It’s easy to say, “Oh, someone is mentally ill in the broadest sense, so they’re going to kill you or kill you.” Similarly, in Penguin, we had to deal with some of the characters having large facial scars and Oz having a disability. Some portrayals suggest that is why he acts or does what he does. We can’t go down that road. We are evolving further as a society. Oz is who he is as a human being. We really tried to show all sides of him. It has nothing to do with him having clubfoot. It’s part of who he is and he lives with some degree of pain. But that doesn’t mean he lacks ambition. That’s not why he’s a narcissist. That’s different. When it came to Arkham State Hospital, it was important to do the best we could. Of course, the setting is Gotham City. It’s a manga show. It has qualities that make you want to accept it, but it also has room to introduce mental illness and show that it is far more complex than what has been portrayed so far. We strive for this and we are fully aware of it. ”
Lauren Lefranc, showrunner for Penguins in NYC
Laurent Lefranc doesn’t just draw inspiration from the world of DC Comics. The Penguin showrunner explained: “Rather than getting everything from comics, I try to get inspiration from real people and literary figures. For example, I think a lot about Oz, and I admire him for 21 years in Providence, Rhode Island. I compared him to Buddy Cianci, who was mayor. I went to school in Providence, so I knew him well. He was in prison while I was there, but he was reelected from prison. He had his own pasta sauce and after prison he had his own radio show. He was this charming, amiable guy, but very violent in a lot of his actions. But people loved him because he cared for them. That’s why Oz talks about Lex Calabrese in the first episode. That story is my homage to Buddy Cianci and what he represents to me as an inspiration. I try to do that. I read as much as I can, and I read as many documentaries as I can. I’ve read books about different mob figures and the criminal world in general. I’m trying to create something that feels consistent to me in this world.”
For Lefranc, it’s very important that the audience feels invested in the characters in Penguin. “We want them to care about our characters. To me, if you care deeply about these characters, it doesn’t matter that much at the end of the day if you don’t have Batman in a show that spins off from Batman.” You might care about them by hating them, and that’s the great thing about television: you get to spend time with the characters, and so do the viewers. I want them to grow with me, and the most important thing for me is to create characters that I have this kind of connection with, so I don’t have to worry about something terrible happening. Or if something amazing happens to them, you feel like it’s a win. I think that’s true in any genre. No one on our show has superpowers. So I know I’ve given it a crime drama, and I know it’s oversaturated with different superhero content, and I’m a big fan of that stuff. The best thing about this drama is that some people love something, and some people don’t love something, and that’s okay, because there are so many of them. If I stopped, I would be hesitant. My priority as a creator is to make sure I fill the world with interesting conflicts that we can all feel on some level.”
In the show, Penguin’s mother Frances Cobb (Deirdre O’Connell) is suffering from dementia. Lauren LeFranc explained why introducing that character element was important to her. “I thought it would be interesting to delve into dementia on the show. I researched it to try to understand what the right thing to do was to tell the story I wanted to tell. Lewy Body Dementia I looked up a very scary disease that I think people actually believed Robin Williams had, and it’s very difficult to diagnose because it causes tremors and loss of balance. , is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease. Unfortunately, sometimes people are put on medications that don’t actually work. It brings a kind of personal quality, a personal connection, not necessarily literally, but you know, I think it’s very relatable to people who have had dementia. There are a lot of people who have it. Dementia is very common. But in this particular form, people have hallucinations and are very present at certain times. You can be one moment and then the next you’re something else. There was something about that that Francis found interesting.
Lauren LeFranc doesn’t want people to see Penguin as Batman 1.5. She explained: “We felt like we actually had quite a bit of freedom if we decided to make the show very intimate and character-focused. We wanted to bring in a lot of different people from across the universe. We weren’t trying to add characters just to enhance the characters that were in Matt’s second movie, and we were successful in that. Partly because of that, because we weren’t just a show where you fit in different characters and figure out how to do it.This is the trajectory of this guy’s mind. , a psychological character study about him and all the people around him. By the end of the eight hours, we hope you’ll think about our characters, some of them new. “I can’t stop thinking about these guys, and now they’re my favorite comic book characters,” and maybe people. will write more comics about them. That’s my hope anyway. I’m very grateful to Matt because he gave me a lot of freedom. ”
Stay tuned for more coverage of NYCC ’24 from The Beat.
Something like this:
Like loading…
