The Penguin has become a massive hit for MAX. The series follows up on Colin Farrell’s portrayal of The Penguin in Batman, and takes place after the conclusion of the film. After speaking with Cristin Milioti at NYCC, I had the chance to sit down with showrunner Lauren LeFranc about The Penguin.
My first question to Lauren LeFranc was how she went about casting Cristin Milioti. She immediately praised Milioti. “I’ve been a huge fan of Cristin’s work for a long time. I think even though everyone knows she’s so tremendous, she somehow remains this underrated actor that people just don’t expect what she always does and always delivers, which is shocking to me. She has such range. I mean, she’s a theater actor, first and foremost, which I think most people don’t know. She’s a great singer. She was in Once the Musical. She just has great dramatic chops. But she’s been cast recently in all these great film and television shows that have a dark sense of humor to them. But I know she can do so much more and has so much gravitas. I was just excited by the possibility of having her become our Sofia because I wanted a Sofia that could be cutting with her humor, that could bring a level of genuine humor, but Cristin is also such a likable person, so it’s more surprising in a way, the darkness that is within her. She blows me away in this show. I’m so excited for me because I think people are really starting to see the tremendous range she’s always had. We brought her in and she did a chemistry read with Colin, just to make surer those two vibed, and it was so exciting. It was awesome. They read the scene at lunch in the first episode together, and seeing Sofia come to life that way through Cristin was the best.”
Lefranc read a lot of Penguin comics in preparing for the show. She explained, “I read all the Penguin comics, which I was not very familiar with, all the Penguin specific ones until I started to dig into that. It was great. For me, it was inspiring to take from all these bits and pieces to try to find the tone or the mood. Obviously I know Long Halloween was inspirational for Matt (Reeves) and so many people who have taken on Batman because of the noir quality.”
Like Cristin Milioti, Lauren LeFranc is a longtime comics fan. She drew from that when conceiving the show. LeFranc explained, “I love comic books and I grew up reading them. There are things that you look back on like “That’s unfortunate. That’s a terrible trope” Or “That’s deeply offensive.” We can do better, especially when it comes to our villains. It’s easy to say, “Oh, someone is mentally unwell in broad terms, so they’re going to kill you or murder you.” Similarly, something we had to contend with in The Penguin is some of these characters have giant scars on their faces, or Oz has a disability. Some depictions suggest that’s why he acts out or does what he does. We cannot go down that path. We are more evolved as a society. Oz is who he is as a man. We really strived to showcase all sides of him. It has nothing to do with he has a club foot. That is a part of who he is, and there is a certain level of pain he lives with. But that is not why he’s not ambitious. That’s not why he’s a narcissist. That’s separate from that. In terms of Arkham State Hospital, it was important to do as best as we can. Of course, we take place in Gotham City. It’s a comic book show. There’s a certain quality to that you want to embrace, but at the same time, there’s room to showcase mental illness and show it’s much more complicated than it’s been depicted previously. We’re trying for that, and we’re very aware of it.”
Lauren Lefranc takes inspiration not just from the world of DC Comics though. The Penguin showrunner explained, “I try to take inspiration from real people, or literary people in some moments, not just have everything comes from the comics. Oz for instance, to me, I attributed a lot of who is, I compared him to Buddy Cianci, who was mayor of Providence, Rhode Island for 21 years. I went to school in Providence, so I was familiar with him. He was in prison while I was there, and he was reelected out of prison. He had his own pasta sauce, and he had his own radio show after prison. He was this charming affable guy who was also very violent and despicable in a lot of his actions and definitely was extremely corrupt. But people loved him because he took care of them. And so Oz’s story in the first episode when he talks of Rex Calabrese, that’s my homage to Buddy Cianci and what that guy embodied for me as an inspiration. I try to do things like that. I read as much as I can. I research, I watch documentaries. I read books on different mob figures and just the criminal world in general. I try to make something that feels cohesive to me in this world.”
It’s very important to LeFranc that the audience feels invested in the characters in The Penguin. “I want them to care about our characters. To me, it doesn’t matter as much at the end of the day if there’s no Batman on the show that spun off of The Batman if deeply care about these characters. You might care by hating them. You might be rooting for them. That’s what great about television, having time to spend with characters, you want your audience to grow with them. The most essential thing to me is creating the characters that you have this sort of connection with, so if something terrible happens, you care. Or if something great happens to them, you feel like it’s triumphant. In any genre, I think that’s the case. I know we earmarked crime drama because no one has superpowers on our show. I know we’re oversaturated from different iterations that have been done time and again of different superhero content. I watch all of them. I’m a huge fan of the stuff. The best thing too of this drama is some people love something and some people don’t love something. And that’s okay. There’s so much of it, so I would be hesitant if we were to stop making that stuff. The priority for me as a creator is making sure your filling the world with interesting conflicts. People we can all feel on some level.”
Penguin’s mother, Francis Cobb (Deirdre O’Connell) suffers from dementia on the show. Lauren LeFranc explained why it was important for her to introduce that character element. “I thought it was interesting to dig into dementia on the show. I did research trying to figure out what would be the correct sort of thing to engage in to tell the stories that I wanted to tell. I researched Lewy body dementia, which is a terrible, terrible disease. I think it’s actually what people believe Robin Williams had. It’s very confusing to diagnose. It’s often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s because people have tremors, they lose their sense of balance. Unfortunately, people will give people medication for that that actually doesn’t help them. For me, I always bring some sort of personal quality, some personal connection to the things I write and the characters I create. Not always literally, but you know. I think it’s so relatable. A lot of people have different experiences with someone who has had dementia. Dementia is very common. But this specific form, people have hallucinations and it’s very confusing. You can be with someone very present in one second, and the very next be different. There was something about that that felt interesting to engage with for Francis.
Lauren LeFranc doesn’t want people to view The Penguin as The Batman 1.5. She explained, “I actually felt like I had a lot of freedom because if we decided to make our show very intimate and very focused on our characters. We weren’t trying to bring in a ton of different people from the universe. We weren’t trying to add a character in only to service them to elevate them to move into Matt’s second film. And if we are successful, it’s partly because of that. Because we weren’t just a show to fit in different characters and then figure out how we’re going to do it. No, this is the emotional trajectory of this man. It’s a psychological character study of him and all the people around him. I hope by the end of eight hours, you think about our characters, some of them who are new, or are definitely different enough from what the comics previously established that you feel like “I can’t stop thinking about these people and now they’re my favorite comics character,” and maybe people write more comics about them. That’s my hope anyway. I was given a lot of freedom and I’m so grateful to Matt for that.”
Stay tuned for more NYCC ’24 coverage from The Beat.
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