Colin Farrell, have you or have you not read Matt Reeves’ new screenplay for The Batman II?
“Not yet” beamed the actor who is celebrating his first Emmy nom today for Batman HBO DC Studios spinoff series, The Penguin.
“But I’m very close to it. I can’t wait. I’m going to have to block out a few hours when that happens and really put the kettle on and put a nice cup of tea on and pay attention,” said Farrell who spoke to us from the Santa Monica, CA set of Apple TV+’s season 2 of Sugar.
“Matt is an extraordinary writer and a highly intelligent artist. I will imagine that the script will be riveting and incredibly deep and he’s taken he’s time with it and that’s because he’s a perfectionist.”
“I’ll be excited to read it and I’m going to read it soon,” added the actor.
DC Studios co-Boss James Gunn already posted on social on July 7 that he’s feasted on Reeves’ Batman II exclaiming, “It’s great,”.
In regard to whether there’s a second season of Penguin given how Farrell has already collected Best Actor Drama Series wins at the SAGs, Critics Choice and Golden Globes, he shared “I heard that they’re talking about trying to figure out what a second season might look like, but it hasn’t gone farther than that.”
“It was always supposed to be eight hours and that’s it,” said The Banshees of Inisherin Best Actor Oscar nominee.
Farrell has loved breaking out the villain of Oz Cobb in the series from caricature to full blooded, bleeding, complex anti-hero.
“In the film, it was pretty clear to me that Oz was there to serve a purpose,” says Farrell, “He was a bit of a red herring, he was a mild-to-moderate foil to Batman.”
“When I heard the pitch for the season, I thought anytime you drop a family member in, or particularly anytime you drop a mother, into a son’s story, you humanize that character instantly. Whatever the relationship is going be however filled with love, or however filled with tension, or sadness, or regret or agitation, whatever it is. When I heard Deirdre O’Connell was going to play (his mother) Frances, it instantly gave us a backstory, and a backstory with his brothers as well.”
“It was this dark relationship between him and his mother which anchored the character in a very humanistic way to me.”
“Those things push Oz forward and it’s the reason for his ambition, are the reasons for his greed, are the reasons for his maleficence, for so much who he is.”
Today, The Penguin received 24 Emmy noms, which is the second most Emmy noms for a comic-book series and a DC Studios show after HBO’s 2019 series The Watchmen which earned 26 and won 11 trophies.
