‘The Penguin’ EP & Showrunner Lauren LeFranc On Season 2 & Subverting The Gangster Trope: “I Loved That Oz Was Just A Man” – Crew Call Podcast
It could be argued that HBO put gangsters out of business, or at least we thought they did.
Wait, what the hell do we mean by that? The Sopranos was so definitive, it rose above and reimagined the great movies that came before it, i.e. The Godfather and Goodfellas.
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Then along comes HBO Max and DC’s The Penguin. Yes, it’s about Colin Farrell getting lost in the tubby suit. However, we knew that from Matt Reeves’ The Batman. Yet, it’s Cristin Milioti’s tragic-yet-acerbic Mafia donna, Sofia Falcone, who steals the show. She’s the type who’d have no problem putting several bullets into Sonny Corleone, that is if they lived in the same universe.
On today’s Crew Call, we speak with The Penguin EP and showrunner, Lauren LeFranc who reveals how she zigged from the gangster genre’s zag.
“I never wrote a crime drama before,” the former Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. producer confesses, “I knew I wanted to subvert tropes.”
“I loved that Oz was just a man.”
Colin Farrell in ‘The Penguin’
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Her mission with Sofia was to bestow her with more three dimensions than the comics.
“I feel some of the female characters weren’t given the richness of other male characters,” says LeFranc regarding comic book dramatis personae.
“I did a spin on ‘The Hangman’ of it all, she is deemed ‘The Hangman’, but that means killing cops. I wanted to honor the comics, but I knew we weren’t trying to adapt anything.”
Rosemary Kennedy was a big inspiration for LeFranc’s Sofia Falcone; a woman who was put in a mental institution and given a lobotomy. “We never heard her story,” says LeFranc.
As far as Season 2 goes, LeFranc teases, “Beyond Colin (Farrell), it depends on whether there’s a story that we can make richer than what we’ve already done.”
“I fully arced everything,” says the showrunner, who made good on her plan to keep Penguin a limited series.
“I’m in the process of exploring what that would be, if there will be more.”
As far as other spinoff series related to The Batman“we’re in early stages” says LeFranc.
Our chat canvasses why Milioti was the right actress for the role of Sofia and why LeFranc is submitting The Penguin‘s finale for Emmy consideration.
Earlier this year, The Penguin and LeFranc won a WGA Award for Best Limited Series.
