Colin Farrell sits down to talk to Melissa Nathoo about his transformation into The Penguin, which scene was cut from the show and how he felt being naked as Oz Cobb. Report by Nathoom. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00How's it going?
00:01Not bad, how are you?
00:02Good. Same.
00:03Good. If it's possible, you just keep getting better and better, Colin.
00:06Uh-oh.
00:07That's the good thing.
00:09That is a good thing.
00:10Who had the biggest reaction to your transformation?
00:12The biggest reaction?
00:13Yeah.
00:14Ah, my youngest son.
00:17He was there, Henry was there for the first.
00:19We did a make-up test about six months before the Batman film.
00:22Right.
00:23Which was, what, four or five years ago or something?
00:24Oh, God knows, yeah.
00:25Yeah, close. I think it was 2019.
00:27Anyway, we did that, and we did it in a studio in Burbank in Hollywood,
00:31and there was a team of 12 people putting it all together.
00:35It was the first time any of us were seeing it on,
00:37and Henry's auntie, my sister, Claudine, picked him up from school
00:40and brought him out when we were halfway through the process.
00:42Halfway through the process was a particularly upsetting stage
00:45because they had this big melon head, hairy chest,
00:48and then this skinny little body beneath him.
00:49That was when Henry walked into the room.
00:51So he was just appalled by what he saw.
00:53Pretty traumatized.
00:54But apart from that, I mean, it was a fairly...
00:57I never got to experience the character but from being in it.
01:00Like, I never got to...
01:01But it was a fairly...
01:02Just from what I saw in the mirror looking back, it was quite imposing.
01:05Yes. Yeah, it really is.
01:06It's still shocking people now.
01:07Very powerful.
01:08Very powerful to look in the mirror and see that looking back at you,
01:10and, you know, it was weird, weird, witchcraft.
01:13Mike Marino, the make-up designer.
01:15Incredible.
01:16Incredible. Deserves all the awards.
01:17All the awards.
01:18All the awards.
01:19You've obviously got, though, a scene there where you're completely naked,
01:22but did you actually feel naked, considering you were under all of it?
01:25I still can't quite articulate how and why that scene was as strange as it was.
01:30Because I was totally in a pair of boxers on.
01:32I was totally, you know, beneath the legs, body, arse, chest, hair, arms, everything.
01:40I was totally covered.
01:41Like, my whole body.
01:42Just my feet and my hands were me, but everything else was covered,
01:45and yet I was mortified.
01:47Really?
01:48Yeah. It was so weird.
01:49It was really, really strange.
01:51The line blurred totally between reality and self-perception.
01:57Yeah.
01:58It was so strange.
01:59It's a point where, in between takes, I'd ask them to cover me.
02:02Oh.
02:03Yeah, yeah.
02:04Fair enough, though.
02:05Can you cover my prosthetic me?
02:07Yeah, yeah.
02:08It was very strange.
02:09You do become that character, right?
02:10It was very, very weird.
02:11Yeah.
02:12Very vulnerable.
02:13The show is called The Penguin, but we barely hear him referred to as Penguin.
02:18Yeah.
02:19Is there a reason for that?
02:20It's a call to arms from the other side if somebody refers to him as Penguin.
02:23It's a derogatory term.
02:24Fine.
02:25It's something that he was called as a result of the way he walks.
02:27He walks because he's got a disability with his right foot,
02:31was born with some issues with that part of his body,
02:35and so if somebody wants to—
02:37The only one, I think, that calls me Penguin in the show is Johnny Vidi.
02:42That's it.
02:43He refers to me as Penguin twice, once before we're getting in the vans,
02:47then once when I catch him in the hotel room with someone he's not supposed to be with.
02:51So, yeah, it's a derogatory term, so that's why we don't.
02:54There was a scene at the end of the show where Oz referred to himself as the Penguin.
03:01Right.
03:02And it didn't make the cut.
03:04The scene didn't make the cut.
03:05It was a short scene, which is fine,
03:07but it was a pity because that moment was lovely
03:10because it showed him stepping into his own mythology
03:14and seeing that it could actually be a source of power to inhabit this mythos of the Penguin, you know?
03:20But I think that's where, even though the scene isn't in it,
03:22I think he's kind of probably come to the point where he sees the power and the strength in a title like that.
03:27Yeah.
03:28Like I said, though, it's getting incredible.
03:30People are just blown away by this series.
03:32It's so cool.
03:33It is.
03:34Yeah, it's really cool.
03:36But how much do opinions like that matter to you at this point in your career?
03:42Look, it doesn't make you stay in bed longer or get out any earlier, to be honest with you.
03:48But I've done enough things over the years, you know?
03:50I mean, I've been lucky enough to be working as an actor for 25 years
03:54and I've done things that have been slammed and I've done things that have been praised.
03:58And if you ask me which one is the favorite, the latter, like by a mile.
04:01Yeah.
04:02And just working with an extraordinary bunch of people, you know, 400, 500 crew on this in New York over a one year period
04:08with a strike that was imposed upon the crew halfway through for five months.
04:11Everyone was out of work.
04:12And then they came back in November to pick up where we left off and with extraordinary spirit.
04:19And I obviously worked with amazing actors, Kristen and Renzi and Dee Dee, who played my mom, Clancy Brown.
04:26I mean, everywhere you looked, it was an extraordinary cast.
04:28So just for it to work for everyone and myself, don't get me wrong.
04:32I'm not trying to say be selfless, like for me as well.
04:34But just the collective, it's just really amazing when you see so much effort put in and then you see an audience respond and really enjoy it.
04:41And there's something kind of low tech about it as well.
04:44I thought when it was coming out on Sunday, I just had an image of just people.
04:51I don't know how many now.
04:52And I'm not even saying they all had smiles on their faces, but people in their living rooms sitting around a TV.
04:57And it felt very low tech.
04:58It felt very like 50s.
05:00And I thought that's lovely because everything's getting so instantaneous and so fractured.
05:05And so everything's on fire.
05:06Heads are always down.
05:07And I just thought it was really it's really cool to be part of something that people seem to be into.
05:11Oh, I'm really happy.
05:12No, genuinely.
05:13I'm really happy for you.
05:14It's nice.
05:15It is nice.
05:16It's nice.
05:17Yeah.
05:18And it'll be like a month's time.
05:19It'll all be done.
05:20There'll be a memory and all that jazz.
05:21So enjoy it.
05:22Enjoy it.
05:23Life.
05:24So it's great.
05:25Good luck with everything else.
05:27Thank you so much.
05:28It's so good.