John Turturro Reveals Why He Turned Down Returning as Falcone for The Penguin

John Turturro is done with Don Falcone. The Severance actor played Gotham City crime boss Carmine Falcone opposite Robert Pattinson in 2022’s The Batman, where he was shot dead by the Riddler (Paul Dano). Falcone returned, via flashback, in episode 4 of the HBO series The Penguin, this time portrayed by DC veteran Mark Strong (Green Lantern and Shazam!). It was initially reported that the role was recast due to scheduling conflicts, but in a new interview, Turturro explained he didn’t reprise the character in part because of the amount of violence against women in the Batman spinoff series.

“I did what I wanted to with the role,” Turturro told Variety about his turn as the Batman villain. “In the show, there was a lot of violence towards women, and that’s not my thing.”

Although Turturro’s Falcone strangles a woman in The Batman, and is revealed to have killed his daughter Selina Kyle’s (Zoë Kravitz) mother before the events of the movie, the violence “happens off-screen,” Turturro said. “It’s scarier that way.”

However, in The Penguin, flashbacks to 2012 revealed that the Falcone Don committed the Hangman murders he pinned on his daughter, Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), who he had remanded to Arkham Asylum. She has since rechristened herself Sofia Gigante after learning that Carmine strangled her mother, Isabella Gigante, and staged her death as a suicide by hanging.

“You can’t do everything you want to,” Turturro added of his schedule, which includes the Pedro Almodóvar film The Room Next Door and the upcoming second season of Apple TV’s Severance.

“Initially, did we want to be able to have John come back and be Carmine Falcone? Of course,” The Penguin creator and showrunner Lauren LeFranc previously told EW of the recasting. “John’s a really talented actor and was exceptional in the film, but once we realized that his schedule wasn’t going to work out for our show, it became quickly about who has that sort of gravitas and ferociousness, that Mark Strong actually does have. It was really exciting to see how those scenes turned out because he was so seminal to Sofia’s story. We certainly weren’t going to not have Carmine in our story. We very specifically plotted Sofia’s arc to be interwoven with Carmine’s arc, as well.”

Addressing Turturro’s recent comments to Variety, LeFranc told TheWrap, “I completely respect an actor who doesn’t want to take on a role for whatever their personal reasons. I only want people to join our show who are excited and want to further the story we’re trying to tell. I think Mark Strong did a really fantastic job. He made the character his own and also really honored what John Turturro did.”

“To my knowledge it was due to scheduling conflicts,” she added of Turturro turning down The Penguin. LeFranc engaged in talks with Reeves, who directed The Batman and serves as executive producer on The Penguin, about how the show would “deepen” the depiction of Carmine Falcone as a killer and his violence against women.

“Carmine in the movie killed Selina Kyle’s mother and then does try to actively kill Selina, and also kills Annika — Selina’s friend,” LeFranc explained to TheWrap. “I think it’s been established, and Matt and I are in agreement on this, that Carmine’s a very violent man and has a violent streak against women.”

New episodes of The Penguin, starring Colin Farrell, premiere Sundays on HBO and Max.