Colin Farrell on transforming into the Penguin for his new TV series, setting up his foundation

Colin Farrell, who has won two Golden Globe awards for his memorable performances in "In Bruges" (2008) and "The Banshees of Inisherin" (2023), recently talked to us about his latest TV miniseries, "The Penguin," based on his DC Comics character Penguin. He also talked about his newest foundation, the Colin Farrell Foundation, which provides support for adult children navigating intellectual disabilities in all areas of life.

Created by Lauren LeFranc for HBO, "The Penguin" is a spinoff from the film "The Batman" (2022) which explores the Penguin's rise to power in Gotham City. Focusing on Farrell's character Osgood "The Penguin" Cobb in the film's aftermath, the series also stars Cristin Milioti (Sofia Falcone/The Hangman), Rhenzy Feliz (Victor "Vic" Aguilar), Dairdre O'Connell (Francis Cobb), Clancy Brown (Salvatore Maroni) and Michael Zegen (Alberto Falcone).

Below the 48-year-old Irish actor talked to us about his transformation into the Penguin in his new TV miniseries in a press conference held after the screening of an episode of "The Penguin." Following are excerpts from our interview with Farrell at the Golden Globe Foundation discussion on behalf of his newly launched foundation, the Colin Farrell Foundation.

The Penguin

What did you draw on to help prepare for this role? Did you study previous iterations of this character, and if so, what did you want to take with you or leave behind from those?

I was speaking to somebody earlier and they referenced Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, and I never for a second thought of Ratso Rizzo once. But there's no doubt that every single film I've seen—someone else last week said to me that having seen the first two episodes, that Oz reminded them of De Niro in The Untouchables as Al Capone.

Someone else said James Gandolfini. So, it's not an original performance apparently. What I mean is, all of them are in there. Like, I've seen Untouchables twice, I've seen Midnight Cowboy four times. Anything, as an actor, anything you ever see, any piece of music you ever hear, it all kind of meets you inside in a place that gets used, gets filtered through every single character you do in lesser or greater ways.

So, there was nothing particular that I thought of. When I read the script first for The Batman, and I said this before, I was kind of a bit baffled as to what I could do with it or how I would look. I met Matt Reeves to talk about The Batman and I had just come off a thing called The North Water that I'd put on 50 or 60 pounds for.

And he was like, oh my god, you look great, the body's great. And I was like, say goodbye to it because I'm dropping pounds now. I've got to get healthy again. I just finished being bigger for like six months. And then, of course, the technology of bodysuits.

And then Matt said, have you been talking to Mike Marino, and I said, yeah. And he said, have you seen what you're going to look like? And I said, what I'm going to look like sounds like a threatening statement almost. No, I haven't. And Matt went, come here, come here, and he opened up his computer on his desk in London and this was about six months before we started shooting The Batman, and he said look.

And I looked at this creation, and I, like, Matt was confused initially when he saw it. I was confused by it. But it spoke to me so clearly. It spoke with a sense of history, a sense of threat, a sense of violence. Also, there was something sorrowful about the visage as well.

Photo courtesy of HBO

It was just so complex. So, I had that, I had the script, and then I started in with Lauren and her team of writers created it from the ground up. They took just a seedling at best, which was what we did in The Batman film. And they created this whole world of these complex characters inhabited by DeeDee as Francis and Rhenzy as Victor and Cristin as Sofia.

And every single character she paid attention to. It's not just The Penguin Oz show. It's all these human beings that are so complex and multifaceted and I just knew that we were going to get to look into the engine of this guy personally in an interesting way. There was no particular reference point.

Danny DeVito and I shared a few texts back and forth, but that was more about taking the piss out of each other about who's the best Penguin. I sent him pictures of our action figures. And we talked about who has the best action figures. But nothing too serious or weighty.

How did you find that daily process? Did it change for you as the weeks and months of the shoot went on? Were you able to Zen out more? How did it evolve for you?

Just seamless and the first application, which was about six months before The Batman film was eight hours, but there wasn't a crew waiting to shoot. It was everyone was taking their time. The full thing wasn't fully green lit yet. We knew it was designed. They had the pieces done up. And we had someone who was doing the hair, someone who was doing the hair on the back of the hands, someone who was doing the wig, someone who was doing the teeth.

