Pennyworth Star Jack Bannon Chose Not to Read Comics to Prepare for Alfred Role

FOX and Warner Bros. TV spent five years developing a Batman prequel series in the form of Gotham, which showed the iconic DC Comics city in the formative years of young Bruce Wayne, beginning with the night of his parents' murder. Now that the series has ended, producers Danny Cannon and Bruno Heller are taking things back even further into the Dark Knight mythos with Pennyworth, a series all about Batman's butler.

That said, this new Epix series isn't at all what fans will expect from a show about a butler. It takes place in London in the 1960s and follows a 26-year-old version of Alfred Pennyworth through a flurry of espionage and violence. Pennyworth is an incredibly different take on the story of the Butler, so star Jack Bannon had to take his own unique approach when preparing for the character.

The cast and creators of Pennyworth took some time to chat with ComicBook.com at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, and Bannon told us a bit about his process bringing Alfred to the screen.

"Well, it's a daunting list of actors to join," Bannon said. "But I look at it that I'm not following them because I'm earlier in the story, so they're following me. That gets me off the hook in my head. Bruno had written such a deep and complex version of him anyway, so the script was my bible really, rather than comics. He had some great ideas and we sort of came up with him together."

Bannon goes on to confirm that he stuck to the scripts instead of the comics, mainly because the story of Pennyworth takes place before Batman's parents were even together.

"I went with the script because there's such a wealth of knowledge out there. It was quite daunting so the script was my bible," he added. "And a lot of this takes place before the comics anyway, so we're filling in those blanks beforehand. So actually I made a conscious decision to not do that."

You can watch the full interview with the Pennyworth cast and crew in the video at the top of the page.

Pennyworth is set to premiere on Epix on Sunday, July 28th.