The final time a penguin was this severe of an awards contender, it was faucet dancing with glad ft. Now, HBO’s “The Penguin,” fleshing out the origin story of the waddling, tuxedo-clad “gentleman mobster” after greater than 80 years as one of many Caped Crusader’s best-known adversaries, has earned a staggering 24 Emmy nominations. For her spinoff to 2022’s big-screen hit “The Batman,” creator Lauren LeFranc introduced an uncommon perspective, burrowing deeply into new histories of twisted, impassioned characters — and stars Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti and Deirdre O’Connell enthusiastically purchased in.

“The people who’ve come before me, who’ve had the opportunity to tell a story about a gangster, they tended to be men,” mentioned LeFranc. “Crime dramas, anything comic book-related, certainly with [predominantly] male characters, let alone someone who’s considered a villain, it’s hard to find a lot of women who’ve had that opportunity.”

LeFranc wished to know all the pieces about not simply Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Farrell) but in addition the one that formed him most, his upward-mobility-obsessed, dementia-suffering mom, Francis (O’Connell, in a task created for the sequence), and the individual he must overcome with the intention to rise to energy, his late mob boss’ daughter, Sofia Falcone (Milioti), in a model totally completely different from the comics character.

Deirdre O’Connell in “The Penguin.”

(Macall Polay / HBO)

“Francis was based a little bit on my grandmother on my dad’s side, who’s Mexican and was an immigrant and had a lot of spite and anger, but was very driven and passionate,” LeFranc mentioned.

“We definitely did talk about what that meant,” acknowledges O’Connell, “and the way her grandmother conducted herself like a queen.”

Francis and Oz are locked in a mother-son dance of loss of life, because the wannabe crime lord feels fixed stress to achieve her eyes. However the two are cursed by a horror from their previous: As a boy, Oz killed each of his brothers, which Francis secretly is aware of.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Instances)

“The relationship between Oz and Francis was the cornerstone, the foundation around which I built everything that became Oz — the intimacy between the two, the deep need Oz always had to feel his mother’s love and earn her pride.”

All of that match with LeFranc’s reimagining of a personality normally depicted in a morning go well with and high hat, with high-tech weaponry inside his umbrella: “In the comics, he has often come from a wealthy family,” she mentioned. “We changed his name to ‘Cobb’ because ‘Cobblepot’ always suggested wealth and prestige. I personally can relate more to someone who comes from nothing and is hustling. A man like Oz is often not seen in the way he feels he deserves.”

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LeFranc’s backstories fed the concept that everyone seems to be the hero of their very own story. It’s definitely not onerous to root for antagonist Sofia Falcone, who viewers study was betrayed by her personal father and dedicated to a decade of psychological torture in Arkham Asylum. In a way, she turns into the sequence’ co-hero — a hero who coolly slays virtually her whole household in revenge.

Milioti mentioned LeFranc’s “care and protectiveness” gave the actors freedom. “You’re able to go to those big places; it feels so real. It gives you carte blanche to go as deep as you want and get as detailed as you want.

“You know it when you see it, and you start drooling.”

Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti in “The Penguin.”

(Macall Polay / HBO)

Farrell’s mobile mutation into Oz has been broadly mentioned — the dialect, the physicality, the unbelievable prosthetic make-up by Mike Marino and his crew, and the way Farrell illuminates that full-body masks from inside. Much less mentioned has been Milioti’s metamorphosis into the internally and externally scarred Sofia, onerous as Gotham’s most brutal gangsters and freed from the ties of conscience that would bind vengeful arms.

“There’s a certain point where she has nothing to lose, and that’s the scariest type of person,” mentioned Milioti, beforehand greatest recognized for comedy (“How I Met Your Mother,” “Palm Springs”) and musical theater (“Once,” David Bowie’s “Lazarus”).

“I’d been looking to do something [in which] I could show a different color, and it reminded me a lot of doing theater because I didn’t feel boxed in. I could come in with the ideas I had and the feelings I was circling. We had this incredible hair and makeup department, they were so collaborative … It felt very not necessarily what I would expect a giant franchise to feel like.”

Tony winner O’Connell underwent her personal transformation as Francis, and never simply because of the character’s rough-hewn, New York-like Gotham dialect, courtesy of coach Jessica Drake. Oz’s mom has Lewy physique dementia, a degenerative situation that impacts pondering, reminiscence and motion.

“It was very deeply important to me that I not sell it short at all,” O’Connell mentioned. “Both of my parents suffer from dementia. I got lucky enough to find a woman who does [physical therapy] for people with Lewy [body dementia] and Parkinson’s, and people let me into their homes.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s so funny because I kind of look like my mom when I see [the show] now. Everybody said my dad had Alzheimer’s, but looking back, he probably had Lewy, the way his hallucinations worked, the guilelessness that came over him, and also the way that his rage manifested; how angry it made him to be that helpless. I wanted Francis to be able to hold her dignity in the worst time, when people have to give up their dignity that way.

“I felt that for her, and I was carrying that for my parents.”

Farrell had what he referred to as his “crutch” — the bodily transmogrification — which additionally sparked a germ of worry in him, of “being a one-trick pony,” he mentioned. “Mike Marino’s genius was so apparent, it would easily sustain interest over five scenes or four scenes in the film. But can I sustain interest, can I find a way to actually make this living, breathing human being who is complex?

At first, Farrell had suggested to “The Batman” writer-director Matt Reeves that he play the Penguin with far more minimal make-up — “Maybe the Penguin’s 170 pounds and 5 foot 10, and Irish,” he jokes — however in the long run it solely deepened his perception that the rise of Oz Cobb may maintain a narrative of its personal.

“I remember saying to [‘Batman’ producer Dylan Clark], like, on Week 2 of ‘The Batman,’ we should do a show on this. There’s so much more we could do with this.

“And then I was given the opportunity to do so much more, and I s— myself, absolutely.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Instances)