Sal Maroni was an afterthought in The Batman, but The Penguin made him a major player in Gotham’s criminal underworld once again. What’s it been like playing a forgotten figure who goes from sitting in a jail cell to being out on a mission of revenge? We asked Sal himself, Clancy Brown, when we got to talk to the beloved actor about the HBO spinoff and the show’s explosive seventh episode. He also told us about making the move from DC’s animated side to live-action, how that compared to doing the same with Star Wars, what it was like working with an unrecognizable Colin Farrell, why Cristin Milioti reminds him of a legendary actor, and more.
Note: This interview contains major spoilers for The Penguin season one, including for episode seven.
Nerdist: You have voiced a lot of Batman characters, so you knew this world really well even before joining The Penguin. What was it like moving from the animated side of the franchise to a realistic live-action version?
Clancy Brown: In my snobbery I had always thought the comic book characters, the animation, really lives best in animation. The characters that were created for DC, that lived in comic books, their best realization was always in animation.
Then the movies start coming out and they get better and better with each iteration. And when The Batman came out, I thought, “Gosh, how many times can they tell this story and tell it freshly?” It was kind of eye-opening how (director Matt) Reeves interpreted this world and really made it about more than the comic book. The metaphors were really right up there. The themes and the lessons, the moralities and the ethics, were very reflective of what was going on in society, as were the Nolan ones, in a more highbrow kind of way.
Every iteration of this world I think gets better and better, especially Gotham. Metropolis is kind of a different thing. And Central City is kind of a different thing. But Gotham really lends itself to a much more naturalistic and impressionistic kind of telling. I don’t know if I’m using the right “istics,” but the stories seem to get better and better, at least in Gotham.
This is not your only move from the animated side of a franchise. How did this compare to your transition from the animated side of Star Wars to live-action?
Brown: That was almost the same thing, because (Dave) Filoni was really involved with the live-action. He was in it from the beginning of The Mandalorian and then into the other series they did. So that was a logical extension.
Plus, Star Wars started out as live-action, so it’s all the same world. I don’t know that it compares to Gotham, and I don’t know that it compares certainly to (The Penguin). I don’t think you can get the Star Wars galaxy any more dirty than it already is. Maybe you can, I don’t know. Maybe they will. I mean, The Mandalorian was an attempt at that. They did pretty well with that. But it’s not Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s more a Pale Rider type of thing.
We’re talking about DC and Star Wars, but when you also consider Gen V, Invincible, Transformers, and so much more, you’ve done a lot of genre films and movies. What is it you find so appealing about these kinds of franchises and stories?
Brown: Those kind of franchises and stories are what they’re making. Pop culture has taken over during my career in a way that you could only hope happens, because I always enjoyed comics and I always enjoyed animation. And I’m right in the Star Wars wheelhouse. And I loved Adam West’s Batman when I was growing up. It was sort of candy, and the candy has kind of taken over and has been transformed into full meals during my career. So I don’t have any regrets about having a career take place when the geeks took over. I don’t dunno how else to say it. The nerds have won and I’m a beneficiary. :laughs:
You spent half of the season on The Penguin sitting at a table presenting yourself as cool and collected and the other half walking around like an active volcano that couldn’t stop going off. Which of those is more challenging as an actor?
Brown: They’re both challenging in their own way. The early scenes you had to convey a sense of character and what he was doing there, all that stuff. But really the mission of those scenes was very expositional. You had to keep the exposition alive in order for Oz to develop his plans and realize them, how (the plans) mess up, and how he improvises his way out of them. It was really fun writing that is basically scenes of exposition, but they had a lot underneath to support that exposition. So it didn’t seem like exposition.
Later on, the volcano…which is a great metaphor. I used a bear. I said he’s a bear in hibernation, and then he’s out of hibernation and he’s hungry and he wants to murder and kill and eat and satisfy himself. But I like the volcano imagery better. That part is also expositional, but only in a way that motivates us through from episode four or five through to the end. It sets us on a course. And Sal is almost out of control. He’s just barely in control. Sofia barely has him under control, and then ultimately when he spins out of control, he dies. He dies because he’s out of control. Sal doesn’t die because somebody kills him. He dies because he’s out of control.
Was there anything you shot for The Penguin that didn’t make it into the show?
Brown: There were a few things that we did not shoot that were in the scripts, but that happens all the time. The only thing that I missed was in the final. When I’m fighting (Oz) there’s also a fight going on in the lab. We weren’t able to shoot any of that, unfortunately, because Oz has that great speech after he dumps my body out. “You fought for each other, you fought for your turf, you stood up for yourselves, and that’s what we got to do.” It would’ve been nice to see that part of it, the little battle. But we didn’t shoot it and we didn’t need it. It was not necessary.
I don’t think there was anything that was shot that wasn’t used. I’m sure there is something that wasn’t used, but I can’t think of anything in Sal’s world.
I wanted to ask about that fight. You and Oz have a real brutal fight in a very tight space. How long did it take to shoot that sequence and how physically demanding was it?
Brown: It was super demanding for me. And as demanding as it was for me, it was an order of magnitude more demanding for Colin because he was in that suit and in that makeup.
I got to tell you, there wasn’t a moment that I wasn’t worried about him, because I’ve been in makeups before and it can kill you. I mean, you got to be careful. Core temperature goes up and it never really goes down because you can’t cool yourself off. You’re covered. Your skin can barely breathe. I was very worried about him. That said, he was very well taken care of. They were taking care of him really well. But when you’re acting in it, you’re given everything that you can give. And I know that instinct, and I know Colin is that kind of an actor, where he gives 110, 120, 150%, and that can wear you out.
