Colin Farrell might have loved playing the Penguin in the upcoming HBO show of the same name, but he’s not sure if he wants to do it again, thanks to the intensity of the role.
A second season of The Penguin could only happen if Farrell is prepared to climb back in the make-up chair. “I don’t know, man,” he grimaces to Total Film in our new issue out on Thursday, September 12, which features The Penguin on the cover.
“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. I tried to remind them that I had ‘grumpy gratitude.’ I was still grateful, and still honored – 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…”
He practically turns purple at the memory. “It’s not like I didn’t know who I was and I was going out and burning cars and shit, but… if you take what Matt Reeves created and then what Lauren [LeFranc, showrunner] did and what Mike [Marino, prosthetics and make-up designer] did and put them all together, it was a really powerful experience.”
So it’s not just the prosthetics and suit that Farrell would have to be willing to get into again, but also the headspace. “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.'”
The Penguin releases on September 20 on Sky and NOW in the UK and on September 19 on HBO in the US. And you can read more about it and a whole lot else besides in the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves and digital newsstands on Thursday, September 12.
Check out the covers below:
Subscribers have the exclusive text-free cover on the way to them right now, with the issue then hitting shops and digital newsstands on Thursday 12 September.
For more, see our guide to all the upcoming DC movies and TV shows.
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