The Batman: Colin Farrell Calls Penguin Makeup “Absolute Liberation” as an Actor

After multiple pandemic-related delays, The Batman is finally hitting theaters tonight. There’s an exciting line-up of stars in Matt Reeves’ new DC film, including Colin Farrell, who plays Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobblepot AKA The Penguin. Farrell went through an extreme makeup transformation to become the iconic villain, and even revealed that the scarred, pock-marked face “horrified” his son. Today, a new episode of Hot Ones was released with Farrell as the guest, and the star revealed that wearing the prosthetics was “absolute liberation” as an actor.

During the episode, host Sean Evans brought up Tom Holland’s appearance on Hot Ones and how the actor talked about the challenge of playing a role while wearing a mask, and wondered how Farrell’s “unrecognizable” look in The Batman “shaped” or “informed” his performance. 

“For me, it was absolute liberation,” Farrell shared. “I thought that it would be very limiting. I really did, I thought I’d be just oppressed by this – and it was totally the opposite. When the piece moves as well as the piece that was designed for the Penguin moved, my eyebrows moved to my cheeks and my smile, it was f*cking insane. I didn’t have any fear that Colin could be seen through.” You can check out Farrell’s full Hot Ones episode below:

During a recent interview with Collider, Farrell revealed that he went to Starbucks in the Penguin makeup.

“The first day we tried the whole thing out, we took it for a drive – a spin, metaphorically speaking,” Farrell shared. “We did it in Burbank. It took about six or eight hours. It was a team of 10 or 15 people. And it was really fun. I went into Starbucks and ordered myself a very un-Oswald drink, an oat milk latte with two stevia sweeteners. I got a couple of stares but only because it’s such an imposing look. [Designer] Mike Marino did so much of the work for me on this, so much of the heavy lifting.”

The Batman already has a spin-off in development for HBO Max which is set to follow Farrell’s Penguin. During an interview with SFX Magazine (via Games Radar), producer Dylan Clark spoke about the upcoming series and compared it to Scarface. 

“We’re doing one with Colin [Farrell, as Oswald Cobblepot], seeing Oz rise to power, almost like a ‘Scarface’ story,” Clark shared. “It’s exciting to do something like that just as a standalone, but it speaks to the character and our movie, so that you’ll go back to the movie [and say], ‘Oh, I see that backstory there, that line refers to this’.”

The Batman is now playing in theaters.