It was a whole process with 10 or 11 artists on a sound stage in Burbank. It was one of the most magical days I've had in 25 years of working as an actor. I was so giddy with excitement. I was like I can't believe I'm getting done up to be The Penguin. This is mad.

And it was extraordinary. Then after that, we made the film. We got it down to five hours, then four, and then with the TV show, we had three hours every day. It was a magic time for me because the makeup crew is a bunch of misfits. There are just fucking the color of the hair, the fucking tattoos everywhere, piercings, and they are the sweetest spirited people and brilliant artists across the board.

I felt like the circus was in town every morning that I stepped into the makeup trailer, and we had our trailer that was just for Penguin. No one could come in because the last thing you want to do is have somebody come in when the nose is half on.

I'd get very shy and very vulnerable if someone saw me only half prepared. I wanted to just keep the secret for myself as well which is why I was wearing the balaclava in the read-through. But it was a great time for me because we'd go in, we'd have our coffee, we'd all have a hug, I'd shave, sit in the chair, and then we'd start the clock, and it was about three hours.

And we'd play music, and we'd catch up with each other and then I'd hit the script, and I'd think about the scenes that were coming up. And I loved the three-hour process. It never felt like three hours. It always felt like two hours and 57 minutes, so it flew.

But it was really, it was an additive experience for me. It wasn't something that was a drag. It was never a drag. By the end of the, by two hours and 54 I'd start to get a little agitated and I'd Walk out and then he'd be following me just doing the last little tip at the door.

How do you manage to get out of the dark world of the Penguin, and why do you think you turned out to be such?

How does Colin manage to get out of the headspace kind of thing? I mean, by the time we finished shooting the show, I was done. I was just like, it was such an honor to do this, truly. I was a fan of Burgess Meredith when I was six or seven years of age.

I was watching Burgess Meredith through Batman '66, and then Danny DeVito in Tim Burton's film. Just to be part of this canon was such an honor. But it was so well drawn, all the characters and their journeys were so well drawn, whether it was somebody's ascent to power like Oz's, it was also coinciding with his descent into madness and psychopathy, but by the end of it, I was knackered.

Taking the makeup off at the end of every day was helpful. As much as the process of putting the makeup on that took two hours and 57 minutes was helpful to get me into character for the day, at the end of the day it was a 45-minute removal, and by the end of the removal, the relief after being in it for 15 hours, like, not poor me.

Just being in it, it was great. Don't get me wrong. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. But the relief of that s--- coming off after 15 hours at the end of every day, it was like being reborn. Every day it was like a birth. You were like being born back to yourself. It was significant.

But by the end of it, I was grumpy because it's so dark and he's such a remorselessly cruel character by the end—I say that with affection and not judgment—I was in a bit of a funk by the end. I was glad to be done. As much as I thought in the film that Matt knew well that I wanted to do more than the five or six scenes, which I was still delighted to have, I got greedy during the film.

Like, can't we do more? I think I've had this enough. Done enough at the end of the eight hours. But yeah, I watched Pixar films. I'd go back to my hotel room and put on Finding Nemo. In my life, I had to watch light stuff. I wouldn't watch any dark material. Like, honest to God, Finding Nemo is the answer. I could have got that much quicker.

Photo courtesy of HBO

There's one incident in his life that's revealed throughout the show that was probably more consequential than anything else regarding directing him toward the man he becomes. But what led him to that incident predates the incident, of course, and it was something inside of him.

He was born with a physical limitation but really emotionally crippling for him, and psychologically crippling. And he felt others in a way that wasn't great. It wasn't an aspirational other. He felt subjugated by his limitation and what he was told his limitation was.

He was bullied. He was treated cruelly by society. I'm not justifying any act, but more often than not, when somebody commits an act of cruelty in this human experience, we all share, you will find out that they had been treated cruelly at some stage in their timeline.

