INTERVIEW: Marié Botha had plenty of comic inspiration for her take on Magpie in ‘The Penguin’

The Penguin is bringing fans of Gotham some of their favorite characters. One of them is Magpie. Marié Botha brought the villain to life and we saw how she interacted with Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) in Arkham. And Botha told us all about her inspiration for the character.

One of the challenges of playing a comic character is the amount of information on them. Magpie is a beloved villain, meaning there are plenty of comics that feature her. But you also don’t want to lean too heavily into something that wasn’t inspiration for the project in question. With Matt Reeves’ Gotham, it is a bit more grounded in reality and the villains Batman encounters reflect that.

What Lauren LeFranc did with The Penguin was simply shift Gotham’s lens and we’re seeing what this take on the city looks like for our villains. Magpie is an interesting addition to the show since we only get to see her in her post-criminal world. She’s already in Arkham and we only get to see her for a brief moment. That didn’t stop Botha from looking into the comics.

“I’m glad you asked that question because I literally have the comic books out that when I got the part, I was like, ‘Okay, great,'” Botha said. She went on to explain how her comic exploration connected to the Magpie we ended up seeing in The Penguin. “We’re dealing with her when she’s already in Arkham after this whole sort of vigilante life, and how am I going to sort of absorb all of that info from the comic books and then sort of pile it into the few scenes that I have in The Penguin. So I just had an absolutely delightful time reading all of her comics and looking at the cool costumes and feeling a little bit like, ‘Oh, now I just have to wear a prison outfit. I can’t wear like the fish nets and the crazy hair,’ she joked.

Building a backstory

If you notice, Magpie has a scar on her face and Botha talked about how those little details helped. She gave credit to Helen Shaver for helping flesh those things out. “I had a lot of help from the director, Helen as well, to fill in some of the backstory that we created for the concentrated sort of Matt Reeves universe and what Lauren LeFranc covers, where Magpie has this scar on her face and where did that come from and how does that inform why she became the way that she became.”

There was a lot of work done to fill in Magpie’s journey and what ended her up in Arkham. “And we sort of colored in a lot of childhood trauma in the scene that I have the first scene with Sofia, I talk about my stepmother,” Botha said.

“So we created this whole backstory of her stepmother being an incredibly traumatizing figure in her life, maybe throwing boiling water on her face when she was little. Then I took that and then weaved it into the comic books and sort of went on a whole daydream experience of situating myself in her body through that. Working with a director like Helen, working with a script as powerful and working with Cristin, it was really easy for me to just let all of that backstory work, imaginary work that I did just sit in my body and just respond to what was happening around me and in front of me.”

Sofia and Magpie’s brief but important relationship

Magpie’s storyline is very heavily tied to Sofia Falcone’s while she is in Arkham. That relationship is important to both characters and Botha talked about how easy it was to work with Milioti in their time together.

“Cristin was just already so dialed and focused and had this very three dimensional, incredible, gritty, dark character that she worked on and brought to the table,” she said. “For me, pulling from the comic books was my favorite part in that first scene and also throughout the other two where Magpie is obsessed with shiny things. She’s a magpie. Working through that little rivet hole for the first scene when we were next to each other in the cells, I turned her into a shiny new thing. And I had been in this dark, gritty prison for such a long time without any shiny things.”

I did have some fun with Botha by the end of our interview when I asked her about what own Magpie series would be inspired by. She quickly answered “Girl, Interrupted.” You can watch our full interview here:

You can watch Botha on The Penguin and maybe if we make enough noise, we can get a prequel series of her. For me.