Meet "Gotham's" New Penguin - East Idaho News
Arts & Entertainment

Meet “Gotham’s” New Penguin

  Published at

FOX 092314 gothampenguin?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1411488088392FOX(NEW YORK) — Monday night saw the premiere of one of the most buzzed-about new shows of the season: the Fox crime drama Gotham, a Batman prequel of sorts, set in Gotham City when Bruce Wayne is still a young boy, years from becoming the Caped Crusader. 

Instead of Batman himself, the show focuses on the early years of the supporting characters: idealistic police detective Jim Gordon, who will becomes Commissioner Gordon, and future super-villains The Riddler, Catwoman and The Penguin.

Critics are already praising Robin Lord Taylor’s performance as the future Penguin, a low-level gangster named Oswald Cobblepot who’s tired of being bullied by his boss and fellow thugs.

In Monday’s episode, he takes the first steps towards asserting himself as a Gotham power player, and Taylor says his character’s backstory compels him to do so.

“Because he was a bullied kid and because of the way he looks and what he’s gone through in his life, he has so much ambition to not be a powerless person,” Taylor tells ABC News Radio. “And so what we see him start to do, as the show begins, is to take those first few steps toward asserting himself as a person who can be powerful regardless of what he looks like or what his circumstances are. So he’s just driven to prove himself.”

As for the show itself, Taylor says it’s all about presenting characters in a way that’s compelling to everyone, not just fans of the Batman comics.

“We’re really trying to bring you know, some humanity and realness to these people,” he explains. “Even though they are larger-than-life comic book legends you know, the fact that there’s still some humanity there, and there’s still something there I think everybody can relate too.”

On a personal level, longtime Batman fan Taylor says it’s a thrill for him to portray a character who’s already been so memorably portrayed in both the Batman TV series and in the movies.

“To follow in Burgess Meredith and Danny DeVito’s footsteps with this character is, just, I mean, absolutely mind-blowing,” he tells ABC News Radio. “Two absolutely fantastic actors that have been part of my life as long I can even remember — I mean, I watched the show when I was a kid, I watched Batman Returns a million times.”

Taylor says that he got so excited when he found out he’d landed the role, he started screaming and crying in his hotel room, and then found himself in an awkward moment.  “In the middle of it, my room service showed up,” he laughs. “So, like, literally the first person I told was this lovely woman who was bringing me my club sandwich. We shared a special moment!” 


Copyright 2014 ABC News Radio

SUBMIT A CORRECTION