Gobblepotfans

NEW YORK – Settle down, Batman fans. There will come a day on TV’s Gotham when The Penguin will be the fat guy you know and love.

“God forbid I would do something with this character that would be completely against the canon and incur the wrath of the DC fans,” amiable actor Robin Lord Taylor says with the nervous laugh that has been his trademark on TV and seems to be an actual tic.

“The response to me has been overwhelmingly positive. But the worst thing people have said is, ‘You’re too skinny and too tall’ - two things I’ve never been called in my life. If this is as bad as it gets, I’ll take it.”

Meanwhile, he says, there has been talk among the writers about how to gradually morph the misanthropic crime boss Oswald Cobblepot into something more resembling the waddling Batman nemesis made famous by the likes of Burgess Meredith and Danny DeVito.

Gotham – after all – is all about how characters in the Batman universe came to be, from a teenaged Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle (the future Catwoman), to a physically-imposing Alfred the butler, to the future Commissioner Gordon as a rank-and-file cop.

And in a season 2 that has been subtitled Rise Of The Villains, attention has focused on Oswald and the deranged forensic scientist Edward Nygma (Cory Michael Smith), in his pre-Riddler days.

But back to the fat Penguin. “Ever since the pilot episode, we’ve sort of established this strange relationship he has with food,” Taylor says. “Like the fact that in the pilot, he murders an innocent fisherman for his food. And you see little instances where food is coming into play, and his obsessive tendencies and weird relationship with it.”

“Ideally, we will be here long enough where we can start exploring that in a physical sense.”

Does that mean Taylor will do a DeNiro and gain, say, 50 pounds for the role? “No,” he says emphatically. “We’ll be building a fat suit if that’s going to happen, because I don’t think my cholesterol levels could handle my putting on that much weight.” [x]

Gotham’s second season has been all about the “Rise of the Villains” and it has most certainly delivered in that respect, more than we ever imagined it could.

The show wrapped up this week with its midseason finale in an episode that shocked us beyond belief, but the entire season had us gripped, even more so than the first.

One friendship that bloomed fairly late on was that of Ed Nygma (Corey Michael Smith) and Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor) and it was one that surprised us all.

Both villains are of course in the city of Gotham, but it’s odd that two characters that are so different should have such great chemistry, however, their combined and mutual sense of humour made them a great double act.

Their new found friendship was more than welcome in a city where everything is dark and where people are murdered left, right, and centre and everyone is fighting to rule over each other.

Robin Lord Taylor plays The Penguin (better known as Oswald Cobblepot) and he recently took part in an interview using Gotham’s official Twitter account.

We wouldn’t be surprised if, now that we’ve seen the last of Theo Galavan, (James Frain) Penguin and Nygma were to step up a little bit more and take over.

Taylor spoke about where his character is at right now, saying: “Penguin’s at this point in his life now where everyone has been taken away from him.”

The actor went on to add: “He’s all on his own again, so it’s almost like destiny brought him to Nygma’s doorstep.”

We’re not sure it was destiny though…

When the show returns in 2016, we hope to see their friendship continue to blossom, and for Taylor he’s really enjoyed working alongside Smith calling it “an amazing experience.”

He revealed that he believes that Smith’s performance on the show “elevate” his, adding: “He’s hilarious, we’re both playing total oddballs, we’re both outsiders in Gotham City.”

“To build off that connection that we have, and to build on what established in that one scene in the first season when they first meet has been just incredibly fun!”