Everything To Know About Sofia Falcone

When government producer Matt Reeves first talked to showrunner Lauren LeFranc about creating “The Penguin,” he inspired her to take the identical method he did with “The Batman”: Do a deep dive into the Batman comics to seek out inspiration, however with the liberty to create one thing new.

“Matt never wanted to do a straight up adaptation of a comic book,” mentioned LeFranc. “It’s fantastic that those stories exist, but I’d like to create new stories. I wanted to create new canon.”

There isn’t a higher instance of what LeFranc did with this freedom than how she flipped the script on the character of Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), who, within the surprising conclusion of Episode 4, gasses the Falcone household within the mob household’s palatial property. It’s not solely an astonishing finish to the episode; it’s a shocking unlocking of the character — a aspect of Sofia which LeFranc hid from the viewers through the use of the lore of the comics and the conventions of the crime style.

“Sofia is drawn and depicted quite differently; she’s really sort of daddy’s girl in the comics,” mentioned 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 uncover within the Episode 4 flashback, Sofia was a daddy’s woman, so to talk, as we see a degree of belief and admiration between Carmine Falcone (Mark Robust) and his daughter. It’s a relationship the mob boss is fast to shatter the second Sofia requested one too many questions, having his daughter dedicated to Arkham Asylum. He makes use of his appreciable energy to have these closest to the household, together with Oz (Colin Farrell), aka the Penguin, testify she is insane. Solely her brother Alberto (Michael Zegen) stands by her aspect.

“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,” mentioned 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 developing 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 tough by her father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., who had her lobotomized when she was 23 years previous. The process left her completely incapacitated, unable to talk, 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,” mentioned 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 preferred taking part in into the concept of how simple it was to say Sofia was insane. Once we meet Sofia’s character within the first two episodes, it’s clear she is struggling to maintain her swirling feelings at bay after residing within the disturbing establishment. LeFranc, who deliberately shifted between factors of view within the early episodes, leads the viewer to query the character’s psychological 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,” mentioned 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.”

One other facet of this misunderstanding is how within the Batman comics Sofia Falcone is the mysterious cop-killer, The Hangman. It’s one more label LeFranc wished the viewers to connect to her, planting this concept to start with of Episode 4, earlier than flipping the script.

“Sofia is The Hangman in the comics, so I took that as inspiration and thought, ‘Well, what if she was innocent?’” mentioned LeFranc, who switched it from cop killer to somebody who supposedly killed intercourse staff. “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 look her reminiscence in flashbacks in Episode 4, making the invention that not solely was her father The Hangman, however he killed her mom, is a startling discovery for the character.

“It’s just terrible and brutal, Sofia lost her mother and her father in that moment,” mentioned LeFranc. “That’s why she and Alberto are so close. They’ve always had each other.”

This makes the invention of Oz’s betrayal on the finish of Episode 3 such a double slap within the face for Sofia. For an evening, Sofia regarded previous Oz’s function in having her dedicated to Arkham, solely to find that he’s not solely double-crossed as soon as once more however killed Alberto, the one member of the family who stood by her.

Once more, LeFranc fastidiously led the viewers’s expectation to imagine the story was headed in one other route. Episode 3 was designed to discover how Oz and Sofia would make a dynamic duo, as they drive round Gotham laying the groundwork for his or her new drug enterprise.

“Oz and Sofia are two sides of the same coin, they could actually be quite a great team because they do have similar drives,” mentioned 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 many causes Sofia finds it extra manageable in Episode 3 to look previous Oz’s previous transgressions is as a result of he treats her with respect, one thing that has been sorely lacking as Sofia tries to slip again 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,” mentioned 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, now not feeling the necessity to stifle the well-earned anger that’s constructed inside her for a decade. She has an nearly Gene Kelly-like ease to her motion and a palpable delight on the conclusion of the episode, as she eradicates the world of her father, which she now sees with absolute readability.

“It’s so easy to say that she’s insane, but what if she’s not?” mentioned LeFranc of her big-picture method 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 obtainable on HBO and Max. Episode 5 airs on Sunday, October 20.