‘I was totally submerged to the point where I’d look in the mirror and what was looking back was nothing recognisable.’
Colin Farrell is no stranger to transforming how he looks for acting roles as evident from Daredevil, The Gentlemen, Horrible Bosses and The Lobster.
That said, Oz Cobb – his character in 2022 blockbuster The Batman and its brilliant new spin-off series The Penguin – is his most radical transformation yet, with the Irish Oscar-nominee appearing completely unrecognisable.
This is down to both heavy prosthetics but also the changes the actor makes to his voice and the way he walks in order to embody the villainous mobster.
This week, JOE chatted to the Oscar-nominee about The Penguin, where he spoke to us about the strong Irish connections in The Batman franchise, as well as the unusual prosthetic he sported for a key scene in the spin-off show.
We also opened the interview by asking Farrell to discuss the differences in preparing for his past roles in Daredevil and Horrible Bosses – which also involved prosthetics – and prepping for The Penguin in terms of time and process.
This is what he had to say:
“Jesus, I forgot about Horrible Bosses. Yeah, I wore a bald cap in that. This one was much more comprehensive and was much more immersive both physically, because I was just totally buried. In Daredevil as Bullseye, I had a little bit of a prosthetic on my forehead. In Horrible Bosses, I had the skull cap and a little bit of a belly, a little pot belly.
“But with this, I was totally submerged to the point where I’d look in the mirror and what was looking back was nothing recognisable as anything I had come to know as Colin over the last 45 years.”
Farrell also noted that it wasn’t just the physical changes that made his role as Oz Cobb more demanding, adding:
“[The Penguin] was more immersive psychologically as a result of the amount of story and the character detail that [series showrunner] Lauren LeFranc and her team of writers had put down on the page.
“It was eight hours of television so whereas the script for Horrible Bosses was 110 pages and I was in about six of them, this was about 500 pages and I was in about 350 or 400 of them.
“So, it was a lot, it was a lot to delve into. There was a lot of information. There was a lot of backstory, a lot of behaviour was explained if not justified. So, it was definitely a deeper dive than those other two pieces.”
You can watch Farrell make those comments below:
The first episode of The Penguin is already available to watch on Sky and streaming service NOW, with new episodes out every Monday.
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