SPOILERS are ahead for Batman: Caped Crusader, now streaming with an Amazon Prime subscription.
As we await Colin Farrell to reprise his The Batman role for the Max Penguin series this fall, another great iteration of the comic book villain has arrived with Minnie Driver’s version in Batman: Caped Crusader. The Good Will Hunting and Tarzan actress is the voice behind the first baddie to show up in the new Amazon series, and she had a blast bringing something new to the table with what she described as an “androgynous” take.
CinemaBlend caught up with Minnie Driver when the actress did press for the series at San Diego Comic Con alongside the new Batman voice, Hamish Linklater, and a different version of Harley Quinn, played by Jamie Chung. Here’s what she said about playing the first female Penguin:
Well, it's amazing because a lot of times today we're trying to redress the balance of the world, through representation and minorities in film and animation. You sometimes feel that things have been shoehorned in perhaps, maybe more than really organically. This is organic, like it is completely believable that this bizarre, strange, larger than life character is genderless because it's the essence of Penguin is really what we're looking at, which is the essence of the original comics and the original animated [series].
As Driver also shared, she felt like it makes a lot of sense for Penguin to be genderless due to the character itself being this “creature” that defines herself more as an animal than human. Minnie Driver also spoke to the influences she looked to when playing this Penguin, who is part of the established 1940s world in Caped Crusader:
You remember how, like Marlene Dietrich, she always wore men's suits and things? So I watched a little bit of that because when I'm singing, I'm wearing that when I'm performing at the very beginning of the show, I'm actually wearing a suit, and I then go and change with this dress.
This Penguin makes her debut by being this cabaret singer in a club who wears Penguin’s suit before slipping into a dress for a scene directly after. Driver was inspired by the beloved German actress from the silent film era, who would switch between suits and gowns like this Penguin does. As Driver continued:
I think seeing the Penguin as a mother is really and also particularly – I don't want to give too much away like what she does to her children – it's really dark and it's really twisted and I think that is what fits into Batman. I mean, it’s a great reimagining, but it's hard to say because she's definitely a very new character but I saw shades of Danny DeVito and Colin Farrell [in the new version].
Once she mentioned the actors who have most famously played Penguin in other live-action Batman movies, I asked the actress what she would pick the brains of Farrell and DeVito about regarding the role they now share if she could. In her words:
I don't know, I'm sure they had an enormous amount of fun playing the character because it is so strange. Like, I love the fact that Oswalda, like, she's a penguin. She's at sea, like in this boat. Like, literally, it's her iceberg, it's her literal home. There are so many kinds of beautiful analogous jokes. I'd love to ask them about what kind of the things that they enjoyed that have been sort of personal Easter eggs, like in their movies and TV, show? Like, what did they get a kick out of? Because, that was my favorite thing.
Driver’s version doesn't get nearly as much screen time than the versions from past movies, but it certainly helps establish a new vision for Gotham in the '40s setting of Caped Crusader. The series produced by Matt Reeves, J.J. Abrams and Bruce Timm has to do something different, doesn’t it? We’ve had so many great iterations of the DC comic series that it was about time for an animated reinvention.
Caped Crusader has already been renewed for a second season at Amazon, so we’ll get to see what comes of that Joker tease at the end of Season 1. Here’s hoping Minnie Driver’s version of Penguin gets to send chills down our spines in new ways for Season 2 as well.
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