Following in the footsteps of Batman: The Animated Series is no easy task, but Prime Video’s new series Batman: Caped Crusader has pulled it off with style, already earning rave reviews (including from our own critic) and a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Something that has drawn much acclaim is the show’s rogues’ gallery, as several iconic Batman villains appear as you have never seen them before. Easily one of the stand-out baddies is actor Minnie Driver’s gender-flipped Penguin, a.k.a. Oswalda Cobblepot, the star of opening episode ‘In Treacherous Waters’.
Although a female version of The Penguin is something new for audiences, Driver feels that “the essence” of the beloved comics character has always been “genderless” due to the fact that the villain has typically been depicted as more like a creature than perhaps a person on the page.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ and other press at a roundtable during SDCC 2024, Driver explained: “She’s a very new character that so fits into the Batman oeuvre – it’s a great reimagining. It’s amazing as a lot of times today we are trying to redress the balance of representation and you sometimes feel that things have been shoehorned in – it’s more performative than organic. This is organic – it’s believable that this bizarre, strange, larger than life character is genderless because it’s the essence of The Penguin. What we are looking at is the essence of the original comics and animation. When you look at her she’s weirdly genderless, she’s a creature, and I love that that’s what we are exploring now.”
Continuing, Driver added that it is interesting seeing The Penguin “as a mother” – and she’s right that Oswalda’s actions towards her own children are suitably “dark and twisted” enough for the world of Batman. Seriously – you don’t want to mess with Oswalda after seeing the fate of her kids!
Given that The Penguin in Caped Crusader is a mother, Driver admits that this is where she looked to for inspiration when it came to unlocking the character. In fact, the main source was her own mother-in-law as the actor revealed: “She has this iconic voice, it’s sort of like a vintage American, New York, I feel like her voice is from the ’30s and ’40s. It’s very clipped, it’s big, it’s deep, it has this kind of resonance and I’ve always loved the way that she sounds.
“I’m like a magpie, I use everything that I come across. It’s definitely a homage to her but that was just the kicking off point. The Penguin is really evil and it was fun to have this kind of blousy way of speaking – that helps underpin how deeply terrible and psychopathic she is.” Maybe let’s not get on the wrong side of Driver’s mother-in-law too then!
All episodes of Batman: Caped Crusader are now streaming on Prime Video.
For more, check out the best shows on Prime Video and our guide on how to watch the DC movies in order.
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