On June 5, the IndieWire Honors Spring 2025 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for some of the most impressive and engaging work of this TV season. Curated and selected by IndieWire’s editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the creators, artisans, and performers behind television well worth toasting. In the days leading up to the event, IndieWire is showcasing their work with new interviews and tributes from their peers.
Ahead, “The Penguin” showrunner Lauren LeFranc tells IndieWire about the joy of harnessing both the unstoppable force of creativity in prosthetics that is Mike Mairno and the immovable object of acting truth that is Colin Farrell. Their Wavelength award-winning collaboration emboldened everyone who worked on “The Penguin” miniseries and brought Oz Cobb to life.
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As told to Sarah Shachat. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I remember as a child being told the story of Gene Kelly performing the most iconic sequence from the film, “Singin’ in the Rain,” despite being sick with a 103-degree fever. Regrettably, I never wrote a song and dance number for Oz Cobb in “The Penguin,” but I suspect the body suit Colin lived in every day felt like he had a fever. Not to mention the hours he spent in the makeup chair every day, acting as a canvas to our incredible prosthetic makeup designer, Mike Marino.
I will never forget the first time Oz walked onto set. Every member of our crew fell into stunned silence. He was so… real. He still is to me, and, as a writer, there is nothing more invigorating. Oz is not just a character, nor is he a caricature. He is a fully realized, living, breathing person, thanks to the combined artistry of Colin Farrell and Mike Marino.
Before I had ever met Mike, before I saw Oz’s face up close, before I fully understood what it is Mike and his team of artists were capable of, I wrote a scene in which Oz takes off his leg brace to reveal his club foot, and by the end of the same episode, Oz is stripped naked and tortured by Sofia. I wrote these scenes because I didn’t want to shy away from what felt right for our story. But admittedly, I was nervous we might not be able to pull them off. Matt Reeves had told me how talented Mike was from his experience on “The Batman,” but on a TV schedule and a TV budget, so many things could go horribly wrong.
But once I met Mike, once I saw his care and passion for every little detail, my fears dissipated. Mike was always eager to push the boundaries and test the limits of what he and his team could do, and there is no better creative partner than someone who says, “Keep imagining. Let’s try!”
I was enthralled when Mike gave me a peek behind the curtain of his design process, and was floored by the various images he showed me of men and birds that inspired Oz. I have been afforded the privilege to work alongside many talented artists throughout the years, but I have never had moments quite like the ones I have shared with Mike on set. I remain fascinated by the sheer artistry it took to pull off what he and his team created every day. It has been a joy to witness.
And yet, without Colin Farrell, Oz is just a mask. An incredibly crafted one, mind you, but still. It is the actor behind the mask that gives Oz his humanity. I could write a thesis on Colin’s talent as an actor. He is exceptional in every way and has been a gift to me as a writer. Colin has quite literally inhabited this psychologically damaged figure with raw vulnerability. He deftly changes on a dime — charming and funny in one moment, and cutting and violent in the next.
Just watch what Colin does in his last scene with Victor in our final episode, “A Great or Little Thing.” Look at how Oz transforms, emotionally and physically. Colin is a masterful, soulful actor, and also an A+ human. He is generous and kind, has an incredible work ethic, and a wicked sense of humor. Colin might downplay how challenging it was to sit in the makeup chair for 3-4 hours at the beginning of every day, and then another hour or more to remove Oz’s face at the end… He might joke about how overheated he was in his body suit, and breeze past the fact that he had to sit in a cooling tent with air conditioners pumping frigid air at him in between every setup. Yet, despite all of these physical and emotional challenges, damn did Colin come to play, delivering a heart wrenching, gritty, tour de force performance. It has been an honor to work alongside him.
Daring to make a show with your lead actor in a prosthetic and body suit is borderline absurd. If Colin wasn’t so human, if Mike had not allowed Colin the freedom to use all of his abilities as an actor, then no one would have believed our story. It would have ended there. Thankfully, it didn’t.
Read Colin Farrell and Mike Marino’s full IndieWire Honors profile here.
