Interview: Deirdre O’Connell (‘The Penguin’) on Working with Colin Farrell in the Land of Oz
Can you love your children no matter what they do?
While HBO Max’s The Penguin had plenty of darkness embedded into the material from the jump, the deepest connection on the series comes from a mother and her son. Oswald Cobb, aka the Penguin, and his mother Francis have a dark relationship where she wears her disappointment for him like armor. She reveals to him at the end of the season that she knows of his involvement in her other sons’ deaths. Luckily, Tony winner Deirdre O’Connell was up for the task of tackling the character and expanding the darkness into something palatable that audiences would empathize with. While Colin Farrell had a physical transformation on the show, O’Connell provided an emotional depth to the story that creates a sadness around Oz’s character. It’s a relationship that’s core is rooted in darkness, one that shapes the center character and shows his history further.
I spoke to O’Connell about being up for the challenge of the role, working with Colin Farrell, self-care, and if Francis still has any love left for Oz.
Tyler Doster: What grabbed your attention first when you were approached for the role?
Deirdre O’Connell: Oh, boy. Well, I mean, it was a beautiful piece of writing. I think I just got to read the first three episodes at first, but immediately the voice of Oz and the voice of Francis with Oz, that the way that they talked, I think the very first script I saw was exactly the words that you see. I don’t think there was any rewrite in the first few episodes. So immediately I just saw this… The style of that writing was so specific and gorgeous. It has that, I don’t know how to describe it even, but it’s kind of an old fashioned mobster movie feel, and at the same time is very lived in and very organic, and it was just such a specific kind of writing that I hadn’t quite seen. So I was drawn to that immediately. And of course I was crazy about the character.
She reminded me a lot of my mom’s side of the family with chock-a-blocks full of tough broads who fancied themselves to be glamour queens. Some of them really were glamour queens, and they lived in New York City and they had apartments like that, and they were just… It was like, oh God, I know these ladies. I know this kind of lady. I had also, of course, then I went and watched The Batman to see Colin’s performance and just couldn’t believe how gorgeous that was. I found it so completely hilarious, it made me laugh so hard. But as we all know, you couldn’t even find the guy inside of it. You were like, how could this be Colin Farrell? It’s just an incredible, gorgeous trick. But even if it hadn’t been a trick, what a beautiful performance. So I loved the character that he had found so much. I was like, “Okay, well, whatever it takes to earn the right to be that guy’s mom, let’s go in. Let’s see how to do it.”
TD: What was the first thing you shot with Colin?
DOC: The first thing was the first scene. So it’s like when he comes to the house and he’s got Vic with him, I always call him little Vic, he’s got little Vic with him and he’s going to try to get the money out from under the floorboards there, and we’re going to go in some airplane to go somewhere and stuff. And I’m just like, “I hate flying.” And it was that scene. I mean, Rhenzy [Feliz] and Colin and I were very lucky, and it doesn’t always happen, and it doesn’t always have to happen, but sometimes it happens that you just feel absolutely compatible and you feel like… I got to say, Colin offered me so much power in that situation and so much love in that situation without me even really realizing that he was doing it.
TV sets can feel… You can get very shut down very fast. You can just get embarrassed. This show was so embarrassing. We had this crazy dialect. It’s a very operatic thing. So they took a certain amount of courage to just be like, “Nope, I’m going to go all this way. Are you going to come all this way?” So it took a lot of courage and you had to be able to look at the other actor and go, “Well, that is great, and you’ve got my back and I’ve got your back. Let’s just go.” And I feel like we were able to kind of say that to each other in the work on that scene, that very first scene. And it was really, really, really fun.
I remember it so vividly. I remember that day so vividly, and the directors and the writers and all the gang were all so excited, and I kind of thought they were blowing smoke up my ass a little bit because they were all like, “Oh my God, it’s so great.” I was like, “Well, it’s fine you guys. It’s fine.” But I don’t think I quite realized that we had found this thing that they had been really hopeful we would find, but weren’t sure. But it felt very easeful once we were all in the room together. The warming up to it, the getting ready for it, the learning the dialect, the learning about the disease, the embracing all the work on the disease, the terrible story that is the story of the Penguin, all that stuff is very hard. All the warmup for it, all the homework for it. I did kind of dread. I did kind of hate doing it in a lot of ways, but once we were on the set, it was very, very pleasurable.
TD: Having that much preparation, did you find that it was a little more freeing, that you knew so much going into it?
DOC: Yeah. I mean, you don’t always need to do that much preparation. Maybe sometimes that thing isn’t in some strange period, in some strange place called Gotham that doesn’t really exist, and maybe the character’s much closer to you, and maybe sometimes you don’t have to do all that prep. And right now I’m like, “God, I hope I’m never in a situation where I don’t have to do all that prep, because I found it so helpful.” I had so many things to think about that kept me from just being purely terrified all the time, just that there was a lot of work to do. And also having Colin in his full prosthetic, I didn’t have to go through the incredible intimidation of thinking like, “It’s Colin Farrell. Oh my God, it’s Colin Farrell.” I didn’t have to think that because I really couldn’t see that it was Colin.
