Interview: Talking ‘The Penguin’ With Showrunner Lauren LeFranc

HBO’s The Penguin is set in the Batman Epic Crime Saga Universe, which started with the release of Matt Reeves‘ The Batman. While events from that movie are referenced, most notably the climax of that 2022 film, Robert Pattinson‘s Caped Crusader is nowhere to be found, and most of the larger details that were set up within that movie are kept at a minimum.

For showrunner Lauren LeFranc, who spoke to Awards Radar on Zoom, the most important element for her in creating a Batman-less spinoff television series focused on the rise of Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) was “to create interesting, invigorating, and complicated characters. I felt like if we could do that and do it well, people would, I would hope, at least feel like they aren’t missing Batman in the way that I think a lot of people maybe came into the show, hypothetically hoping for him to show up. It felt like it would potentially detract from our characters. More than anything, I just wanted our characters and our show to stand on its own, which I know is quite a task, but with the talent that we have in our cast, crew and other writers, I’m really excited by where we ended up.”

One of the biggest discussions LeFranc had with Matt Reeves on the show was how to build this riveting character study that would ultimately end with Oz rising to power. While Oz appeared for several scenes in the movie, he did not get as much development as he should’ve. As a result, this show became the perfect opportunity to explore both in fleshing out the character and mapping out his rise to power:

“I was really excited by the idea that I could dig into him psychologically because Oz shows up in the movie in about five or six scenes, but he’s not dug deeply. Matt wished more to be able to dig into characters, but he had only a limited amount of time in the film to do that. 

I knew that we were starting a week after the film’s events. It was important to take advantage of the chaos that Gotham was experiencing and the power vacuum that would arise due to Carmine Falcone’s [Mark Strong] death. Beyond that, we knew that by the end of the series, we wanted Oz, to a certain degree, rise to power. Because this story is about a rise to power. Other than that, it was just a conversation of, “Can I use this character? Can I do this? Are you okay with me coming in?” He was always incredibly supportive, and I created the characters’ emotional arcs in a pitch early on before I had a writers’ room and everything. We were always on the same page about that.”

And is it difficult to make an entire show about a villain?

For LeFranc, “It’s hard to make a show, and it’s really hard to make a great show. It is really fun to write villains and complicated people. I came up in television when everyone’s like, “Someone has to be a hero and can’t have any flaws because people don’t want to see that!” That’s how it was when I was first starting out as a writer and what I was getting from the networks. 

So it is very freeing to me to write such a complicated guy. Oz is a jerk, that’s my tame way of putting it, but he’s funny, dark and violent. In a way, he’s thrilling to write and be in that guy’s head. Obviously, by the end of our show, it becomes less fun because it gets into darker psychologies, but I will say that it remains fun to write complicated people.”

There was obviously much more to talk about, which you can listen to in our audio interview below. However, if you have not seen the series, keep in mind that this interview contains MAJOR SPOILERS, primarily regarding the finale.

You can listen to my interview with Lauren below and stream all episodes of The Penguin on Max today:

[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]