Despite his character sporting a trademark cigarette holder in the comics — and in 1992’s Batman Returns — Colin Farrell‘s version of The Penguin was banned from smoking in The Batman. In a new interview with Jake’s Takes, Farrell reveals that he put up a fight with Warner Bros. to at least let his character hold a cigar, but the studio wasn’t budging. Cigarette smoking has become a sensitive subject in films and even more so when you’re dealing with a billion-dollar franchise that would very much like to sell toys to young kids.
Via Variety:
“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.]”
Of course, Farrell might have a chance to add a little more comic accuracy in his Penguin spinoff series for HBO Max where things tend to skew a little more mature. In the meantime, Farrell seems to have had a blast with the role, which buried him underneath a sizable amount of prosthetics that he was virtually unrecognizable to his co-stars. The actor recently revealed that before he started filming The Batman, he took his new look for a “spin” at a Starbucks in Burbank, where he got a few strange looks.
(Via Variety)
