Actress Cristin Milioti Has Entered Her Villain Era, and It's So Good

Cristin Milioti's love of Batman dates back to 1992. It was early summer, and the New Jersey native saw Batman Returns in theaters for the first time. Directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer, the film made a huge impression on the then 7-year-old. She was Catwoman for Halloween that year and became infatuated with the original 1989 Batman starring Keaton and Jack Nicholson. When Batman Forever came out three years later, Milioti saw it in theaters more times than she can remember. Then followed Batman: The Animated Series, Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, and 2022's The Batman directed by Matt Reeves—she consumed and loved them all. Milioti is no fair-weather Batman fan; she's the real deal.

When the actress got a call to meet with the creators of The Penguin, a new HBO Batman spinoff series starring Colin Farrell, she came prepared. "We had this really beautiful two-hour-long Zoom call, and I got to geek out about how much I love Batman and this whole world," Milioti shares with us the day after The Penguin's NYC premiere. She had plenty of questions about the role of Sofia Falcone, a Gotham mafia family heiress seeking control of the city, and shared what she would do with the character. Her excitement following the call quickly turned to devastation when three weeks had passed and she heard nothing. Her Batman dreams seemed all but dashed until she got a call out of the blue to come out to Los Angeles and screen-test with Farrell. Within 24 hours, she was told the part was hers.

"The villains are always the best roles," Milioti says with a cheeky smile. Batman villains—all delinquent, diabolical, and nostalgic in their own right—take the cake. Having grown up loving the likes of Catwoman ("Michelle Pfeiffer is pretty burned into me") and Jim Carrey's Riddler, Milioti was ecstatic to lift another Gotham antihero off the page, and what a deliciously complicated and layered villain Ms. Falcone is.

Set one week after the events of Reeves's The Batman, The Penguin centers on the rise of Oswald "Penguin" Cobb (an unrecognizable and fantastic Farrell) as he seeks to take over the reigns of Gotham City's underworld through any twisted means possible. When Oz's boss, Carmine Falcone, dies, it seems like the perfect time for Oz to strike. That is until Sofia Falcone, whom Oz used to drive, returns from Arkham Asylum and stands in his way.

Milioti's Sofia is not to be underestimated. Hers is a "rise from the ashes" story. She is powerful, calculated, and monstrous. Behind the polished exterior is a battered-down woman on the verge of insanity. "I had the first four [episodes] for two, maybe three months before we started, and I remember reading them and thinking, 'Holy hell. This is such a complicated character. I am so excited,'" Milioti tells us. Sofia, with all of her complexities and unpredictable nature, was just the type of character the actor would have seen on-screen as a kid and immediately gone home and played in her backyard.

In Oz, Sofia has an excellent adversary. There is affection and history there since they've known each other for so long, but it's damaged by years of betrayal. Milioti describes it as kindred spirits and finds that chemistry and tension really interesting. She says, "They both saw the versions of each other that they can never return to. [Sofia] knows exactly how to hurt him, and he knows exactly how to hurt her, and they are both so power hungry."

Getting to go toe-to-toe with Farrell within that dynamic for 16 hours a day was incredibly thrilling for Milioti. "It feels like you can go anywhere with each other," she says. The actress tells us that, at this point, she probably spent more time with Farrell as Oz than Colin, which is trippy. She remembers seeing him as Penguin for the first time, watching The Batman, and being blown away by the fact that it was him. "Obviously, I know it's him, and I hear his voice. I know those eyes so well, but it was a very surreal experience," she explains.

There's no denying the impact of makeup, hair, and wardrobe in this show. Part of the fun of designing a villain is creating their look, and Sofia is no exception. Milioti was thrilled to be invited into the collaboration of Sofia's wardrobe and glam choices, which evoked a certain mob wife aesthetic. "This is a woman who is raised within these parameters of a very patriarchal mafia family, and women in that world, their choices are expressed through their hair and makeup and clothes," she starts. "I think it's a way in which she inspires terror in people and also comes into her own. She has such style. Even when she's in the earlier looks and hiding from everyone and trying to get back into this world that was so awful to her, it's still done with such style. She loves decadence. It was so much fun." There were two of Sofia's looks that really stood out to Milioti: One was from episode four, and the other, her favorite, shows up in episode seven.

With The Penguin, Milioti is not only checking an item off her childhood bucket list, but she's also adding to her ever-expanding list of intriguing roles and projects. Lest you forget her multidimensional portrayals of Nanette Cole in Black Mirror's hit "USS Callister" episode and a reluctant maid of honor stuck in a time loop in the comedy Palm Springs or when she played an impressionable woman on the run after discovering her husband implanted a monitoring device in her brain in Made for Love. Milioti has an affinity for unique, fantastical worlds, and she hopes to have the chance to do as many genres and mediums of acting as she can while she's still working. She dreams of one day starring in a movie musical but admits all of her favorites have already been done, and she would love to do a music video. We'd personally love to see her do both. As we've come to find out over the years, Milioti has an acting superpower of her own—to consistently surprise and delight.

The Penguin is now streaming on Max with new episodes airing Sundays.