“You’re blushing!” Colin Farrell on playing The Penguin and his prosthetic… pecker

All right, I'm going to ask the big silly question, I can't help myself. But you. Who does my hair? Yeah, who does do your hair? Because it's Carlos, because it's somewhere over there. You're the penguin. How the heck did that happen? But way back. I don't know, actually, I must ask Matt Reeves, the director of the film. I tend not to ask such questions for fear that I'll engender a greater degree of doubt than previously existed within the director's mind. But it was supposed to be, it was supposed to be nothing like this. I hadn't any idea. And Matt Reeves, when he cast me, hadn't any idea that it was going to be as transformative a process physically as it ended up becoming. And that's honest to God, down to Mike Marino and his imagination, his love for the source material. I mean, at the end of the day, this is all about money, right? Maybe we don't see eye to eye on every little thing. You know, maybe you don't like me. It's fine. I'm an acquired taste. Because it's sort of flattering, sort of not flattering. Matt Reeves goes, I think you look great. You know, in four hours of prosthetics. Yeah. In a totally different accent. And a lot of people won't even recognize you. Yeah. What's the point? And you go, thanks. Why hire these eyebrows and then fire them underneath the mounds of prosthetics? I look, we knew there was going to be something like a little bit of a huck nose or something that referred back to the comic books. But but then Mike just came up with this. I arrived at Matt Reeves office before the Batman film about six months in London. And Matt said, I've been talking to Mike, the makeup designer. And I said, yeah, we've been sending pictures back and forth, a few little reference things. And he said, did he show you what you're going to look like? And just that that line alone, did he show you what you're going to look like? Was kind of. Yeah, it was very powerful. In one sense, a kind of disavowal of the feeling that you had input. Yeah. In another sense, was terribly exciting. And I said no. And he said, come here, come here. I was sitting on the couch, he said, come here. And he opened up his laptop and he went, look. And I just looked at what is just in the show, the whole thing. And it was Mike's original sculpt of the face of Oscar was called the part at the time. And I couldn't believe it. Yeah, I was blown away. And Matt took a punt, took a chance. It was just an extraordinary opportunity to bring together these this collective of creatives. You know, Matt Reeves with the script that he wrote, obviously the source material. And then Mike Marino with his extraordinary imagination. Love for all things comic book and just his his artistic acumen. You know, it was it was. Yeah, I've never felt such little ownership, total ownership of a character I played in a really good way. And all you guys got to do is sit back and reap the rewards. I'll oversee the whole thing. You know, you some of the crew, I run it out of the plant. Well, I'm not blowing smoke. You are incredible. Thanks, man. I will say, even if I just talk about the voice. Yeah. Was that a yes or? It's just top draw. Thanks, man. I think a lot of people get a lot of compliments for doing a good American accent. Right. As if that's a generic term. Yeah. But I'm getting De Niro and Pesci and I'm just there. That's sweet. Hold up. What are you talking about? And you talking about an anchor word? I saw it in an interview where you said gefilte fish, gefilte fish, gefilte fish. Yeah, yeah. That's your sort of jumping off. It was just, yeah, just something that that it's like, you know, a smell of toast can bring it back to a moment in your childhood. It's the same thing. It was just it wasn't even the sounds. It wasn't even the the necessary the articulation of the word just as much as that word came up in the process of working on the dialect with Jessica Drake, my dialect coach. And so we just use as gefilte fish. If I said gefilte fish to her a couple of times or to myself, it kind of anchored me and exposed me to all the stuff that we had done around that word presenting itself while we were in the process, you know. And you've also got the gate because he's got his foot. Right. Yeah. So there's a whole movement thing here. Yeah. And in the opening episode, there's you with a sledgehammer. Right. Yes. The world ain't set up for the honest man to succeed. You keep yourself busy, active. That should be the American dream right there. That was the first shot, yeah. You know, beautiful story with a happy ending. Was that the first shot? First shot of the show? Yeah, it was the first day walking the elevator door opening. Yeah. Yeah. How do you get into his movement? You just