Penguin has become a hot topic in MAX. The series follows Colin Farrell’s Penguin image batman, And takes place after the movie ends. After talking with Cristin Milioti At NYCC, I had the opportunity to sit down with showrunner Lauren LeFranc to discuss penguin.
The first question I asked Lauren LeFranc was how she cast Cristin Milioti. She immediately praised Milioti. “I’ve been a big fan of Kristen’s work for a long time. I think even though everyone knows she’s so great, she’s still kind of an underrated actor and people just don’t expect her to always do what she does. And always delivers, and it blows my mind that she has such range. I mean, she’s a theater actor first and foremost, and I think most people don’t know that. She’s a great singer. .she was at once this music. She just had a great flair for the dramatic. But she’s been in all these great movies and TV shows lately with a dark sense of humor. But I know she can do so much more, and do so with dignity. I was just excited about the possibility of having her be our Sofia because I wanted a Sofia that would fit her sense of humor, which would allow for a level of genuine humor, but Kristen is also such a likable person, so even more surprising is the way, the darkness within her. She blew my mind in this show. I’m really excited for myself because I think people are really starting to see the tremendous range that she’s always had. We brought her in and she read chemistry with Colin, just to make sure these two people clicked, which was so exciting. marvelous. They read the lunch scene from the first episode together and seeing Sophia come to life through Kristen was the best.
LeFranc read a lot of Penguin comics in preparation for the show. She explained: “I read all the Penguin comics, but I wasn’t really familiar with all the Penguin-specific comics until I started digging into it. It was great. For me, it was trying to find the tone or the tone from all these bits and pieces. Emotions are inspiring, obviously. long halloween is inspiring Matt (played by Levis) There are also a lot of people who accept Batman because of its film noir qualities.
Like Cristin Milioti, Lauren LeFranc is a long-time comic book fan. She drew on this when conceiving the show. “I love comic books, I grew up reading them,” LeFranc explained. “There are things you look back on and are like, ‘That was unfortunate. That was a terrible metaphor,’ or ‘That was very disrespectful. We It could be better, especially when it comes to our villains. It’s easy to say, “Oh, broadly speaking, someone is mentally disturbed, so they’re going to kill you or murder you.” “Again, the things we have to deal with Penguin Some of the characters have huge scars on their faces, or Oz has disabilities. Some descriptions suggest that this is the reason for his behavior or the things he does. We can’t go that way. As a society, we are relatively evolved. Ozzy is who he is as a man. We really tried to show all sides of him. This has nothing to do with him having a club foot. It’s a part of him that he suffers to some degree. But that doesn’t make him unambitious. That’s not what makes him a narcissist. That’s separate. When it comes to Arkham State Hospital, it’s important to do the best you can. Of course, our story takes place in Gotham City. This is a comic show. You want to embrace a certain quality, but at the same time, there’s room to show mental illness and show that it’s much more complex than what has been previously portrayed. We are working on this and we are very aware of it.
Lauren Lefranc isn’t just inspired by the DC Comics universe, though. this penguin The showrunner explained: “I try to draw inspiration from real people or, in some cases, literary characters, rather than just everything coming from comics. In the case of Oz, I have a lot of affinity for him. Rating, I compared him to Buddy Cianci, who was mayor of Providence, Rhode Island for 21 years. I went to school in Providence, so I’m familiar with him. He was in prison at the time, and he was elected to prison. He had his own spaghetti sauce, and he had his own radio show after he got out. He was a charming, affable guy, but a lot of his behavior. Also very violent and mean, and definitely extremely corrupt, but people love him because he takes care of them. So the first episode where Oz tells the story of Rex Calabrese is what I love about Buddy Xian. A tribute to him, and he inspired me. I read as much as I could, I read books about different gangster characters and the whole criminal world. Something that makes me feel cohesive in the world.
For LeFranc, it was important for the audience to feel invested in the characters. penguin. “I want them to care about our characters. To me, if Batman isn’t in the show, it ultimately doesn’t matter as much. batman If you care deeply about these characters. You may care about them because you hate them. You might support them. That’s the great thing about television, having time to spend time with the characters, you want your audience to grow with them. The most important thing to me is creating characters that you have this connection with, so if something terrible happens, you care. Or if something great happens to them, you feel like it’s a victory. In any genre, I think that’s true. I know we designated crime drama because no one on our show has superpowers. I know we’re oversaturated with different iterations of different superhero content over and over again. I watch them all. I’m a huge fan of this stuff. The great thing about this show is that some people like certain things and some people don’t like certain things. It doesn’t matter. There are so many of these that I would be hesitant to stop making them. As a creator, my first priority is to make sure your world is filled with interesting conflict. We can all relate to these people on some level.
Penguin mother Frances Cobb (Deirdre O’Connell) suffers from dementia on the show. Lauren LeFranc explained why it was important to her to bring in character elements. “I thought it would be interesting to delve into dementia on the show. I did research and tried to figure out the right way to tell the story I wanted to tell. I researched Lewy body dementia, which is a very, very scary disease. disease. I think that’s actually what people believe Robin Williams has. It’s very confusing to diagnose because people have tremors and lose their sense of balance. Giving people drugs that don’t actually help them, for me, I always bring some kind of personal quality, some personal connection, to the things I write and the characters I create, not always literally. You know. I think it’s very relevant. A lot of people have different experiences with people with dementia, but this specific form of hallucinations is very confusing to you. There was something interesting about being with someone one moment and then being different the next.
Lauren LeFranc doesn’t want people to see Penguin as Batman 1.5. She explained: “I actually feel like I have a lot of freedom because if we decide to make our show very intimate and very focused on our characters. We’re not trying to bring in a ton of different people from the universe. We’re not trying to just serve They’re adding a character to elevate them into Matt’s second movie, and part of that is because we’re not just a show that’s going to adapt to different characters and figure out how we’re going to do it. , that’s the emotional trajectory of this man, it’s a psychological character study of him and all the people around him, and I hope that by the end of the eight hours, you’ll be thinking about our characters, some of which are new or established from before in the comics. The characters are definitely different and make you feel like “I can’t stop thinking about these people and now they’re my favorite comic book characters” and maybe people will write more comics about them. Anyway, that’s my hope. I’ve been given a lot of freedom and I’m so grateful to Matt.
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