Popverse's top stories

• Netflix loses its Black Mirror creators as Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones have used a loophole to get out of their exclusive deal with the streamer
• 3 essential Superman stories to watch or read after seeing the new James Gunn movie from DC Studios [FYC]
• Netflix Wakfu fans rejoice: Ogrest graphic novel prequel hits Kickstarter July 15

“The world wasn’t built for guys like us,” is a line from HBO Max’s The Penguin, delivered by Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb. There have only been a baker’s dozen actors who have given themselves to embody the Batman villain, of which, only four have been live action. That fearsome foursome includes Farrell, Danny Devito, Robin Lord Taylor and the late Burgess Meredith. 

So to have Farrell and DeVito participate in Variety’s Actors on Actors was an exclusive treat as they compared notes of what it was like playing the power-hungry rogue, the creatives behind their separate versions of the character, and their direct relationships to Batman. 

DeVito played Oswald Cobblepot in Batman Returns (1992), the sequel to Batman (1989) which buried the Batman ’66 vision of the character. Michael Keaton’s Batman squared off with DeVito’s sewer-dwelling Penguin and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman. Farrell was the first to bring up the topic of whether or not they’d play the character again. DeVito did not hesitate and said, “Absolutely.” 

“I just loved it because it was, it gave you a freedom to burst out. You can go off the rails with something. I mean, you had a little bit more restraint because you were in a totally other realm. The operatic element of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns was my favorite thing about it. The music, the sets, you felt that all the world was a stage. Oswald’s realm and his penguins, and his minions, and his passion, and all of that I loved about it.”

Farrell followed up the question by asking if DeVito took the character home but he had no problem leaving it behind each night. DeVito played some real despicable and ridiculous characters, so if he brought any of that home, he thought he’d be very difficult to live with.

The Penguin star described his version of Oz, as so ugly by the end that he was over it. “I was still grateful for it, like I never lost sight of the fact that I used to watch Burgess Meredith’s ‘Quack-quack-quack’ when I was six,” Farrell told DeVito. “I was in Dublin when I was 13, 14, on my arse watching you, but I never lost sight at how lucky I was. But by the end of it, I was kind of, I’m good. I’m glad it’s coming to an end. I think it was being completely buried, I had nothing of myself.”

“There’s an ugliness that your Oswald and my Oz shared,” Farrell stated. “A kind of uncouth grotesqueness.”

Oz Cobb went to some incredibly dark places in his quest for an empire. He did some absolutely heinous acts. All of it was on brand for someone that has been so singular in his drive since he was a child. Any person with an ounce of humanity in them would have felt the same as Farrell did after completing Season 1. But did being in that filth that long turn him off of Oz completely? No. He’d do it again. 

DeVito then asked Farrell if he’d do a Season 2 while mockingly ushering in a Brinke’s truck. “If they,” Farrell replied. “I have no idea. But yeah, I’d love to. Yeah. C’mon.”

Now we are talking about ifs, because the events of Season 1 of The Penguin should lead up to the sequel to Matthew Reeves’ The Batman, which is still in preproduction. If Penguin survives that ordeal somehow, and Farrell was willing to undergo the transformation again, why not. Just make sure Season 1 showrunner Lauren LeFranc returns too, because that was a high-level gangster story as far as superhero landscapes go.

Since they were on the subject, Farrell did ask DeVito if he’d be on board to appear in The Penguin, to which he gritted his teeth, tilted his head and growled out, “Absolutely. It would be really great. Ah, the old Penguin, Nastier than ever; you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

Enjoy our guides to how to watch the recent DCEU, the Arrowverse, and James Gunn's upcoming DCU.