Colin Farrell open to returning for 'The Penguin' Season 2 after fan support

Reports of Colin Farrell's departure from The Penguin have been greatly exaggerated.

Despite earlier comments expressing frustration with the demanding makeup process, Farrell now says he's open to returning for season two, provided the writing remains as strong as the first season, News.Az reports, citing The Hollywood Reporter.

“If there’s a great idea [for season two], and the writing was really muscular and as strong or stronger on the page than it was the first season, of course I would do it,” Farrell tells The Hollywood Reporter.

It was the fan response that helped evolve his mindset, the actor says.

“For me, the bar for success is not very high. It’s, ‘Do most people like it?’ — just the simplicity of that. I love being in things that are critically approved — it’s much better than the alternative — but I’ve been around long enough [to know] that it’s the audience who are really the most important critics.”

Across eight episodes, The Penguin chronicled underworld boss Oz Cobb’s brutal rise to power. The show originally was devised as a limited series intended to simply bridge creator Matt Reeves’ 2022 film The Batman with his forthcoming 2026 sequel The Batman Part II. But the massive success has Reeves and showrunner Lauren LeFranc in talks with HBO to continue the project.

Yet for Farrell, a return to Gotham City would still come at a cost. The issue isn’t just the laborious makeup, but transforming into an obese gangster with a New York accent and a pitch-black state of mind. To make that shift, the actor took a bit of a Method approach, remaining in character his entire time on set. Just as Penguin fans on social media have said they forget Farrell when Cobb is onscreen, some of his co-stars have said they barely met the real-life Farrell — he even wore a ski mask when not in makeup to hide his face.

“Colin is a really beautiful, empathic person,” Reeves tells THR. “And so to live in that darkness, and then on top of that, to have all that latex put on day after day, I know that as much as he loved the role, it was also a kind of hell at the same time.”

THR spoke to Farrell via Zoom at his hotel room in Dublin (where he had just demonstrated how unlike the Batman villain he is in real life — running a marathon in four hours and pushing his friend with a rare skin disorder in her wheelchair during the race’s final two miles). He talked about going deep into Oz Cobb’s psyche, his favorite scene from the season and what fans can expect from The Batman Part II.

News.Az