Robin Lord Taylor Interview with Daily Record 

Bat to where it all began: Robin Lord Taylor on his role as supervillain Penguin in hit TV series Gotham

THE star is proud to carry on character\'s villainous tradition – and speaks of pride in his Scottish roots.

HOLY fish fingers, Batman! The new Penguin doesn’t like seafood.

Robin Lord Taylor has revealed all as he plays a young version of supervillain The Penguin in the dark and exciting new TV series Gotham, which starts on Monday on Channel 5.

The actor from Iowa laughed: “I’m not a huge seafood fan.

“I grew up in the American Midwest and not a coastal community so I didn’t have the best options available to me.

“There is a scene where The Penguin is originally eating sardines. I was a bit worried and was like, ‘OK, how many takes do we have to do?’

“I’ve never eaten a sardine in my life so I thought it might be difficult for me to keep it down.

“But the art department reconstituted some dry mango and cut them into sardine shapes. They were something I could eat and not look like I was going to vomit.”

Robin, as Oswald Cobblepot – the man who becomes The Penguin – is one of Gotham’s many villains who feature in the new series, which takes us back to the origins of Batman.

After Bruce Wayne’s parents are murdered, detective James Gordon (Ben McKenzie), the man who later becomes Batman’s ally Commissioner Gordon, promises to find the killer while also wading through the corruption that is turning the city into a sewer.

The future Batman is just aged eight and played by 13-year-old David Mazouz.

In the series we also meet the characters who will become the superhero’s nemeses such as The Penguin.

Catwoman is young thief Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova), The Riddler is coroner Edward Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) and Poison Ivy is Ivy Pepper (Clare Foley), the daughter of a suspect in the murder of the Waynes.

There are other well-known characters. Brit Sean Pertwee plays Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred who looks after the orphaned boy after his parents are murdered.

Carmine Falcone (John Doman) is the Mafia don who made his comic debut in 1987. There is also a new villain created for the series, Fish Mooney, a Mob leader played by Jada Pinkett Smith. She is Oswald’s boss in the first episode and breaks his leg with a chair leading to an exaggerated waddle-like limp.

He is already nicknamed “Penguin” because of his beak-like nose. Luckily for Robin, the nose isn’t his but a large prosthetic and even the slick black hair isn’t his own.

He said: “It’s great actually because the look isn’t me so I can take it off and leave it at work.

“The nose isn’t my own and I’m naturally a blonde so now I’m a Goth.

Gordon investigates murder of Bruce Wayne\'s parents

“I got into The Penguin’s mindset by listening to a lot of Morrissey and The Clash.

“For the limp, I put a bottle cap taped into my right shoe to remind me to keep up an uneven gait.”

Robin’s Penguin is a bullied kid who is determined to make something of himself and become powerful, not powerless.

Of course, fans of Batman will know that the character, who was introduced by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger in 1941, is short and round, wears a top hat, bowtie and a monocle and smokes cigarettes with a holder. He also likes high-tech umbrellas. Burgess Meredith was The Penguin in the 60s Batman TV series and a spin-off movie while Danny DeVito created a more twisted, deformed Penguin in 1992’s Batman Returns.

Robin’s character has shades of these but it’s incredibly exciting to see the development of somebody who becomes one of Batman’s most implacable foes.

Rather than being worried about having to follow two such incredible performances, Robin is proud to carry on the tradition and in America, where the series is already being aired, he has been lauded as the standout star of the show.

He said: “You feel the pressure because The Penguin is such a well-known and well-loved character but it’s an amazing opportunity. Just the excitement to be involved in this project eclipses all the other fears and worries.”

Villains Don Falcone, Catwoman, Fish Mooney, the Penguin and the Riddler

He’s happy to admit he wasn’t a big comic book fan. Instead, he enjoyed Calvin and Hobbes and Mad as a youngster.

He said: “I grew up with the TV show and the Tim Burton Batman movies. I saw the Michael Keaton Batman on opening night in 1989 and was hooked. I then watched Batman Returns with Danny’s Penguin in the cinema and right afterwards my parents got a satellite dish and we got HBO, which ran Batman Returns seven times a day. I must have seen it 500 times when I was a kid.

“But I also loved watching the reruns of the old television shows. Burgess Meredith’s Penguin was iconic.

“They are buried in my brain and are both such fantastic portrayals.

“They are both an influence. What I’ve taken from them in my portrayal is this gleeful approach to the darkness.

“I hope I can carry along in the great tradition of The Penguin.”

While he’s got the nose and the limp, there’s still much of The Penguin (including his plumpness) Robin hasn’t put into his character.

Robin laughed: “I’ve been trying to work on it, to make it natural, but I think I might need a vocal coach or something. I really want to sneak it in there at some point.”

Winning such a huge role has eased the pain of missing out on the role of Todd in Breaking Bad. Jesse Plemons got the part. Robin has appeared in TV shows such as Walking Dead, The Good Wife and Law & Order but The Penguin is his big break.

No wonder then he was more than happy when he found out he’d got the part.

Living in New York since 2000, Robin was in a hotel in Los Angeles waiting to find out if he’d got the role. But he wasn’t the only one in the frame.

He’d been waiting for a week and had taken to pacing his hotel room waiting for the call.

He said: “Then my agents call and tell me I’ve got it. I was screaming, crying and laughing all at the same time.

“While I’m jumping around, room service knock on the door and this poor woman is there with some food.

“She’s looking at me strangely so I tell her I’d just got a part in a series. She was the first person I told and I still think about her. It’s a moment I’ll always share with her.”

Already a hit in the States, the success of Gotham will hopefully allow Robin to come to Scotland. He is a proud Scot (a few generations removed) and, like many Americans, is itching to find out more about his roots. He has been here before. In 2008, he and Billy Eichner brought a show Creation Nation to the Edinburgh Fringe.

But he didn’t have time to do any digging about his family.

He said: “I have a direct line to Scotland. One half of my family is very proud of our Scottish roots.

“My grandfather wrote a genealogy on the family. The first-born son of the whole family on the Taylor side was called Robert. It goes back to the 1400s. We even have a connection to the Mayflower.

“Unfortunately, when I came along, my dad was Robert and my cousin, who was born before me, was also given the name – so my parents tried to get as close to it as possible and called me Robin.

“I’m dying to have some time to dive into my roots and see where we came from.”

And he promised that if Gotham goes well and The Penguin starts to dress well, he may slip some tartan into the costume as a nod to his roots.

He laughed: “I’m being serious. I have Taylor tartan hanging on my wall.”

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