spend a bit of time in your hotel room at night, like in Egypt, you know, walking around, doing laps from the couch to the television and checking yourself out in the mirror a bit. And and imagine what you feel you can sustain over over seven months as well. Not that it's that hard, but I just what you can not not in relation to protecting your body more just in relation to the continuity and what feels grounded, because the bottom line is he has this extraordinarily painful right foot that he was born with a defect in that foot. And it's just it's an enormous mental pressure. And if he's on his feet all day, it's sore at the end of that night. So it's just trying to be on top of that a little bit like the limb might be a little bit more accentuated at the end of a long day than it is first thing in the morning or, you know, but it was fun again. It was all just there was just so many facets to the character. I mean, what Matt wrote in the in the film was beautiful, but he was kind of a red herring. He was almost a little bit of comic relief, which was great. That's no complaint at all. That's what the part that's what it said in the tin. That interrogation scene with the. It was a blast, man. Oh, the hell is this? Good cop, batshit cop. But this I knew was going to get it obviously darker and it was kind of was going to have a greater degree of psychological kind of trauma, torture. Yeah, dark, dark, dark character, like dark, really dark, like darker than I would have thought having done even the five or six scenes in the film. You're going to do everything I say or else I'll murder you and anyone you care about. You got it? Yeah. And that's down to Lauren LeFranc and and her team of writers and where they wanted to go with the character and how they wanted to treat his backstory and talk about the reality that monsters are more often than not. There is kind of, I'm sure, a constitutional thing that some beings come into the world with. But monsters are often carved and shaped and formed by society and by family and by. Oh, yeah, they grow up around, of course, like his mother. And yeah, suffered. Open your eyes. Oswald, it's too much. No, perfect. Suits you, man. I mean, I absolutely love the title drop of the oh. Yeah, it was good when I read it. Oh, the line is nice. Like this is tasty. When I read it, you know, all of it was that opening scene because the first episode is out now. I think it's OK to talk about. Yeah. But the rage and what I love most is your laugh after what he's done. Yeah. Because he has a moment release. Yeah. Yeah. Who's the boss now? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, totally. And he realizes where he is, what his station is in life and the consequences and the implications of of this act of brazen, brazen impulsiveness. You must have loved that Rex speech. That was a sort of. That was fun. It was lovely, man. I mean, I was given it was such a gift to be given these scripts. You know, there's a gangster, real old school type. Rex Calabrese. He was a big deal. As I said, the Batman film itself that Matt wrote was extraordinary. And your average film script is probably 110 pages, maybe, you know, or 115. And this is probably about 450 or 500 pages. You know, it was a tome of really great material and everyone got a fair lick. You know, Kristen's work is Sofia and Renzi as Vic. And then Didi, who plays my mother. Everyone had a backstory. Everyone had some kind of version of their own internal gefilte fish to to anchor them, you know, and to explore. Can you imagine to be remembered like that? Is it easy or hard to break when you're underneath the four hours? Is everything funny when you've got the costume on? No, not quite the other way around. Like I was I felt and you can it's probably obvious to say, but I honestly felt you could put me in a room beneath all that stuff for 12 hours, put me with anyone with a bunch of feds and a bunch of gangsters. And I and I wouldn't and I could maybe I'd be shitting myself beneath the prosthetics, but you wouldn't know. You know, so many people came together to design it. It felt like a very total experience. Yeah. No room for chuckles. Not much, man. No. And I was kind of, you know, he's as much as he likes to have a laugh and he's he likes the sound of his own voice as and he's got an awkward but entertaining sense of humor, at least to me. And then go. I saw that. I agree. And then but he's also he's he's deeply miserable as well. He's deeply rageful. He's he's he's vengeful and he's. Yeah, he's incredibly paranoid. You know, so that's that was always kind of there. That's just good emotional state to be in all day. Just fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. It wasn't until it wasn't. I would have said I have to imagine there were days