John Turturro turned down 'The Penguin' due to the 'violence toward ...
He’s not having it.
John Turturro, who was in the 2022 movie “The Batman,” said that he opted out of reprising his role in the HBO spinoff series “The Penguin.”
“I did what I wanted to with the role,” Turturro, 67, told Variety.
“In the show, there was a lot of violence toward women, and that’s not my thing,” he added.
Mark Strong will play the mafia don on the show.
In the 2022 movie, Robert Pattinson starred as Batman while Colin Farrell played Oz Cobb, a k a the Penguin, and Turturro played crime boss Carmine Falcone.
“It happens off-screen,” Turturro said, referring to Falcone’s violence in the movie. “It’s scarier that way.”
Airing Sundays (9 p.m.) on HBO and Max, “The Penguin” is a spinoff of “The Batman,” following Oz (Farrell) as he schemes and double crosses people to ascend in Gotham’s criminal underworld. There’s also a powerful woman crime lord character in the show, Carmine’s daughter Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti).
Farrell is unrecognizable onscreen, as his appearance is buried under prosthetics to make Oz appear older, heavier and balding.
“It was such a liberating experience, to be so submerged beneath all that stuff. I felt like I had full permission to just throw paint at the wall,” Farrell told The Post in September.
He added, “But, it was weird to look in the mirror for the first time, and see that looking back.”
As much as Farrell praised the makeup, he also admitted that it got “old by the end of the day.”
He continued, “At a certain point in the shoot, I remembered reading something about Jim Carrey losing his s–t on ‘The Grinch.’ So, I remember looking up Jim Carrey ‘The Grinch’ interviews, and seeing his quotes, just because it was beginning to get to me, a little bit.”
The Oscar-nominated “Banshees of Inisherin” star joked, “I remember just almost needing a support group, but knowing it was a cottage industry.”
Turturro said that he also isn’t in “The Penguin,” because “You can’t do everything you want to,” and he’s also busy with Season 2 of the AppleTV thriller “Severance,” which returns Jan. 17.
The show, which stars Adam Scott, follows employees of the sinister and mysterious Lumon Industries, who participate in a “severance” program where their work memories are separated from their memories of their lives outside the office.
“[The show] was something that I would want to watch as an audience member,” Scott told The Post in 2022.
“It’s this mix of dark humor and satire and thriller and suspense, all with this sinister undercurrent that’s really fun. Just the idea of being at work and not knowing who you are to the outside world, and when you go home, you have no idea what your job is and what you do while you’re there had so many fun possibilities. I had to be a part of that.”
“I didn’t like being in that office — the light there drove me insane,” Turturro told Variety. “I did my second go-round, but I feel like I’ve had a full meal.”
Ben Stiller directs and exec produces the show.
“He’s very demanding, but also brilliant,” Turturro said.
“We really grew as collaborators — we learned to trust each other and found the right rhythm. I keep joking to him that we need to remake ‘The Odd Couple’ or something.”
