Colin Farrell Claims That His Penguin Will Only Be in The Batman for a Few Scenes

Director Matt Reeves will bring us the next installment in Batman’s cinematic history with his upcoming film The Batman. It boasts a very large and impressive cast, including Robert Pattinson as Batman, Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as The Riddler, and Colin Farrell as The Penguin. Colin Farrell’s casting as Oswald Cobblepot is one of the more interesting choices, but Farrell says that we might not be getting too much of him.

During an interview with the podcast Happy Sad Confused (via Collider), the Irish actor discussed his role in the upcoming film.

“I’m only in it for five or six scenes,” he said. “I can’t wait to see the film because it won’t be ruined by my presence. Really, it’s a freebie to me. I’ll get a little bit uncomfortable for the f***ing nine minutes I have, and then the rest of it, I cannot wait to see how he [Reeves] brought this world to life.”

That discomfort is referring to the prosthetics he had to wear in order to play Cobblepot, which unfortunately includes a fat suit. He does give a lot of praise to Mike Marino, calling him a “genius” for putting the entire look together.

Mike Marino is a genius. He’s an absolute and veritable genius. And that word gets thrown out a lot, but he is a drawing, sculpting, shaping genius. And he created this visage for the Penguin.

I mean he and Matt talked about what physically the character stature would be, and I had been quite big for The North Water and I didn’t want to naturally go big again cause I had a few little health things as a result of The North Water and I was just like, f***, this acting thing ain’t this important. I know the top actors that go up and down, and God bless them, I wish them good health. But for me, I think The North Water is the last time I’ll go up that much. So, we decided on a fat suit.

While I have issues with fat suits for reasons that fat writers have discussed, I do respect him not wanting to put his body through a lot of physical harm and discomfort for just a few scenes. Of course, one does then just wonder why not hire a fat actor, but I don’t cast these film;s I just write my thoughts on this website.

Farrell added: “Look, I only had, as I said, five or six scenes, or seven scenes, and I wasn’t quite… I was up here early stages, looking at what I felt, what I could do, what I could bring to it. I was a bit lost. And then, when I saw what Mike did, the whole character made sense to me. I swear to God, I saw what he did, and I just went ‘Ok,’ and I got really excited about it. All that to say that if anyone ever thinks what I do at The Batman is a decent performance, I’ll gladly take 49% of the credits.”

I have no doubt he will do an excellent job in the film. Farrell has proven himself to stand out even in the most ridiculous of worlds (cough Daredevil cough) so I’m glad that didn’t totally turn him off comic book films.

Since he is only going to be in a few scenes, I’m feeling a bit better about the fact that The Riddler, Penguin, Catwoman, and Falcone are all going to be in this movie. It was starting to look like Batman Forever cluttered, rather than Batman Returns cluttered.

WB apparently has two sequels planned, and a spinoff prequel television series is in development for HBO Max, so I’m expecting there will be some backdoor pilot breadcrumbs being set up. If there is one thing you can be sure of, Warner Bros. will always invest in more Batman.

(via /Film, image: Warner Bros.)

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