And so, Oz had been treated with great cruelty. Not by his mother. He'd been treated with love by his mother. But even with the perfect health that both of his older brothers live in, he was secondary or tertiary. His mother was, as Lauren designed and as DeeDee was touching on, his mother was the greatest influence in his life.

But there was no amount of love that he could receive even from her that would have ameliorated the pain that he didn't know how to manage within himself, and that's something that comes out later and in this tale over eight hours in all sorts of grotesquely consequential ways.

I'm a big fan of nature/nurture Darwinian. I've known people who have come from broken homes and violent homes, and they've gone on to do the most extraordinary compassionate things in their lives for themselves and their immediate family and their friends and the community as a whole.

I've known people who have come from very privileged, very loving households, and they have made a dog's dick of their lives. And they have then gone through some healing and stuff, but they've hurt people, a lot of people. So, there's nothing linear in this experience and what it is to be a human being.

But Oz certainly has a back catalog of a lot of pain and a lot of uncertainty in his past. And that was the beautiful thing about getting to do this show, was not just having something cool and violent and rock and roll, which at times is cool, at times it is very violent, at times it is rock and roll. But all of the characters are kind of – nothing's justified, but we get to have a look at why people are the way they are.

And is there forgiveness? Is there redemption? Is there a point where you've gone too far? By the end of the show, no spoiler alerts, but Oz has gone too far and there's no coming back. He has dropped into a certain psychological place in his life, and that's where he belongs now.

Who knows what the future holds? It was the job that both Matt did in creating it originally and working closely with Lauren and her team of writers in fleshing out all of these characters with the nuance that she did.

The Colin Farrell Foundation

Farrell, who has two sons—James, 21, and Henry, 14—mentioned in his speech after winning Best Actor for "The Banshees of Inisherin" at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards that they are the two loves of his life.

James, his son with model Kim Bordenave, was diagnosed with Angelman syndrome, a rare neuro-genetic disorder that is characterized by developmental delays, lack of speech, seizures, and impaired balance and is often misdiagnosed as autism or cerebral palsy.

Since that diagnosis, Farrell has become an advocate for the disorder and consequently established the Colin Farrell Foundation.

In our interview with Farrell at the Golden Globe Foundation, he talked more about his advocacy.

What is the biggest lesson you've learned in your experience in creating your foundation, in terms of the subject of intellectual disabilities and also in terms of working within the world of philanthropy? And how taxing has it been for you emotionally?

The biggest thing I've learned is more of a confirmation of what I already suspected based on my own experience, rather than anything that was a eureka moment of, "Oh, I didn't know that was happening." What I mean by that is the reason why the foundation was established was that I, with all my very many means, with all the good fortune I've had in my life, in my career, and financially as a result of that career over the last 25 years, I'm in a position now as one of James' two primary care givers—his mother and I —struggling to find and figure out what the rest of his life is going to look like. And particularly the next chapter, as he turned 21 on Thursday.

Now, of the benefits that have been locked in place and the firewalls that offer him safety and security and a form of inclusion and community, after-school programming, all that stuff, it's all gone away. Looking at the next chapter of James' life and what it's going to be like, because for 21 years he's been under the umbrella of his mother's care and my care. He's been offered a certain amount of assistance by the state and by the federal government. It's all gone, and so it's a new world.

Even, as I say, with the means that I have, it's a struggle to particularly find suitable residential care, somewhere where James can go and live—and live a happy and connected life where he feels like he belongs within the community, where he can be challenged, where he can be taken care of, and treated with a similar version of the love that myself and his mother have been able to share with him over the years. In realizing that, I thought, 'Oh my God if I'm having these difficulties, what about all the other families out there that don't have anything close to the means that I have?'

The confirmation I got of the horror of my suspicions about the degree of struggle that families with a child who was becoming an adult with special needs were confirmed by the response to the piece that I did in People. Within the first two days, we received 8,000 emails... from the first two days, 8,000... and Paula Evans, who's the CEO of the Colin Farrell Foundation, can confirm that she has responded to every single one of them. I have 14,000 emails on my Gmail account. If I can do four emails a day, that's a busy day for me. But everyone was responded to it.

