Cristin Milioti and Matt Reeves interview: Into the pulsating world of ‘The Penguin’ and Gotham’s underbelly

Hotshot actor Cristin Milioti and ‘The Batman’ filmmaker Matt Reeves discuss the eight-episode DC Studios series, Colin Farrell’s epic transformation into the role of Penguin, and what makes Gotham City persist

For years — a decade, almost — Cristin Milioti was simply known as The Mother to fans of How I Met Your Mother, a role with which she broke hearts and had audiences clamouring for a rewrite of her character to keep her alive.

Then in 2020, her life changed after starring in the dazzling time-loop rom-com Palm Springs that was a surprise Sundance darling and captivated audiences globally, and Cristin quickly became one of Hollywood’s hottest properties. After striking further gold with two back-to-back shows, Made for Love and The Resort, the New Jersey native is poised to take on her biggest challenge yet: enter the world of TheBatman.

This week, she stars in the role of the villainous Sofia Falcone (Carmine Falcone’s daughter) in The Penguin, a spin-off miniseries that follows the events of Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson’s The Batman (2022), opposite none other than Colin Farrell.

Cristin, a self-confessed Batman fangirl, is ecstatic as she talks about her character of Sofia facing off against another iconic foe from the Gotham universe. “Sofia and the Penguin are adversaries for sure, but I think what we also get to explore a little bit is how kindred they are and how they’re pretty connected. Yes, they are also very different, but there are ways in which they have this similar level of hunger for power; they are excellent adversaries for each other because they know each other so well.”

“The comic book world is what is so intriguing about Batman. That’s why I’m such a huge fan and that’s not lip service — I’ve genuinely wanted to play a Batman villain since I was like six. One of the things I really like about it is that no one has superpowers; it’s just an extremely heightened version of our world. Regardless of whether you’re talking about the Tim Burton ones or the Christopher Nolan ones, they’re all heightened,” she adds.

Meanwhile, Matt Reeves, who took on the mantle of helming the Batman films from Christopher Nolan in 2022, comes on as executive producer for The Penguin. The visionary filmmaker behind titles such as Cloverfield and War for the Planet of the Apes, says that what they were trying to do was tell the story of “a dark American dream” of somebody possessing tremendous ambition with no bounds, and willing to do anything to get it. “This is not just a narrative about how Oswald Cobblepot (Penguin’s original name) begins that path toward becoming the kingpin that we all know, but also about the internal parts of that character. Who is he? What is his rage inside and what are his wounds? What kind of void does he need to fill?” Matt shares.

He continues, “But he’s always going to be unhappy, angry and raging no matter what. This kind of crime story relates to a very broken male character like Oz; a lot of times, when you see a character who has a lot of that hyper-testosterone aspect, it comes from a feeling of great inadequacy and weakness. In a way, the most illuminating part of this guy grabbing for power is the weakness within, and the tragedy of that.”