Colin Farrell Thought Penguin Was “One-Note” Until Mike Marino’s Makeup Changed Everything and Led to Spinoff Series

At the Zurich Film Festival, Colin Farrell opened up about his journey with The Batman and how the stunning transformation into Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot eventually led to HBO’s Penguin series.

Interestingly, it wasn’t just the story or the character that convinced him to dive deeper into Gotham’s underworld, but the groundbreaking makeup work of Mike Marino.

Farrell admitted that at first, he wasn’t entirely sold on director Matt Reeves’ take on the character.

“I was thinking of Burgess Meredith and I was thinking of Danny DeVito … and that child who sat on the carpet in Dublin at the age of 5 watching Batman ’66, and then at the age of 11 or 12 saw Tim Burton’s Batman with Danny DeVito, and used to draw Batman signals on his jeans.

“I was like, wow, I’m so excited. The script came, I read it, and I was like, eh? I’ve only got five scenes. I got so greedy. I didn’t really get it, either. That was the shortsighted part.”

He admitted to initially dismissing the Penguin as too “one-note” but said his perception completely shifted once Reeves revealed Marino’s makeup design.

“I’ll never forget, Matt went, ‘Come here, come here, come here.’ And he opened up his laptop and he went, ‘Look!’ It was the first time I saw the makeup … and the cogs crunched.”

When Farrell asked if it was CGI, Reeves replied: “No, [Marino] said he can make you look like that and nobody’ll notice.” That was the moment it all clicked for the actor.

“I was like, that’s extraordinary. Then the script became clear to me. I could see through Mike Marino’s imagination and every little pockmark and every scar.

“The character was ferocious looking, but there was also, I could imagine, a sadness to aspects of that character’s life. … It just gave me so much information.”

The transformation was so powerful that it changed the way Farrell performed.

“Then we did a screen test and it was very weird. It was amazing. But it was very weird. You just give yourself over to it. There was a degree of, let’s say, possession. As close to being overtaken by something as I have ever been was on that.

“A lot of it was the distance that I was afforded, the seeming distance that I was afforded. It’s very powerful to look at yourself in the mirror and see that looking back at you. It was wild.”

He explained how the prosthetics gave him a freedom he hadn’t expected.

“I could riff all day as the Penguin. I could come on this stage and talk to you for five hours and not break character once.

“The weird thing was, and I’m not saying this as a boast, it was just weird, the strange thing was that I would have a totally different humor, totally different.

“I used to send my kids messages, you know?” He then slipped into Oz’s Brooklyn growl, imitating what he’d send to his kids: “How you doing, kid? You’re doing your homework?”

About three weeks into shooting The Batman, Farrell approached producer Dylan Clark with the idea for a Penguin spinoff.

“Mike’s makeup design was so extraordinary and really was very moving, like it was very touching again, to be a part of it, because I just felt like I was stepping into the lineage of artists like Dick Smith, who did the original Planet of the Apes and did F. Murray Abraham’s makeup, Salieri, on Milos Forman’s Amadeus, and won the Oscar for that; Dick Smith, who’s no longer with us; Mike Marino was a pupil of his, kind of an apostle of his; Rick Baker, all these extraordinary artists — Rob Bottin, who did all the makeup in The Thing back in the days when makeup was all practical.

“So I felt doing that part, I was like a part of Hollywood history. It was really cool. But there was no plan for it. It was because the makeup was so extraordinary, I thought, this is such a waste to only have five scenes of this, not me, in it. We can do so much with this beautiful makeup that Mike designed.”

Clark later followed up with Farrell about developing a series, which eventually became HBO’s Penguin. “And that was it. But we had no idea that it would be received the way it was at all. Truly. No idea.”

As for the future of Gotham, Farrell confirmed he’s read the script for Reeves’ The Batman Part II, and he’s just as excited as fans are.

“I can tell you, I read it start to finish. And as much as I loved the first script — I know I had misgivings about the Penguin part — but the first Batman film, the script I read was brilliant.”

The sequel, he teased, “is deeper, it’s scarier. The stakes are higher emotionally. … Just as a fan of scripts and stories and films, it’s so brilliant. And Matt, he took his time and he created just an extraordinary story, really. So full of feeling, really sad in parts. I’m very excited to see it, whatever my involvement in it.”

Source: Variety