Colin Farrell Says He’ll 'Catch Up' on The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and The Wire 'When I Grow Up'

Colin Farrell has some catching up to do on classic television dramas!

While speaking to reporters, including PEOPLE at the New York City premiere of The Penguin on Tuesday, Sept. 17, Farrell was told that his portrayal as the Gotham City villain Oswald “Oz” Cobb, has been compared to The Sopranos.Farrell, 48, first played the character in 2022's The Batman.

“I've only seen two episodes. I have Sopranos, I have Breaking Bad and someday when I grow up, I have The Wire to catch up on, which are the three I think of when I think of extraordinary television,” Farrell said at the Jazz at Lincoln Center. 

The Golden Globe Award winner added that he takes it as a compliment that his work is compared to the mob crime drama, which ran for six seasons beginning in 1999. 

“That, kind of, in their time, changed the face of television and opened up possibilities for other shows,” Farrell said. 

“So what do I think of when I hear about those comparisons? Nothing but compliments," he continued. "You know, they're revered and deeply loved shows by so many people. So that's — they're cool comparisons. I think there are worse ones you could make."

The evening also marked a special occasion for Farrell, who walked the red carpet with his youngest son, Henry Tadeusz Farrell, 14. The actor is also a father to 21-year-old James Padraig Farrell.

Farrell previously admitted during a 2022 appearance on The Ellen DeGe -

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neres Show that his two sons don't have much interest in his work.

"They're sick of me being a bad guy," he said at the time. "Which apparently, reading between the lines, leads me to believe that they think I'm okay."

In The Penguin, Farrell underwent drastic changes to become the famed antagonist.

“Do you ever see cats looking at themselves in the mirror? How they recoil and they just don't know it's them?” he told PEOPLE and other outlets of his on-screen appearance, adding, “It was strange.”

“It's not like I ever fully lost sense of myself, but it was a very powerful thing to know yourself a certain way for 45 years and to see a reflection. And it also kind of made me aware of how much I identified with how I look,” he continued.

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Despite the transformation, Farrell called the process “amazing.”

“It was really, really powerful. It was something very powerful and very kind of hypnotic to the experience,” he said.

Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Deirdre O’Connell, Clancy Brown and Michael Zegen also star in the eight-episode series.

The Penguin premieres on Thursday, Sept. 19, at 9 p.m. on HBO and Max.

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