The Penguin: Colin Farrell says wearing prosthetics led to an emotional “revelation”

Colin Farrell blew fans away with his performance as Oz Cobb in the HBO series, The Penguin, which was released back in 2024. The events of the show took place immediately after the plot of The Batman, and placed Oz right at the centre of Gotham's criminal underworld.

However, the show also sees Sofia Falcone, played by Cristin Milioti, daughter of Carmine Falcone, come back to Gotham after being released from Arkham Asylum. The show explores the dynamics between both these characters as Sofia finds out the truth behind her father's death as she vies for his empire.

Check out the official trailer here:

While the storyline and characters in themselves are quite interesting, it is also interesting to note that Colin Farrell's appearance in the show garnered quite a lot of attention. This was especially due to the usage of prosthetics, and Farrell opened up about using prosthetics for his appearance on the show and how it impacted his performance.

Colin Farrell revealed that wearing prosthetics for his role in The Penguin led to an emotional revelation

In a recent interview with Variety, Colin Farrell and Jessie Buckley came together to speak about the recent characters they played. While the main focus of the interview was Farrell's role of an addict in Ballad of a Small Player, and Buckley's character in Hamnet, the conversation also swayed to other characters the Irish actors have played in the past.

During the course of this conversation, Jessie Buckley brought up Farrell's role as Oz in The Penguin, and asked him about his experience playing the character.

"It’s so hard to work in a mask and see such humanity burst through that. I’ve never seen somebody so dexterous and so human in a mask. How did you do that?"

Farrell replied, saying that the mask actually made portraying the character much easier for him, since he felt like he had gotten permission to experience a kind of revelation.

"The last thing I want to say is that the mask allowed the real me to come out. But I certainly have felt ugliness in me. I can feel moments of envy or I can feel anger. It isn’t being born in the moment. It’s something from fucking seven generations ago. Because my face was covered, I was given permission — through being obscured, I was greenlit to experience a kind of revelation. When I saw the face, I started to feel a sense of sympathy."

The Penguin spans over eight episodes and follows the journey of Oz Cobb as he goes head-to-head with Sofia Falcone when she attempts to take over her father's empire but faces a lot of challenges from the boys' underworld that is not so welcoming towards her.

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All eight episodes of the show are available to stream on Prime Video.

READ MORE: The Penguin creator to develop more shows for HBO in a new deal

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