SPOILER ALERT! This story comprises particulars from Sunday’s third episode of The Penguin on HBO.
In contrast to Colin Farrell, Rhenzy Feliz didn’t have supply materials to peruse earlier than accepting the position of Victor Aguilar — The Penguin’s man Friday who finally ends up saving his boss in episode 3 by driving a automotive into Nadia Maroni’s henchmen.
Victor is a brand new creation for HBO’s adaptation concerning the traditional DC villain — which implies Feliz, greatest identified for voicing Camilo in Encanto and taking part in Alex Wilder in The Runaways — had a clean canvas to work from when it got here time to create the proper protégé for Oz.
A minimum of, that’s what Feliz thought earlier than making an attempt out for the position.
“Proper after I despatched in my preliminary audition, they needed me to fulfill Craig Zobel, our director,” recollects Feliz. “I ran via the scenes a few occasions, after which he requested me if I’d ever executed a stutter earlier than. I hadn’t. He mentioned, ‘I do know you haven’t ready, I do know you didn’t know this coming in, however do you thoughts simply sort of making an attempt it out to see the way it sounds?’ As an actor, you simply say sure and run with it. I gave it my greatest shot. I suppose it was adequate as a result of they needed me to fulfill with Colin just a few weeks later.”
Trying again, Feliz understands why the producers thought it vital that Victor, a delinquent from a flood-ravaged part of Gotham Metropolis, have a speech obstacle.
“I feel to Oz, he sees a little bit of himself in Victor,” says Feliz, who labored with a fluency coach throughout manufacturing. “Ounceshas a incapacity himself, and he is aware of he been checked out as an underdog who hasn’t been given many probabilities in his life and even regarded down upon due to his incapacity. He sees Victor has one, as nicely. They’re from the identical neighborhood, and he thinks, ‘possibly I may give this child an opportunity, the possibility that no person actually ever gave me.’”
That’s primarily why Vic selected to stay with Ouncesfairly than be part of his galpal on the bus and escape the hell that Gotham had turn out to be.
“At that time in his life, he form of misplaced his household. He misplaced his goal, actually,” says Feliz. “And I feel in Oz, he finds a little bit of goal. There’s this grand factor that they’re making an attempt to perform, and he might be part of one thing larger than simply himself. I imply, he’s a poor child. Cash’s an enormous incentive to individuals who don’t have sufficient of it. After which on prime of that, he sees one thing in Ouncesthat he needs he had for himself. This form of confidence, this form of chest out, chin up. There’s an perspective that Ouncescarries in himself that possibly Victor admires and appears as much as, and he needs a bit little bit of that in his life, as nicely.”
Feliz described working with Farrell as if it was seeing “magic being executed in entrance of you,” although he admits to being terrified when the Irish actor first ambled on set in his full physique go well with and prosthetics.
Oh, man. It was astonishing,” he recollects. “I do know Colin’s beneath there, nevertheless it appears and seems like this fully totally different human being. So it’s this bizarre magic trick occurring in entrance of you. It’s terrifying as a result of he appears scary and virtually larger than I imagined. I keep in mind telling Colin it’s scary. And he goes, ‘good. Use it.’”
Oh, there are many alternative for that: Feliz says the season solely will get extra hair-raising from right here.
“Don’t get me unsuitable, I really like being part of this present, and my expertise has been unbelievable,” says Feliz. “However you’re carrying round a little bit of darkness all day lengthy for weeks, after which weeks turns into months. It simply sort of seems like your shoulders are a bit extra hunched than they usually can be. I welcome it although. I been trying to find one thing that seems like this for a very long time. I’ve been part of some critical stuff earlier than, however that is positively the darkest and most twisted crime world factor that I’ve ever executed.”
