Colin Farrell credits Penguin makeup artist Mike Marino for inspiring spin-off series

Colin Farrell is happy to give credit where credit is due. He may be the one portraying Oswald Cobblepot in The Batman and its upcoming spin-off series, but it’s the makeup artists who brought The Penguin to life. So much so, in fact, that Farrell credits their work with spawning the spin-off.

Asked by Variety if he knew that the character might get his own series while filming The Batman, Farrell responded, “God, no.” However, he says, “The only thing I had an idea was that I wasn’t nearly getting to explore the character as much as I wanted to. Because there was all this extraordinary work done by [makeup artists] Mike Marino and Mike Fontaine and his team, and I just thought it was the tip of the iceberg, pardon the pun, that we were getting to do the six or seven scenes that we did in the film. I was grateful for them, but I wanted more.”

“I had a bit of a thought about it, and I talked to [producer] Dylan Clark, and Dylan had a similar thought, and we all kind of came together,” the Banshees Of Inisherin star said of the genesis of the show. “And it was really, honest to god, any thought I had about an extended series was to do with Mike Marino’s work. I just knew there was so much to do with it—age it up, age it down. He’s just such a genius, Mike, so it was his work that was the inspiration, really.”

Farrell revealed that filming will begin on The Penguin in February and “will take around five or six months,” per Variety. He’s joined by co-star Cristin Milioti, who plays Sofia Falcone, daughter of the late Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and Cobbelpot’s rival for Gotham City’s new Big Boss of the crime world. Farrell previously teased that the series picks up “about a week” after the events of The Batman, when the city is still “somewhat underwater.” He even previewed the series’ first shot: “[It] opens up on my feet splashing through the water in Falcone’s office,” he told Extra. Let the games begin!