The Penguin is often depicted in comic books with his trademark top hat, monocle and cigarette, but none of these signatures are sported by Colin Farrell in the upcoming “The Batman.” The film takes place before Oswald Cobblepot’s full transformation into the villainous Penguin. However, Farrell recently told “Jake’s Takes” that he “fought valiantly” for his pre-Penguin Oswald to smoke in “The Batman.” The studio turned down such a request.
“Big studios make big decisions around such things as the presence of cigarettes in films,” Farrell said. “I fought valiantly for a cigar. At one stage I said, ‘I can have it unlit! Just let me have it unlit.’ They were like, ‘No.’ [As if] a bunch of 12-year-olds are going to start smoking Cuban cigars because [the Penguin is smoking cigars in a movie.]”
Emma Stone had to deal with a similar smoking ban while making “Cruella.” Disney put a ban on smoking in all of its films in as early as 2007, then extended the ban to all Lucasfilm, Marvel and Pixar offerings in 2015.
“That is not allowed in 2021,” Stone told The New York Times last year after the publication noted that her iteration of Cruella is a non-smoker. “We are not allowed to smoke onscreen in a Disney film. It was difficult to not have that cigarette holder…I was so excited to have that green plume of smoke in there, but it was not possible. I don’t want to promote smoking, but I’m also not trying to promote skinning puppies.”
Farrell appears as Oswald/Penguin in “The Batman” under prosthetics that make the actor appear unrecognizable. In a recent interview with Collider, the actor revealed that he tested out the prosthetics’ effectiveness ahead of filming by going to a local Starbucks in character
“The first day we tried the whole thing out, we took it for a drive — a spin, metaphorically speaking,” Farrell said. “We did it in Burbank. It took about six or eight hours. It was a team of 10 or 15 people. And it was really fun. I went into Starbucks and ordered myself a very un-Oswald drink, an oat milk latte with two stevia sweeteners. I got a couple of stares but only because it’s such an imposing look. [Designer] Mike Marino did so much of the work for me on this, so much of the heavy lifting.”
“The Batman” opens in theaters nationwide March 4.