Colin Farrell Explains Secret to His New York Accent in The Penguin

Colin Farrell has not only a massive physical transformation in The Penguin — returning to the role of his The Batman villain Oz Cobb — but also a vocal one, switching out his famous Irish accent for that of a New York gangster.

At the HBO series‘ New York premiere on Tuesday, Farrell explained the key to that switch, joking, “For some reason ‘Gefilte fish’ became an anchor if the accent was beginning to go out.”

“My dialect coach, Jessica Drake, she has a library of thousands of accents from all over the world dating back to the ’30s and ’40s, so when we’re preparing for something we go in — based on where the character’s from, we have a listen to four or five different recordings from around that region, then you narrow the zone into something you think is good energetically, not just the sounds,” the star told The Hollywood Reporter on the carpet. “There was a gentleman who was the manager of an apartment complex in the ’80s; he was older, he sounded about 60 or so, and he talked a lot about Gefilte fish. And so whenever my accent started to go, she would call me back and I’d say ‘Gefilte fish’ and that was a little trick.”

The show is set after the events of the 2022 film The Batman — with Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz — and follows Farrell’s villain as he aims to seize the reins of the crime world in Gotham. Showrunner Lauren LeFranc said the creative team — which includes executive producer Matt Reeves — discussed an appearance from Pattinson’s Batman but ultimately decided against it.

“If it made sense for our story and didn’t detract from other characters I think we’d be open to it, but it just kept feeling like if Batman comes in, we don’t want to steal the spotlight from Oz and Oz certainly would not appreciate that,” LeFranc teased.

She also added that she doesn’t view the show “as a supervillain story. I view it sort of as a grounded character drama with this very complicated man who at times is problematic, and he’s very smarmy with a dark sense of humor. But I feel like it’s really grounded so there’s really no heroes or villains on our show; there’s just flawed, complicated people.”

As a result, there have been early comparisons to The Sopranos, which executive producer Dylan Clark weighed in on.

“HBO has a long list of great gangster shows, The Sopranos is one of them of course; The Wire, there’s a ton of them,” he said. “To me, it’s a way to do a gangster character at a place that’s known for good gangster fare, but it really comes from The Batman movie and this great character that Colin and Matt created from the movie that Lauren LeFranc detailed out in a limited series.”

The Penguin, which also stars Cristin Milioti, Michael Kelly and Rhenzy Feliz, premieres Thursday on Max.

Neha Joy contributed to this report.