Colin Farrell wore a penis prosthesis

SPOILER ALERT: This article discusses plot points from the series premiere of “The Penguin”, now streaming on Max.

The climax of the first episode of HBO's “The Penguin” is Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) being stripped naked and tortured by Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti).

Falcone does this because she lawful suspects that Oz is responsible for the murder of Alberto Falcone, her brother and son of notorious crime boss Carmine Falcone, who was killed by Riddler played by Paul Dano in Matt Reeves' film “The Batman” (2022).

The scene is terrifying and gruesome, made even more grotesque by the fact that Oz is naked and exposed. Farrell's makeup and prosthetics team went to even greater lengths to capture Oz's, er… Physicality as accurate as possible.

Although Oz's body is not shown to the audience in its entirety, that doesn't mean the team didn't create genital prosthetics for Oz/Farrell.

Farrell emphasizes diversity how grateful he was to Michael Marino, the prosthetics designer for The Penguin, for “being kind enough to make Oz, shall we say, anatomically correct. I had some Velcro to stick on and a nice retro bush.” ​​These additional prosthetics, specifically for the torture scene, were added on top of the layers of makeup and prosthetics he already wore on his body and face to physically transform himself into the Penguin.

“It was such a surreal discomfort for me, which was strange because at the end of the day it was just makeup. It was so uncomfortable that I had to ask for a towel to cover myself between takes,” says Farrell. “It was kind of a weird psychological no man's land that you can find yourself in when you're the canvas for something as powerful as the makeup designed for it.”

He continues: “I felt incredibly exposed, even though I was anything but. I was completely covered, but I was covered by a naked man. And it's not that I thought I was him, but it had a very strange effect on my ego.”

The Penguin is a spinoff series of the crime thriller produced by HBO and is set in the world of Reeves' 2022 Batman blockbuster. The story, which begins about a week after the events of the film, describes Cobb's meteoric rise to power as one of the most notorious players in Batman's criminal gallery.

Lauren LeFranc is the showrunner of the series, which is executive produced by Reeves and director Craig Zobel. In addition to Farrell and Milioti, The Penguin stars Deidre O'Connell as Oz's mother Francis Cobb, Rhenzy Feliz as his young protégé Victor Aguilar and Clancy Brown as rival crime boss Salvatore Maroni.

The episode ends with Oz turning the tables and tricking the Falcones into believing that Maroni killed Alberto to avenge their usurpation of Maroni's criminal empire.

LeFranc wanted Oz to get out of this deadly situation to show that he is not to be played with. He is calculating, ambitious and has vision – and his ability to game the system allows him to always be two steps ahead of his opponents.

“Oz is a player; he's a schemer. He's very clever and calculating, and we obviously show in the first episode how impulsive he can be, especially when he's being laughed at and belittled,” says LeFranc. “He's very resourceful in his violence and ambition.”

“I didn't want to end on a direct cliffhanger,” she continues. “I wanted to set the tone for the audience for the kind of show we wanted to be. A guy like Oz can do all this incredible violence. This woman can torture him, and at the end of the day he can still sit there and drink a slushie and seemingly be unaffected. And that makes him a very strange character, and that's what I wanted to show.”

In the closing moments of the episode, Oz shares a slushie with Vic Aguilar, in stark contrast to the beginning of the episode where Vic tries to lift up Oz's car tire. After threatening to kill him for his transgression, Oz finally agrees to let Vic prove himself – to test him and see if Vic can stick with him to help Oz rise to the top of Gotham's criminal power.

Fun fact: For those Batman comic fans who noticed that the tire scene resembles the scene where Jason Todd is introduced to the Dark Knight himself before his eventual appearance as Robin in the comics, this parallel is intentional.

“I read a lot of comics and wanted to draw from different forms of inspiration and pay homage to things that had come before. I originally created Victor from the perspective of, 'Batman has Robin. Why can't Oz have anyone?'” says LeFranc. “In our down-to-earth criminal world, young men are realistically raised and trained to be violent in the mafia. That's part of it; it's that culture of upbringing. And so in many ways Oz really sets Victor up, and I wanted to tell a story like that.”

