The Batman’s Colin Farrell Reveals the Hardest Accent to Pull Off

After many pandemic-related delays, Matt Reeves’ The Batman is finally playing in theatres. The movie features a star-studded cast, including Colin Farrell as Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobblepot AKA The Penguin. Farrell has been working hard in Hollywood for over 25 years and is best known for films such as Minority Report, Daredevil, The New World, In Bruges, Fright Night, The Lobster, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and many more. Farrell is Irish, but he’s played many different types of people throughout his career with varying accents. This week, the star appeared on Hot Ones and talked about some of his favorite films as well as playing Penguin in The Batman, and he also revealed which accent is the hardest to pull off. 

“Honest to God, I’ve tried a couple of times to do, I don’t know what you would call it, ‘standard American.’ When someone says ‘standard American accent,’ and I find that the trickiest,” Farrell replied when asked which “was the most tedious or most time-consuming to learn.” He added, “Because generalities don’t really help you as an actor.” He went on to explain that “it just sounds general” and “vague.” “It almost sounds insulting. It sounds like you’re not respecting the character or the project or the script.” You can watch Farrell’s full episode of Hot Ones below:

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’.”

During another recent interview with MovieMaker, Farrell revealed that his version of the Penguin was inspired by another famous movie mobster, Fredo, the character played by John Cazale in The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II. 

“There’s a certain amount of brokenness in Oz that, I think, as a reference, not for me performance-wise, but just emotionally, as a reference for Matt – I think Fredo from The Godfather was a bit of a reference,” Farrell explained. 

“Matt was just talking about somebody who had very real and very lofty ambitions, but never really had the opportunity or the chance to explore them, and was maybe looked upon as someone who was handicapped, whether it was psychologically, intellectually – Fredo was frowned upon as less than the other brothers, and maybe Oz as well, in his life, was looked upon as somebody who wasn’t capable,” Farrell added. “And so that’s one of the things that fuels Oz.”

The Batman is now playing in theaters.