when you maybe had to take a video call, like one of your friends calls you up or family member and you go, I need to warn you. I am Oz'd. Oh, yeah. Are you ready for this? I had I had a call with the doctor during it. I got a bit sick during it. And I had I had the production made me call the doctor from the trailer. And I just, yeah, I had a bit of explaining to do. His expression was. And I don't think he don't necessarily assume that he knew who I was, but he might have Googled or something. But even if he didn't, it's not like where's the guy I was expecting. It's just this is a very unusual looking man I'm facing right now. I was told a 48 year old actor who's doing the thing in New York. And who are you? You seem to be a little inflamed around the everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Enlargement of everything, including the neck area. A couple of ibuprofen and you'll be fine. By the way, there's an amazing bit of IMDb trivia, because I think you and I suffer from telling a joke and people thinking it's flat out truth. Right. Do you ever get this? Yeah. Where and I just looked at it earlier when this can't be real. It can't be. But you said as a joke that there is a penguin prosthetic pecker. Right. And so now IMDb trivia has said, oh, yeah. It had Velcro. It exists. It certainly does. It's not in my house. It's not in any drawers. And it's not in any drawers in my house. You're telling me it does exist. Oh, yeah. Mike Marino leave nothing to chance. You're blushing. I am blushing. And Mike Marino left nothing to chance. Yeah, we were doing that scene in the first episode. Again in the first episode. Yeah. First episode was I mean, the whole thing was makeup heavy. But the first episode was for Mike and his team was the big one because we had the whole it was the only time you see his whole body completely naked. So that was like a seven. Usually it was three hours in the morning. That was a seven hour. Did you just say seven that that day? Yeah. How many podcasts you get through on that? None of you listen to the shite coming out of Mike's mouth and then sharing shite coming out of my mouth and then playing music and then hitting the hitting the script. And it was although we did we did watch interviews like Dick Smith, the old makeup artist, and we'd go back and watch interviews from days of Planet of the Apes and stuff like that. But no, that was. Yeah, yeah. Prosthetic being. Yeah, it was lovely. I mean, it wasn't lovely, but it was a fine piece of work or whatever. You know what I mean? It was very detailed and Mike was very happy with his work and he was very thrilled that he could he could sculpt a penis that had a had a beak because it's a penguin. It's got a beak, dude. Dude, it's got a beak. Yeah, I know. Gold. Totally. Absolutely gold. Well, we never I said to him, we're not going to see it. They're only shooting me from the waist up. I was like, go away with that thing. It was in a donut box. I say we presented it like, dude, what do you see what I got for breakfast? I know, and I have a sweet tooth, but not that morning. Not that morning. We were already swimming in very strange waters. Yeah. Again, you have to struggle not to laugh. Tell me that you got a wrap gift and it wasn't that. I got no, I took I took the ring. Yeah. Yeah. Just just as yeah, as his ring, just as a little memento of our time spent in peace and equanimity. And they gave you the plum car as well. Yeah. Oh, obviously. All right. With that one, you were like, I had enough of that. Yeah, yeah. It's got a bullet hole in the back. I don't want it. Yeah, yeah. Time for us to see other people. It's damaged. We can move on. Also, imagine if people saw you in that car. They'd be like, Colin, we know you're the penguin. We get it. I'm just trying to blend in my plum Maserati. I tell you what I love on a fan basis. I'll wrap up on this. Yeah. Is that there's a video I even saw on the way in today on Instagram, which was with one Josh Horowitz, where you're on the red carpet and you see the man, the myth, the legend Gary Oldman. Oh, yeah. I'm giving you one of these. Hey, Gary. So I'm not going to get shy now. No, I can I give you a hug? You're such a spectacular actor. Oh, that was lovely. He was so kind when he tapped in the shot. I turned around and there he was. I'm such a fan. Oh, I'd like to meet you. That's just meeting him for the first time. Really? Oh, my God. I mean, talk about a legend, you know, and somebody who I just, you know, looked up to for so long. I've got to say, he's so pure. Like, honestly. Oh, yeah. No, he was gorgeous, man. He was gorgeous. I get, yeah, very moved by things. And he was just super lovely. It's wonderful to see people respecting each other. That's great. Sir, I'm respecting you. Congratulations.