It appears Colin Farrell got a little lost in his latest performance for The Penguin.
The Academy Award nominee recently recalled the grueling makeup process that went into bringing his The Batman villain to life for the series spin-off of Matt Reeves‘ 2022 film, which premieres Sept. 19 at 9pm on HBO, and if he’s up for getting into prosthetics again for a potential second season.
“I don’t know, man. Don’t get me wrong – I loved it – but it got in on me a little bit,” Farrell told Total Film. “By the end of it, I was bitching and moaning to anyone who would listen to me that I f—ing wanted it to be finished. I tried to remind them that I had ‘grumpy gratitude.’ I was still grateful, and still honored – I grew up watching Burgess Meredith [who played the role in the ’60s TV series], and then Danny DeVito [in Tim Burton‘s 1992 film Batman Returns] was my Penguin – so being a part of the lineage of that storytelling, I really did feel privileged. But by the end of it…”
He continued, “It’s not like I didn’t know who I was and I was going out and burning cars and shit, but… if you take what Matt Reeves created and then what Lauren [LeFranc, showrunner] did and what Mike [Marino, prosthetics and make-up designer] did and put them all together, it was a really powerful experience.”
Farrell previously portrayed the Gotham baddie opposite Robert Pattinson‘s Dark Knight in The Batman. Set one week after the movie, The Penguin follows his eponymous Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobblepot amid his rise to power in the city’s criminal underworld.
Colin Farrell in The Penguin.
Macall Polay/Max
Whether or not Farrell has another season of Cobblepot in him remains to be seen, but he’s not sure he can imagine (literally) getting back into character.
“Lauren said, ‘Look, if I could find a way that makes sense, would you talk about it?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely,’” Farrell told the outlet. “And maybe in a year I would. But when I finished I was like, ‘I never want to put that f—ing suit and that f—ing head on again.’”