He didn’t wear out. He was very active in the choreography and in the activity of it. We would help each other through different phases of the fight. It was good that it was in a confined space, because at least we didn’t have to run around and they could blow in air in between takes. But it was a brutal and taxing fight. Like I said, as bad and as tired as I got, and as worried as I got about it, it was so much harder for Colin to do. He did a great job, and I thought it was pretty good. It’s one of the best fights that I’ve ever been in, and I hope you enjoyed it. And I’m glad his makeup didn’t lead to a cardiac arrest.
My brain struggles to believe I’m watching Colin Farrell every week.
Brown: Oh, yeah.
What was it like working with him when he’s essentially a totally different human being as Oz Cobb?
Brown: The only time that you ever knew it was Colin was in between takes when he spoke in his natural voice and his natural accent and he was as charming as he always is. But yeah, it’s weird. It’s weird. I really never met Colin until the screening we had in New York. When I finally went up to him and gave him a hug and held him I had to hold him a little longer just because he was so much smaller than Oz. He wasn’t Oz. It was a little cognitive dissonance. It was a very dissonant experience to talk to this man about working together and never actually having seen his face. Or even having seen his physicality, his body. It was weird.
Penguin was very doughy. He was big and he was round. He wasn’t un-human. It wasn’t spongy. It was just that he was thicker. And then Colin, he just ran a marathon for crying out loud. He’s a fit guy and he’s much smaller than I. It was just very weird. It was very weird. It’s still weird. It’s still weird to talk about. What they did is amazing. It’s amazing.
Cristin Milioti is really a force of nature on this show. What was it like filming with both her as an actress and being on screen with Sofia Falcone?
Brown: I wish I could work with her more. She has a thing I’ve seen before only once when I was working with Sidney Poitier, where you’re working with him and you don’t really see what he’s doing. Even when he is right in front of you, you don’t really appreciate the subtleties and the choices he’s making because you’re doing your own stuff. But the way she reacted, you don’t really notice until you see it cut together on film. Sidney was the same way in that you don’t appreciate how much power the camera gives to him. Cristin does the same thing. She has the same power on the camera. It’s a magical thing that not many actors have, where the camera just shows every little thought in their brain and decision that they make is magnified.
And she’s delightful to work with, a very giving actress. She only responds honestly, so we were able to play honestly together. When you can play honestly with somebody you can start taking risks. That’s when it gets really fun. We started to go down that path, and I would’ve loved to have shot every one of those scenes for an entire month. We could’ve just dug everything out of them. She was such a delight to play with. She’s great as a person, she’s lovely as a person. I’ve been a fan of hers as an actress for a long time, and now I’m totally a fan of her as a fellow actor. I would work with her again in a second. She’s spectacular and wonderful and has been that way for a long time. It’s really great she’s getting the notice she deserves for this. Good on her.
I’m very interested in the craft and how you bring these characters to life. When your character is having a fatal heart attack, what are you think about as an actor in that moment? Is Sal Maroni thinking about how he’s dying? That he’s losing? What’s going on in your head as an actor to make that moment real?
Brown: It’s funny, I don’t know what a heart attack feels like, of course. Thank goodness. I tried to look it up and I got to a point where it’s like, “Should I click on this dark web thing where I can see somebody actually having a heart attack or not?” And I decided not to because it’s a movie heart attack.
So the important thing in that heart attack is to have the heart attack. I looked it up and I read about the descriptions of what’s going on physically and where the pains are and stuff like that, so we did that. I tried to do that. Then it was just all about being frustrated that I can’t kill this guy. I just want to kill him and I can’t kill him. In the script, it said something like, “Sal has a look of fear in his eyes, that he knows he’s dying and he’s afraid,” which I think is really appropriate. I don’t know if I did that. I don’t know if it was on me that long, because when we shot it I was just really trying to power through the pain and death to get to Oz and choke him.
That would be what Sal would try to do. And then he ends up at the Pearly Gates and he’s like, “What happened? Send me back. I got to kill that guy.”
The scene isn’t really about Sal dying, anyway. It’s really about Oz being cheated out of killing him himself. Because all these characters are just horrible beasts, and they want the satisfaction of killing their enemies and their competitors. They want to be the apex predator. They want to be the alpha. And if you don’t get the satisfaction of that alpha, then there’s something still empty inside you. That’s really the point of that scene. It’s just unsatisfying for both of us, but mostly for him. Because he goes on and then tries to fill that hole with other atrocities that he’s going to commit later in the limited series. I dunno.
Does that make any sense to you? Did that make any sense?
It made perfect sense. And I think everything you said about what you were trying to do comes across completely in that moment, which is why I asked about it. It’s such a different type of death scene than we’d normally get for these kinds of payoffs. I was really fascinated by it.
Brown: Right. No matter what decision or what technique I’ve decided in my brain I’m going to do, when we’re in the fight, it becomes its own thing. And you just got to kind of surrender to what’s going on. Like when I talked about with Cristin, it’s that way. You just surrender to what is actually going on in the room with that person. So any decision I made was shared with Colin by what he was doing. It was a dance and it ended up the way it ended up. So no matter what was written in the script, no matter what erudite thing I decided I was going to try to do, it ends up being the tango that we did together.
Now that you’ve bid farewell to Matt Reeves’ Gotham right before James Gunn’s DCU gets underway, I have to ask: Have you ever thought about or wanted to play a live-action version of Lex Luthor?
Brown: Ooooh, I’d love to. Yeah. :laughs: Oh yeah. Yeah, that would be fun. That would be really fun.
Have you had any conversations about it?
Brown: Nobody’s ever asked me to do that. No, no, no. I would love to.
Maybe they’re waiting for you to call.
Brown: No, they don’t wait for me to call. At all. :laughs:
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist who would have liked to try Sal Maroni’s cooking. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
