Colin Farrell is keeping the door open for a Season 2 of Max’s acclaimed Batman series, “The Penguin.” The Irish actor, who plays criminal kingpin Oswald “Oz” Cobb, took home the Screen Actors Guild Award on Sunday for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series.
“I go off [of] and agree with what [executive producers] Matt Reeves and Dylan Clark and Lauren LeFranc have said, which is, if they came up with an idea for a second season that was really strong, and we all felt compelled to continue to explore the character of Oz in that way, then for sure,” Farrell told reporters following his win for “The Penguin” at the SAG Awards in the virtual press room.
“It all has to tie in though [to the Batman world],” he said, referring to his titular character that was introduced in Reeves’ 2022 “The Batman” movie with Robert Pattinson as the caped crusader. He is confirmed to return as Oz in the big-screen follow-up, “The Batman 2.” “Matt Reeves is the G.O.A.T. in this world of Gotham right now… He’s the boss and he established this new vision of Gotham with the Batman film.”
“It has to work in a parallel way,” Farrell theorized if “The Penguin,” which is originally billed as a limited series, were to continue. “So we’ll see what Matt Reeves and the rest of them can come up with. But yeah, I’d be open to it for sure.”
Since “The Penguin” ended in November, Farrell has been on an awards high, collecting accolades from the Golden Globe Awards, the Critics Choice Awards and the Saturn Awards, among others. He downplayed the significance of the rare awards momentum for a genre show.
“Maybe I’m just too self-centered that I don’t feel the weight of representing the genre that this is of — the crossover world from the pulp of comic book,” Farrell said, citing being a fan of other Batman properties like the “Batman ’66” comic books.
“To be honest with you, I don’t feel like I’m setting any benchmark. I feel like what I’m doing is joining an already established lineage of wonderful actors to create great characters, and it’s just a different interpretation but all this is lovely, man. None of us really saw any of it coming… It’s very, very rewarding.”
If and when the decision is made to bring “The Penguin” back (and that remains to be seen), it will force HBO to move its eligibility from limited series to drama series, which is a far more competitive category. But the move isn’t unprecedented — FX’s “Shōgun” was initially billed as a limited series before it was switched to drama and HBO’s “Big Little Lies” competed in drama categories after it won multiple limited series awards for Season 1.
Earlier in the evening, presenter Jamie Lee Curtis revealed that Farrell had given her COVID at the Golden Globes after he announced him as the winner.
When he went onstage to accept the award, Farrell confirmed that to be true: “Guilty as charged! But Brendan Gleeson f**king gave it to me! So I was just spreading the love.”