Vic is a street thug from Gotham's East Side. Although his relationship with Oz is initially somewhat hostile, the two develop a unique bond and fight together against the Falcones.

When asked what Vic sees in someone like Oz and why he decides to stay with him (aside from the threat Oz poses to his life, of course!), Feliz replies, “I think one of the questions going through his mind is, 'What path do I have ahead of me? If I don't go with Oz, what do I have left?'”

“He sees Oz as the answer to that question. There's a certain appeal to the life that Oz leads,” Feliz says. “There's this money, there's this power, there's just this confidence that Oz exudes, and I think Victor finds that very appealing.”

“He starts to think: ‘You know, maybe may make something of myself. Even though my life hasn't amounted to much, I now have the opportunity to be part of something bigger than myself.' That appeals to him, and even though he feels like he's making the wrong decision, it's the one he wants to choose.”

Episode 1 of The Penguin brilliantly explores the world Reeves created for The Batman and lays the groundwork for the Penguin's future in the franchise.

Here, Farrell describes the premiere's most shocking moments and what fans can expect from the series moving forward.

It's crazy to think that so much work went into creating these prosthetics that, quite frankly, were never meant to be shown to the public.

Well, we didn't know if the camera was going to do a wide shot. Mike wanted to play it safe; he doesn't leave anything to chance. I was tied to the chair for hours. I couldn't move because they had to sculpt it. They had to make the body and mold it into the position I was going to be in because you can't give that much with limbs. They had to push me from the trailer to the set in a wheelchair. The makeup took six or seven hours.

The makeup took seven hours?

I sat in the makeup chair for the first three hours, then they put me in the wheelchair for the next three or four hours. Then they rolled me about a thousand feet to the set, put me in it, and that was it for a couple of hours while we were shooting. It was cool though.

The torture scene was by far the most exciting in the episode. What was it like filming it with Cristin Milioti?

Oh my God, she's extraordinary to work with. With some actors, you have a natural familiarity with it, with some you have to work towards it and have it for the camera – and it doesn't have to exist off camera. But I had a great affinity with everything Cristin did from the beginning. She was incredibly commanding, and there was also this deep well of pain that her character operated from. One of the most incredible things Lauren did in crafting this whole narrative across eight hours of television was that she really paid attention to each individual character. Just because the show is called The Penguin, it's not just my story. I loved that.

What kind of man do you think Oz is to orchestrate his plan to hand over Alberto's body to the Falcones?

He will do whatever it takes. He is uncompromising in his uniqueness about his vision of what he needs to do. Betrayal is something he doesn't even believe in: you just do what you need to do to get ahead. And he's grown up on his own merits. I mean, his mother raised him, but he lost his two brothers at a very young age. His father was never around, so he's internalized a certain toughness. But that just means he operates in the world with an extraordinary ability to understand human behavior. Maybe not so much his own, as is often the case, but he can understand other people's behavior, needs, wants, and desires. Where their vulnerabilities are and what their weaknesses are – and he manipulates those to his own advantage, unapologetically.

How does the brazen shooting of Alberto at the beginning of the episode fit into this caricature?

So the thing with Alberto was not a plan. It was, as he tells his mother, an “impulse.” And then she says: “No, it was not an impulse. It was instinct.”

Well, you know, impulses are unguarded, uncontrolled instincts. You have an instinct for something and then you feel compelled to do it. Then the compulsion to do it and the decision to act on it becomes the manifested impulse. So he's very sophisticated. His ability to plan is extraordinary, but his impulsiveness is incredibly dangerous.

What do you think Oz sees in Vic? Why does he decide to maintain this relationship instead of literally kill it?

What I see in him is vulnerability. I probably see in him, without meaning to, an opportunity for companionship. Oz is probably lonelier than he thinks, but I think it is that vulnerability and that desire that makes Vic beg me to spare his life. The energy of that plea, the desperation of that plea, comes from a person I can get to do many different things for me. That Oz can do many different things for him.

I should stop talking about Oz in the first person. It's only been eight months…

This interview has been edited and shortened.