TD: You couldn’t really see him.
Deirdre O’Connell: I could not. I mean, it really was… I did not have to go through that starstruck, slightly intimidated thing that I would’ve had to go through. It was kind of great that I got to skip all that. It was so much easier. So that particular day probably went a lot better than it would’ve if he’d been just dressed up as Colin Farrell.
TD: Is there any preparation work that you do for theater that’s transferable over to work in front of the camera?
DOC: It’s all kind of the same, I think. I will say for theater, I worry a lot more about my voice. I feel like keeping your voice safe and healthy is such a constant worry in the theater to do eight shows a week, even if you’re just talking and you’re not singing at all, which I’m never singing, but just that work to not be freaking out about your voice all the time is really nice, because to do eight shows a week, I’m always freaking out about my voice. And I mean, I don’t think I’m neurotic about it. I think it really does take a lot of… You have to really keep it warm and protect it and keep it strong. So that’s different.
But the rest of the stuff, particularly with Penguin, partly because Penguin is so inherently theatrical, because I feel like sometimes I have thought to myself whether I’m right or not like, “Oh, you have to kind of pull this back for the camera.” And there were a few times when I was like, “Oh my God, I’m not pulling this back for the camera at all, am I getting away with this? This is insane that we’re actually pitching this hard. Are we getting away with this?” I would have those thoughts because it didn’t feel different than doing theater on that set, except for just the sheer vocal strength you need in the theater.
TD: Do you think that Francis has love for Oz at this point in their lives?
DOC: I think she has so much love for Oz. I think that the hardest thing in her life is that she loves him and she wishes she didn’t. I mean, I don’t think if I had just been sitting around thinking about it, I would’ve necessarily known that. But I, playing Francis, found Colin playing Oz, utterly irresistible. Francis loves Oz. She wishes she didn’t. She also hates him a great deal, and she has waves of hatred for him whenever she feels like he thinks he’s getting away with it, whenever she is almost tempted to tell him that she knows what he did. And she looks him in the eye and he acts all sad about his brothers, that kind of stuff makes her hate him. But when they’re not directly on that subject, many times she loves him a lot. She loves him a lot, and she’s very dependent on him, and she hates that. So she hates him when she’s hyper aware of how dependent she is too. So there’s a few times she hates him. But yeah, the bottom line is she loves them a lot, which is, I think she really wishes she didn’t.
TD: Are you the type of performer that finds that you need to connect with the person you’re portraying, or is it easy to keep them at arm’s length while you’re portraying them?
DOC: I don’t think I can keep them at arm’s length. I mean, sometimes… no. I feel like I’m always, always… And I never know what it’s going to be. It’s not like I have a system or a technique that always works. I feel like from the second I get the script and know I’m going to do something, I’m like a cell phone that’s looking for service and is running out of battery. I’m just always, it’s sort of at half-mast trying to find the connection to the character that will make there be a smaller and smaller space between me and the character. And I never know… And the space just feels enormous, and I can’t imagine that it will ever close. And I’m never quite sure what will help me close it. But I do have to close it to feel comfortable. Sometimes I don’t succeed, but then I don’t feel happy with my work. So yeah, I feel like I really want to have that happen. I’m trying to think if there’s anybody I’ve… No, I feel like I always need that to happen or I just feel too self-conscious.
TD: Do you think with Francis specifically, as she is a kind of character that spends a lot of time in her head, is it necessary to have that kind of self-care afterwards?
DOC: Yeah, I did need to have some self-care. I mean, it was hard. I would say the hardest thing was always the homework. Say I had two weeks off and then I was going to shoot for three days, and then I’d be like, “Okay, you got to go back in and do all the homework. You got to do all the prep work again. You got to go back and look at all your body dimension material again. You got to think about…” I mean, my dad had dementia. You got to go back and remember everything. I always dreaded it. And you got to think about the boys and you got to think about what happened with the boys, and you got to put yourself back in this situation, and I would just be filled with dread. So I dreaded doing the homework, and then I found the homework to be…
The other day I realized it was like somebody you are crazy about who you love and you love being with is in the hospital. And the hospital they’re in is really gross and sad. And you just got to go to the hospital and walk down the icky smelling hallway and go into the gross room. That’s what it was always like. I felt like, “Oh, please don’t make me have to go.” But then once I got there and we were on the set and we were in the middle of the scene work, I can’t think of a time that I wasn’t incredibly happy. I mean, I don’t feel like happy is exactly the right word, but yeah, just completely stimulated and excited to be there. And sometimes it was very sad and hard to play the scenes, but I was pretty happy. I was a happy animal.
Deirdre O’Connell is Emmy-nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for the episode “The Gold Summit” of The Penguin.
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