In the finale of “The Penguin”, Cristin Milioti finds some hope for Sofia

This article contains spoilers for the finale of HBO’s “The Penguin.”

Cristin Milioti is embarrassed about sounding too “actress” in interviews and explains that she usually cringes when she hears an artist refer to a character in the third person. But she can’t help but do the same when talking about Sofia Gigante, née Falcone, her villainous crime boss on HBO’s “The Penguin.”

Milioti, speaking on Zoom from her home in New York, explains that she loves Sofia. “It’s my favorite character I’ve ever played.”

So when Milioti found out how the limited series was going to end for Sofia, she was “truly devastated.”

In Sunday’s finale of “The Penguin,” Oz Cobb by Colin Farrellthe gangster who bears the title’s nickname, finally wins his numerical advantage against Sofia. He takes control of Gotham’s criminal underworld and leads his former boss’s daughter to a remote area. For a moment, it looks like he’s going to hit her and leave her for dead. But instead, he orchestrates another punishment, turning her over to the cops and sending her back to Arkham, where she suffered for years after being framed for a series of murders she didn’t commit.

“What’s horrible is that he discovers a fate worse than death for her,” says Milioti.

However, Milioti finds a glimmer of hope in Sofia’s end: in prison, she receives a message from Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman. Matt Reeves’ 2022 filmThe Batman» establishes that Selina’s father is Carmine Falcone, making him Sofia’s half-sister. “There’s this little spark of light at the end of the tunnel,” muses Milioti. “She might have family.” And Milioti is motivated by her own optimism: She wants to play Sofia again at some point.

“That would be my wildest dream,” she said.

Playing Sofia was already a dream for Milioti, who became an avid fan of the Batman universe after her father took her to see “Batman Returns” when she was 7 years old. “I remember being completely terrified and couldn’t look away. » she said.

She immediately ordered a Catwoman costume, but the obsession didn’t stop there. She went to Blockbuster and rented Tim Burton’s 1989 “Batman,” which she watched over and over again. When “Batman Forever” hit theaters in 1995, she made her father take her six times. She even had pictures of Jim Carrey’s The Riddler on her walls. For Milioti, love of Batman comes from his sympathy for the characters.

“Batman, all his villains come from a place where pain is real,” she says. “They don’t have powers, they all make their own costumes, and it’s fabulous and can be campy and humorous, but it’s also heartbreaking.”

Growing up in New Jersey, Milioti was always drawn to complex female characters with violent tendencies. In addition to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in “Batman Returns,” she was obsessed with Uma Thurman’s fiancée in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” her favorite movie.

“When I saw ‘Wonder Woman’ in the theater and all these little girls watching, it was very emotional, and I remember in that movie I thought, ‘Oh, ‘Kill Bill’ was my one.’ Wonder Woman,’” she said.

“Batman, all his villains come from a place where pain is real,” Milioti says.

(Victoria Will / For Time)

After leaving NYU, Milioti found that although she thrived in the New York theater scene, she was not able to transform as she wanted into the television and film roles she was auditioning for: jobs like “girl found dead in a trunk” or “guest at Blair Waldorf’s party”. She never booked a job on “Gossip Girl.”

But Milioti fans have long been familiar with his range. She has played roles including that of a Czech songwriter in the Broadway musical “Once”, the title “mother” on “How I Met Your Mother”, THE writer with a “sexy baby” voice on an infamous episode of ’30 Rock’ and the wedding guest stuck in a time loop in the romantic comedy »Palm Springs.” In recent years, Milioti has been “incredibly grateful” to have been able to work on projects she believes in — even if they haven’t found an audience, like Peacock’s short-lived series “The Resort” or the surreal black comedy by Max “Made”. for Love,” which has since been removed from the streaming platform. (She is very frustrated by this development.)

Still, she knew she was waiting for something like “The Penguin.”

“A few months before this project was presented to me, I think it’s just a part of getting older, I started thinking more about time, about how I want to spend my time,” she says. “I was always on the lookout and looking for a role like this. They are really hard to find.

Usually, she adds, such roles also result in a metaphorical bloodbath involving dozens of actors. But “The Penguin” Lauren LeFranc, showrunner and executive producers Craig Zobel and Reeves wanted to Zoom with her.

From the first script, Milioti could sense that Sofia had a lot to offer, even if she didn’t know her full story.

“There are incredible scenes where it’s like an iceberg, you only see the top, but there’s a lot of things moving underneath,” she says.

Indeed, Sofia transforms several times during the series. In a flashback episode, we see her as an innocent who learns of the murders of women committed by her father, Carmine (Mark Strong). She is later accused of these murders. She later takes revenge on her entire clan – whom she considers complicit in her commitment to Arkham – by gassing them, strutting around her family’s mansion in a yellow dress and gas mask. It’s a sequence that carries over into the finale when she burns the place down in a fabulous red coat, made for her by costume designer Helen Huang.

During the series, Sofia transforms several times. In the finale, as she prepares to burn down her family’s mansion, she struts in a coat trimmed with red fur.

(Macall Polay/HBO)

Milioti uses the word “collaborative” several times to describe the process of working with LeFranc. She suspects the amount of contribution she made is unusual given the show’s notoriety.

“I don’t have any other franchise to compare it to because I’ve never been involved in anything like this, but I have to imagine that’s not the case,” she says. “I know what a blessing that was.”

Along with LeFranc and other department heads like hairstylist Brian Badie, Milioti understood how Sofia would “flourish” as the episodes progressed. As she asserts herself – and becomes more of a mob boss – Sofia gains confidence. Milioti pushed, for example, for her hair to evolve from prim and back to the sexy shag she has at the end. “It’s like a new kind of animal development,” she explains.

I admit to Milioti that I wanted Sofia to beat Oz at his own game. It looks like she might do it when she bombs his warehouse. Alas, he takes over. As an actress, it’s her job to stand up for her characters, even those who do terrible things, but she admits that she was also rooting for Sofia. Others on set were as well. “I even remember the crew members feeling that way too,” she says. “But we wanted her to win. »

Milioti has pushed her hair to evolve from prim and back to the sexy shag she has at the end. “It’s like a new kind of animal development.”

(Macall Polay/HBO)

Her final scene with Farrell was one of the last she filmed, and it was an emotional day. “I couldn’t have asked for a better partner to go deep into the darkness,” she says. “I think he also understood how devastating it was.”

There have already been rumors that Sofia might return for “The Batman” sequel, but Milioti says she hasn’t had any discussions with Reeves or LeFranc. “Everyone keeps it really locked down,” she said.

The character, however, means so much to Milioti that she was deeply stressed during her first filming. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s a needle in a haystack,’” she recalls. “And that definitely contributed to my absolutely crippling nerves for the first couple of months we were filming. I was so aware that opportunities like this don’t come along often.

When did the nerves wear off for her?

“The moment I realized there was so much of me in the company that if they were going to fire me it was going to be a real pain in the ass.”