Colin Farrell's Penguin Series Casts Joker and Sopranos Actor
Colin Farrell's Penguin series is getting some street cred. New set photos from The Batman spin-off reveal John Cenatiempo, whose credits include episodes of HBO's The Sopranos and DC's Joker, has been cast in an undisclosed role opposite Farrell as Gotham gangster Oswald "Oz" Cobblepot. Cenatiempo joins a cast that includes Cristin Milioti (The Sopranos) as Cobblepot's chief gang war rival, Sofia Falcone, daughter of mob boss Carmine Falcone (John Turtorro); Clancy Brown (Dexter: New Blood) as crime boss Salvatore Maroni; and Rhenzy Feliz (Runaways), Michael Kelly (Man of Steel), Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Expanse), and Deirdre O'Connell (Daredevil) in undisclosed roles.
See the first look at Canetiempo's character in the photo below.
John Cenatiempo has been cast in a mystery role for ‘The Penguin’ series!
— The Art of The Batman (@thebatfilm) March 11, 2023
The actor, pictured on set here next to Colin Farrell, previously featured in ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘Joker,’ and ‘The Irishman.’ pic.twitter.com/o7KGaFrbaS
A veteran actor, Cenatiempo's credits include crime and action films Lethal Weapon 3, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Bad Boys II, The Departed, American Gangster, and Boardwalk Empire. On television, Cenatiempo played crime family crew member Tony "Black" Maffei in seven episodes of The Sopranos and Vincent Lamb in Magic City. Most recently, Cenatiempo appeared in the role of a Gotham City police officer in DC and Warner Bros. Joker and as gangster Nico 'The Package' Bugliosi opposite Sylvester Stallone in the crime drama series Tulsa King.
Lauren LeFranc (Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Impulse) is writing, executive producing, and showrunning the series now filming in New York City. The Batman writer-director Matt Reeves and executive producer Dylan Clark are executive producing the series, which follows Farrell's Cobblepot as he rises through the darkened ranks to become the Penguin.
"The Penguin show is dark, but I've just got such license to explore in it, and such a freedom beneath the makeup," Farrell recently told Gold Derby in an interview for his Oscar-nominated movie The Banshees of Inisherin. "There's some kind of permission you're given to explore in a way that's hard to give yourself when it's just your visage, you know? So I'm super excited about it."
The eight-episode series is "f-ing great stuff," Farrell said, adding that the Penguin make-up "is somehow, in a very subtle way, even better. It's just more perfected."
The Penguin is now in production and will stream on HBO Max.