The depth of struggle and the horror of fear that is utter powerlessness in the face of trying to guarantee security... None of us can guarantee security or a secure life for our children, whether our children have special needs or whether our children are typical, as we would say. Life is full of mystery. Life is full of challenges. None of us know what's coming around the next corner—but the dearth of support that is there for families who are living with and caring for a child with special needs, particularly as they get older, is astonishing, and it's cruel, and it's just apathy and it's just lack of action. It's absolute inaction. And it's just money again. It's just money going into all the wrong places. It's beholden to us as a species and as a race of people, as human beings. I think everyone in this room can confirm that we are at our best, humans are at their best when they're caring for others.

That was the biggest surprise, but also the degree of positivity and the support. It's been astonishing because it's easy to get down on the world. There's fracture everywhere. Some ideologies conflict with each other. There are philosophies. All sorts of energies are brushing up against each other in this world. Some of it's on a global stage, in war zones. Some of it's on the streets of LA or the streets of Dublin. There's just a lot of agitation. And what the founding of the Foundation showed me was that people are tired of that. They are. They just want to have a space where their decency and kindness and their desire to connect can be articulated, without any philosophical, political or ideological differences coming into play. That's one of the most powerful things about caring for others is, it allows us to go, "Look, let's check all that b------- at the door. Let's not talk about politics."

When we do the gala in December in Chicago, there'll probably be between 900 and 1,200 people in the ballroom when we do that evening. There will not be politics spoken once. There will not be anything philosophical or ideological. We're there for one reason, to express our love for our children—and our children will all be born of different political homes, but that will be pushed to the side where it belongs, so it will just be about care and how do we provide as best an opportunity for our kids to live as full of life as possible. That's cool. It's exciting, you know?

Photo courtesy of the Golden Globe Foundation

There's a children's hospital in Dublin called Our Lady's. It's in Crumlin. Crumlin is the area that this children's hospital is in. That hospital has been the victim of incredible underfunding for decades. The hospital does not have the equipment it should have, and staff are overworked and underpaid, as is often the case in hospitals all around the world. It was a place that I used to go with my sister every Christmas when I was home in Dublin. Claudine would call up the toy shop in Dublin.

I think it was Barry's Toy Store, or whatever the toy store was. We would try and find out loosely what kids, because a lot of the sick children in Crumlin would be allowed out for Christmas day, so it wasn't the busiest day of the year—but there were still a lot of kids there, a lot of kids with everything going on, from sickle cell to leukemia to all manner of cancers, and a lot of families with them. There were a lot of mothers, fathers and siblings spending Christmas Day by the bedside of their sick sibling or their sick daughter or their sick son.

We would fill up two big vans full of toys and we would go out to Our Lady's. There was never any press there or anything. It had nothing to do with the press, although there's nothing wrong with that if actors and singers go in and there's press there, that's great. I'm not judging that, but we just did it under the radar. We did it every Christmas for six or seven years, whenever we were home in Dublin. We'd go out at about 12 o'clock in the day and we'd stay there 'til three or four in the afternoon. We'd go through the different wards, and we'd just give out toys. It was a strange thing because you want to be respectful—but not everyone wants to see you. You can't just go, "I am an actor, happy Christmas!"

You're stepping into a very serious domain where people are struggling and they're dealing with mortality. They're dealing with their sons and their daughters, who are in many ways terminally ill. Doing that opened my eyes to the good fortune that I had and how I may be able to help, in a small way. I mean, we're talking for four hours over 365 days, so it's not like I was doing a lot—but it felt good. Not in the way that I didn't feel above anyone or anything like that. I didn't feel the intoxicating allure of fame in those four hours.

It was a really heartbreaking and tough four hours to experience. Tough, but also incredibly beneficial to my soul from a self-serving perspective. I felt incredibly connected to the parents—and it was just a case of paying honor and saying, "I see you. I'm sorry for what you're going through. You're extraordinarily brave. I wish you all the best going forward. There's a toy that's probably four years too young for your child."

