How The Penguin Became a Secret “Buddy-Cop Comedy”

When a movie gets a TV spinoff, there’s often a noticeable difference in quality. Secret Invasion doesn’t look nearly as big and cinematic as The Marvels, nor does The Continental looks as eye-popping as the John Wick movies. But director Craig Zobel’s aim with The Penguin, for which he helms the first three episodes, was to make the visual transition from The Batman to its HBO spinoff as seamless as possible.

“I was very eager to make it look like the film, at least at the beginning,” Zobel tells Inverse. “Simply because we can now finish watching The Batman on Max and then immediately press another button and start watching The Penguin.”

The Penguin picks up almost immediately after the events of The Batman, with the death of Carmine Falcone (John Turturro in The Batman, Mark Strong in The Penguin) leaving a hole at the top of Gotham’s criminal underworld. Hoping to fill that gap is Falcone’s longtime lieutenant, Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), a sleazy, ambitious low-level criminal whose hair-trigger temper leads him to murder Falcone’s chosen heir, his alcoholic son Alberto. Now, with Alberto’s sister zeroing in on Oz, the “Penguin,” as he’s mockingly dubbed, launches a scheme to pit the Carmine and Maroni families against each other in a war that will rock an already devastated Gotham.

The Penguin has already been positively compared to The Sopranos for how it positions Oz as the morally gray lead in a grimy crime drama, but that’s a comparison Zobel didn’t want to lean into. “Culturally it's all in there, all in our heads,” Zobel says of The Sopranos inspirations. “It was more interesting to me to chase [Reeeves’] visual inspirations for his film.” Those would include ‘70s crime films like The French Connection, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Klute. But even if they shared visual and genre inspirations, Zobel wanted to establish The Penguin as its own separate thing.

“While hopefully we were still in the same palette as what Matt was doing... the story goes different places than The Batman does,” Zobel says. “It happens during the day, it happens in different locations. That stuff drove it into become its own look that hopefully is reminiscent of The Batman and inside of the same world, but is its own thing.”

Inverse spoke with Zobel about why we can’t stop watching Farrell’s Oz Cobb, why the team called the first part of the show a “buddy-cop comedy,” and what Batman rogue his dream TV spinoff would center around.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Spoilers follow for The Penguin Episode 3, “Bliss.”

Colin Farrell put such a mark on the character of Oz Cobb in The Batman. Were there elements of the character that you were excited to expand upon in The Penguin, those internal elements that you were talking about just earlier?

What I thought was so fun about what this did was he's in six scenes in the movie. So you know him, but you don't know a whole lot about him. And what I thought was so great about this was that it wasn't just simply backstory, but it was quite a specific re-establishing. In the film, he's dressed very flamboyantly, has this crazy purple car and stuff. And it was fun to be able to recontextualize that and be like, this is probably a guy for whom buying those suits is more important than maybe it is to Carmine Falcone. He's still on his way up, he's not of the same financial strata as the made men inside of the Falcone family.

And that he's peacocking in a way. He shows up, he's performatively dressing and stuff. And that was a fun turn to get to learn about him. I feel like what the scripts do really well is expose the side of him that there is. And he's certainly a narcissist, but also there is an insecurity that maybe at some times you can have some empathy for in him, especially in the first scenes in the first episode. That he lets himself be somewhat vulnerable for a second and that doesn't go well. I thought that was a fun way to expand the character.

Oz Cobb is the star, but the show gets elevated whenever Cristin Milioti and Colin Farrell are onscreen together. Their scenes are just magnetic. Can you talk about shooting their scenes and just their very complicated dynamic throughout these first three episodes where it goes from obvious enmity and hostility to a wary alliance towards the end?

We all had so much fun shooting those scenes, especially the scenes in which they're in an alliance, or gaining confidence in each other. I think in some way, for one, it was fun to tell everyone that there was history between the two of these people. But to let that be discovered over the course of a few episodes was quite cool and fun. And as you move further, you get to even know more history between the two of them. But clearly, there was at some point some friendship, to a degree, between the two of them in the past that has gone at the beginning of the series. And to watch them respect each other's different traits and how to play off of each other. We always called it the buddy-cop movie portion of the story.

You get to play a lot of that, especially in Episode 3, where it's just like them trying to establish their empire outside of the Falcones. But then Oz is maneuvering both the Maronis and the Falcones against each other.

And I would say, I think that had Oz not made a really poor choice at the very beginning of the series, and had he somehow ended up in this scenario with Sofia without having killed her brother, I think that they would've probably been able to maybe make some partnership work. What's fun about Oz too, is that I think that he is able to think two things at once. I think he's able to appreciate that and appreciate her, and at the same time understand that he is at odds with her by virtue of the circumstance. I love the last scene in Episode 3. I love that I do feel like you get to see them both be more vulnerable to each other and admit that they both have value for each other in a way.

I love Sofia's whole arc we see through these first three episodes, because the episodes give you little nuggets of why she is the way she is and what happened in Arkham, but is still withholding. But she is already such an interesting presence, and even more fleshed out than how she is in the comics, where she actually is Hangman. Was that fun to play with the comic history of the character, but still maintain that mystery with her?

It was great because there haven't been a whole lot of film or television versions of Sofia Falcone before. In some ways, it was fun because it felt like a new character. And I was aware of the... I think both me and Cristin were aware of Sofia from the “Long Halloween” era of the comics and stuff, but we all knew we were doing something different. We were doing Matt Reeves' world, and not directly something related to that. Yeah, it felt like making a new character.

Episode 3 climaxes with a standoff that ends with Vic crashing Oz's car into the Maronis to save Oz. Up until at this point it feels like the show has been relatively character and dialogue-driven. Was this the biggest set piece that you got to shoot during those three episodes?

Well, there's a little bit of a car thing in Episode 1, and ,of course, there's the flashback at the beginning of Episode 3. I hope that we satisfy people who are coming to see that action element. But at the same time, this is TV and it's just naturally going to be more about character and about, hopefully in a good way, looking at character more than it is looking at action. But whenever you get to do that, it's always a great day on set, for sure.

You're like, I get to crash some cars.

Yeah, you get to crash cars. It's like why the nine-year-old version of me wanted to make movies.

Speaking of The Batman and the action of that movie, Matt Reeves has talked about how he briefly considered bringing Robert Pattinson's Batman in for a cameo but then decided against it. Were you involved at all in these conversations? Were you aware of this?

By the time I was involved, that had been decided. The rationale was really that The Batman would be about the Batman. That's his point of view and that's his thing, and that this was a different point of view. And so, those would be the exclusive purview of the features, and anything in the TV space would be about other parts of Gotham and stuff.

Do you find it exciting too to be able to explore Gotham sans Batman? The city, the rogues, and the characters are pretty rich and allow for a show like The Penguin to stand on its own.

It's so fun to be able to have shot something in Gotham City. It was nice to be able to do a crime show and be connected to a superhero universe; to both be in that universe and be able to tell a different story.

There's also talk about other Batman-related spinoffs that would explore similarly the world of Gotham outside of Batman. Do you know anything about those conversations?

You'd have to just talk to Matt Reeves. It's all in his head. And I think that he is focused on the movie right now, that's the next thing out of the gate. I tried to not learn. I felt like I didn't want to know too much about what was happening and point towards anything by accident or any way. Our job was to tell Oz's story.

Well, if there were to be another spinoff and you were to be asked to be involved, what Batman rogue or character would you like to direct?

Which other rogue would I like? I think that I would love to see Matt Reeves' universe version of Poison Ivy. I think that would be cool.

New episodes of The Penguin air Sundays on HBO and Max.