00:00How's it going?
00:01Not bad, how are you?
00:02Good. Same.
00:03Good. If it's possible, you just keep getting better and better, Colin.
00:06Uh-oh.
00:07That's the good thing.
00:09That is a good thing.
00:10Who had the biggest reaction to your transformation?
00:12The biggest reaction?
00:13Yeah.
00:14Ah, my youngest son.
00:17He was there, Henry was there for the first.
00:19We did a make-up test about six months before the Batman film.
00:22Right.
00:23Which was, what, four or five years ago or something?
00:24Oh, God knows, yeah.
00:25Yeah, close. I think it was 2019.
00:27Anyway, we did that, and we did it in a studio in Burbank in Hollywood,
00:31and there was a team of 12 people putting it all together.
00:35It was the first time any of us were seeing it on,
00:37and Henry's auntie, my sister, Claudine, picked him up from school
00:40and brought him out when we were halfway through the process.
00:42Halfway through the process was a particularly upsetting stage
00:45because they had this big melon head, hairy chest,
00:48and then this skinny little body beneath him.
00:49That was when Henry walked into the room.
00:51So he was just appalled by what he saw.
00:53Pretty traumatized.
00:54But apart from that, I mean, it was a fairly...
00:57I never got to experience the character but from being in it.
01:00Like, I never got to...
01:01But it was a fairly...
01:02Just from what I saw in the mirror looking back, it was quite imposing.
01:05Yes. Yeah, it really is.
01:06It's still shocking people now.
01:07Very powerful.
01:08Very powerful to look in the mirror and see that looking back at you,
01:10and, you know, it was weird, weird, witchcraft.
01:13Mike Marino, the make-up designer.
01:15Incredible.
01:16Incredible. Deserves all the awards.
01:17All the awards.
01:18All the awards.
01:19You've obviously got, though, a scene there where you're completely naked,
01:22but did you actually feel naked, considering you were under all of it?
01:25I still can't quite articulate how and why that scene was as strange as it was.
01:30Because I was totally in a pair of boxers on.
01:32I was totally, you know, beneath the legs, body, arse, chest, hair, arms, everything.
01:40I was totally covered.
01:41Like, my whole body.
01:42Just my feet and my hands were me, but everything else was covered,
01:45and yet I was mortified.
01:47Really?
01:48Yeah. It was so weird.
01:49It was really, really strange.
01:51The line blurred totally between reality and self-perception.
01:57Yeah.
01:58It was so strange.
01:59It's a point where, in between takes, I'd ask them to cover me.
02:02Oh.
02:03Yeah, yeah.
02:04Fair enough, though.
02:05Can you cover my prosthetic me?
02:07Yeah, yeah.
02:08It was very strange.
02:09You do become that character, right?
02:10It was very, very weird.
02:11Yeah.
02:12Very vulnerable.
02:13The show is called The Penguin, but we barely hear him referred to as Penguin.
02:18Yeah.
02:19Is there a reason for that?
02:20It's a call to arms from the other side if somebody refers to him as Penguin.
02:23It's a derogatory term.
02:24Fine.
02:25It's something that he was called as a result of the way he walks.
02:27He walks because he's got a disability with his right foot,
02:31was born with some issues with that part of his body,
02:35and so if somebody wants to—
02:37The only one, I think, that calls me Penguin in the show is Johnny Vidi.
02:42That's it.
02:43He refers to me as Penguin twice, once before we're getting in the vans,
02:47then once when I catch him in the hotel room with someone he's not supposed to be with.
02:51So, yeah, it's a derogatory term, so that's why we don't.
02:54There was a scene at the end of the show where Oz referred to himself as the Penguin.
03:01Right.
03:02And it didn't make the cut.
03:04The scene didn't make the cut.
03:05It was a short scene, which is fine,
03:07but it was a pity because that moment was lovely
03:10because it showed him stepping into his own mythology
03:14and seeing that it could actually be a source of power to inhabit this mythos of the Penguin, you know?
03:20But I think that's where, even though the scene isn't in it,
03:22I think he's kind of probably come to the point where he sees the power and the strength in a title like that.
03:27Yeah.
03:28Like I said, though, it's getting incredible.
03:30People are just blown away by this series.
03:32It's so cool.
03:33It is.
03:34Yeah, it's really cool.
03:36But how much do opinions like that matter to you at this point in your career?
03:42Look, it doesn't make you stay in bed longer or get out any earlier, to be honest with you.
03:48But I've done enough things over the years, you know?
03:50I mean, I've been lucky enough to be working as an actor for 25 years
03:54and I've done things that have been slammed and I've done things that have been praised.
03:58And if you ask me which one is the favorite, the latter, like by a mile.
04:01Yeah.
04:02And just working with an extraordinary bunch of people, you know, 400, 500 crew on this in New York over a one year period
04:08with a strike that was imposed upon the crew halfway through for five months.
04:11Everyone was out of work.
04:12And then they came back in November to pick up where we left off and with extraordinary spirit.
04:19And I obviously worked with amazing actors, Kristen and Renzi and Dee Dee, who played my mom, Clancy Brown.
04:26I mean, everywhere you looked, it was an extraordinary cast.
04:28So just for it to work for everyone and myself, don't get me wrong.
04:32I'm not trying to say be selfless, like for me as well.
04:34But just the collective, it's just really amazing when you see so much effort put in and then you see an audience respond and really enjoy it.
04:41And there's something kind of low tech about it as well.
04:44I thought when it was coming out on Sunday, I just had an image of just people.
04:51I don't know how many now.
04:52And I'm not even saying they all had smiles on their faces, but people in their living rooms sitting around a TV.
04:57And it felt very low tech.
04:58It felt very like 50s.
05:00And I thought that's lovely because everything's getting so instantaneous and so fractured.
05:05And so everything's on fire.
05:06Heads are always down.
05:07And I just thought it was really it's really cool to be part of something that people seem to be into.
05:11Oh, I'm really happy.
05:12No, genuinely.
05:13I'm really happy for you.
05:14It's nice.
05:15It is nice.
05:16It's nice.
05:17Yeah.
05:18And it'll be like a month's time.
05:19It'll all be done.
05:20There'll be a memory and all that jazz.
05:21So enjoy it.
05:22Enjoy it.
05:23Life.
05:24So it's great.
05:25Good luck with everything else.
05:27Thank you so much.
05:28It's so good.
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