How ‘The Penguin’ Showrunner Took Inspiration from a Forgotten Kennedy to Rewrite Sofia Falcone’s Story
When executive producer Matt Reeves first talked to showrunner Lauren LeFranc about creating “The Penguin,” he encouraged her to take the same approach he did with “The Batman”: Do a deep dive into the Batman comics to find inspiration, but with the freedom to create something new.
“Matt never wanted to do a straight up adaptation of a comic book,” said LeFranc. “It’s fantastic that those stories exist, but I’d like to create new stories. I wanted to create new canon.”
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There is no better example of what LeFranc did with this freedom than how she flipped the script on the character of Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), who, in the shocking conclusion of Episode 4, gasses the Falcone family in the mob family’s palatial estate. It’s not only an astonishing end to the episode; it’s a surprising unlocking of the character — a side of Sofia which LeFranc hid from the audience by using the lore of the comics and the conventions of the crime genre.
“Sofia is drawn and depicted quite differently; she’s really sort of daddy’s girl in the comics,” said LeFranc. “Women, historically, in comics and in crime dramas really don’t have a lot of depth and you don’t get to spend a lot of time with them.”
As we discover in the Episode 4 flashback, Sofia was a daddy’s girl, so to speak, as we see a level of trust and admiration between Carmine Falcone (Mark Strong) and his daughter. It’s a relationship the mob boss is quick to shatter the moment Sofia asked one too many questions, having his daughter committed to Arkham Asylum. He uses his considerable power to have those closest to the family, including Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), AKA the Penguin, testify she is insane. Only her brother Alberto (Michael Zegen) stands by her side.
“When we first meet Sofia in the the first couple of episodes, she has a lot of anger living inside of her having lived 10 years in Arkham, but she’s trying to tamp everything down,” said LeFranc. “We discussed this with hair and makeup and wardrobe as well, she puts back on the clothes that Sofia might have worn before she was put in Arkham. She’s trying to inherently fit back into this mob patriarchal world, despite herself.”
In constructing the Sofia arc for “The Penguin,” LeFranc drew inspiration from Rosemary Kennedy, the “forgotten” or “hidden” sister of President John F. Kennedy. The eldest Kennedy daughter was deemed difficult by her father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., who had her lobotomized when she was 23 years old. The procedure left her permanently incapacitated, unable to speak, and institutionalized for over 60 years.
“Rosemary was put in a mental institution and given a lobotomy, and then her story ended, her narrative never was told beyond that, which I always found fascinating and tragic and terrible,” said LeFranc. “With the history of mental institutions, usually someone would say a woman’s ‘hysterical,’ and we don’t really know what that equates to, and then they would put her away. So I asked Matt early on, ‘I would like to have Sofia come from Arkham State Hospital,’ and he was on board, which I’m so grateful for because Matt has the ability to say absolutely not, and instead he leaned into it.”
LeFranc liked playing into the idea of how easy it was to say Sofia was insane. When we meet Sofia’s character in the first two episodes, it is clear she is struggling to keep her swirling emotions at bay after living in the disturbing institution. LeFranc, who intentionally shifted between points of view in the early episodes, leads the viewer to question the character’s mental sanity.
“Early on, it was important for me to play Sofia as a bit of a cipher from Oz’s perspective, just like you’ve seen in many crime dramas, unfortunately you never really get to dig into those women and who they actually are,” said LeFranc. “The fact that you might initially think Sofia’s crazy, and everyone around her thinks she’s insane, I want the audience to also think that, and then realize, oh, they’re wrong.”
Another aspect of this false impression is how in the Batman comics Sofia Falcone is the mysterious cop-killer, The Hangman. It’s yet another label LeFranc wanted the audience to attach to her, planting this idea in the beginning of Episode 4, before flipping the script.
“Sofia is The Hangman in the comics, so I took that as inspiration and thought, ‘Well, what if she was innocent?,’” said LeFranc, who switched it from cop killer to someone who supposedly killed sex workers. “Women against women violence was something that I thought was interesting, especially when we find out that her father’s the one who’s pinning his own murders on his daughter.”
Forcing Sofia to search her memory in flashbacks in Episode 4, making the discovery that not only was her father The Hangman, but he killed her mother, is a startling discovery for the character.
“It’s just terrible and brutal, Sofia lost her mother and her father in that moment,” said LeFranc. “That’s why she and Alberto are so close. They’ve always had each other.”
This makes the discovery of Oz’s betrayal at the end of Episode 3 such a double slap in the face for Sofia. For a night, Sofia looked past Oz’s role in having her committed to Arkham, only to discover that he’s not only double-crossed once again but killed Alberto, the only family member who stood by her.
Again, LeFranc carefully led the audience’s expectation to assume the story was headed in another direction. Episode 3 was designed to explore how Oz and Sofia would make a dynamic duo, as they drive around Gotham laying the groundwork for their new drug venture.
“Oz and Sofia are two sides of the same coin, they could actually be quite a great team because they do have similar drives,” said LeFranc. “Episode 3 was so fun. I would call it in the writer’s room our ‘Moonlighting’ episode because I was like, this needs to have some banter and a bit of tension between them; they might have a connection.”
One of the reasons Sofia finds it more manageable in Episode 3 to look past Oz’s past transgressions is because he treats her with respect, something that has been sorely missing as Sofia tries to slide back into her father’s world after leaving Arkham.
“She’s eating a lot of shit; these men are treating her so terribly and with such disdain that it’s like how much can this woman take. And after the revelation about Oz, after putting her trust in him again, I think really makes her feel stupid and angry and frustrated,” said LeFranc. “That there was a little bit of opening the door to Oz again, only to learn what he did to her brother. She’s had it. She’s done. It’s like, ‘Why do I need to play by the game that was constructed, the institution of the mob. Why should I play by those rules? It’s not built for someone like me.’ And so she decides to burn it all down, gas her entire family, and she does it with a level of delight that feels very free, and suddenly unlocks the woman she’s become as a result of Arkham.”
Sofia reveals her scars, no longer feeling the need to stifle the well-earned anger that’s built inside her for a decade. She has an almost Gene Kelly-like ease to her movement and a palpable delight at the conclusion of the episode, as she eradicates the world of her father, which she now sees with absolute clarity.
“It’s so easy to say that she’s insane, but what if she’s not?,” said LeFranc of her big-picture approach in mapping out Sofia’s arc. “I wanted to let Sofia take back that narrative in the way that Rosemary Kennedy was never afforded. I wanted Sofia to get to tell her own story in our show.”
Episode 4 of “The Penguin” is available on HBO and Max. Episode 5 airs on Sunday, October 20.
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