We did our best in trying to fit the toys with the kids, but I'd leave that hospital filled with love and concern and gratitude. They were the most profound Christmas moments I've ever had. They were both the best and the worst Christmas moments I ever had; being afforded the opportunity to be in the hospital and sharing the beauty and the sorrow and the struggle—but from a very distant perspective.

I would share a little bit about the beauty and the sorrow and the struggle of what those families were going through. I'd also get frustrated on seeing that things weren't the way they should have been, as they aren't anywhere around the world. There are very few places and very few countries—maybe in Scandinavia they do a little bit of a better job of it than most of us in the Western world, but whether it's Ireland or whether it's America, there are very few places in the world that really give the kind of attention and care to those who are sick, particularly children and those who are aged and infirm. It's usually at the bottom end of life, at the origin of life, the beginning of a journey, a child's journey, and towards the end of life when our aged and infirm are getting close to having to cross that final river, they're neglected. They don't vote. They're neglected. They're a bleed on the state, whatever the ideologies behind it, I don't know. But that was a turning point for me.

I always knew I wanted to do something, but I've just been busy raising my own two kids. And then, as you know, I work a lot, so when I'm not working, I just want to be home with my boys and be a dad as well, because I'm very aware of time being as fleeting as it is. Now, with James being 21 and Henry 14, the boys are up and running. James is about to enter the next stage of his life, whatever that may be and wherever it may hold him, so I felt like I just had a bit more space to do something. I feel like it's early days for the Foundation, but I feel like all the film work over the last 20 years has led up to what I hope this will become.

Can you please talk about what your journey with James taught you?

What has the journey with James taught me? In many ways, James has taught me to take care of myself, through him needing me to take care of him and to be around for him. I think James was two when I got sober, and part of the fuel that I used to get straight and get off alcohol and get off drugs and all that stuff; the most significant part of the fuel, the most pure fuel I had, was knowing that James had some health issues. All children need their parents or a parent or a grandmother or somebody to care for them, but I knew that James had profound, significant developmental delays by that stage. I didn't know what direction it was going to go because he was still young enough, but he was already having seizures.

I don't know if we'd had the diagnosis of Angelman syndrome at that point. James was misdiagnosed with having cerebral palsy, which is a common misdiagnosis because cerebral palsy and Angelman syndrome share similar characteristics – but he taught me to take care of myself. He taught me to access within myself a desire to live, even if it was initially more about me thinking that I wanted to live and I needed to live to be around him. The great gift with that is the way that through the years I've found reasons that I want to live that are for me as well. A byproduct of that is being able to then put that regard back out in a purer way than it would've been before, perhaps.

James is incredibly strong, brave and strong-willed. He works so hard to achieve physical capabilities that most of us nail by the time we're two or three. He has a lot of significant struggles, but we all do. But the struggles of the people in this room – forgive me for my generalization for a second – but most of them are existential, are about emotional or psychological stuff, which is not to be sneezed at. It's very, very serious and prevalent stuff. Looking out into this room, I wouldn't know now that any of you had struggles. You're all looking at me, you all look very healthy, and you all look very present. When James walks into the room, you go, "Wow, what's that dude got going on?" It's significant. He'll never be able to take care of himself.

He has taught me the power of will and he's also taught me what he's teaching me now through the Foundation; that our responsibility and our ability to operate in our highest calling as human beings is truly when we're considering others. It really is. And again, the way that falls back on us is that somebody could say, "Yeah, but you're only helping that blind person across the road because it feels good." Of course, it feels good.

It's not an either or, it can be both. You can be doing it for pure reasons because you want to be of assistance, you want to be of care, you want to be of service – and you should acknowledge that it does feel good. Not, good in terms of, "Oh, aren't I great?" But good in terms of, "Jesus, don't I feel connected to my fellow human being through this act of service or through this act of communion?"

He's taught me a lot, but both of my boys have taught me. I do feel that both of my boys have raised me more than I could ever raise them. I know that sounds quaint. It's a bit of a fridge magnet thing to say, but it's very true. Whatever man I am today has a lot to do with my parents and my upbringing and stuff – but it's also very, very much to do with what my boys, by virtue of their mere presence in my life, has asked of me.

—MGP, GMA Integrated News