Entertainment

In 'The Penguin' finale, Cristin Milioti finds a glimmer of hope for Sofia

Published

1 year ago

November 11, 2024

In 'The Penguin' finale, Cristin Milioti finds a glimmer of hope for Sofia

This article contains spoilers for the finale of HBO’s “The Penguin.”

Cristin Milioti gets self-conscious about sounding too “actor-y” in interviews, and explains that she usually cringes when she hears a performer referring to a character in the third person. But she can’t resist doing the same when talking about Sofia Gigante, née Falcone, her crime-boss villain in HBO’s “The Penguin.”

Milioti, speaking on Zoom from her home in New York, explains that she loves Sofia. “She’s my favorite character I’ve ever played.”

As such when Milioti found out how the limited series was going to end for Sofia, she was “genuinely devastated.”

In Sunday’s finale of “The Penguin,” Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb, the gangster who gets called the title moniker, finally wins his power play over Sofia. He takes control of Gotham’s crime world and drives his former boss’ daughter to a remote area. For a beat, it seems like he’s going to whack her and leave her for dead. But instead, he orchestrates another punishment, delivering her to the cops and sending her back to Arkham, where she suffered for years after being accused of a series of murders she didn’t commit.

“What’s horrible is he discovers a fate worse than death for her,” Milioti explains.

In the finale, it appears as if Oz (Colin Farrell) is going to leave Sofia (Cristin Milioti) for dead. “What’s horrible is he discovers a fate worse than death for her,” Milioti says.

(Macall Polay / HBO)

Still, Milioti finds a glimmer of hope in Sofia’s ending: In prison, she gets a note from Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman. Matt Reeves’ 2022 movie “The Batman” establishes that Selina’s father is Carmine Falcone, making her Sofia’s half-sister. “There is this little spark of light at the end of the tunnel,” Milioti muses. “She could have family.” And Milioti has her own optimism driving her: She wants to play Sofia again at some point.

“It would be my wildest dream,” she says.

Playing Sofia was already something of a dream for Milioti, who became an ardent fan of the Batman universe after her dad took her to see “Batman Returns” when she was 7. “I remember being utterly terrified and couldn’t look away,” she says.

She immediately ordered a Catwoman costume, but the obsession didn’t stop there. She went to Blockbuster and rented Tim Burton’s 1989 “Batman,” which she watched over and over. When “Batman Forever” hit theaters in 1995, she made her dad take her six times. She even had pictures of Jim Carrey’s Riddler on her walls. For Milioti, the love of Batman comes from her sympathy for the characters.

“Batman, all his villains, they come from such a place of real pain,” she says. “They don’t have powers, they make all their own costumes, and it’s fabulous and can be campy and can be humorous but then is also gut-wrenching.”

Growing up in New Jersey, Milioti was always drawn to complicated female characters with violent tendencies. In addition to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in “Batman Returns,” she was obsessed with Uma Thurman’s Bride in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” her favorite film.

“When I saw ‘Wonder Woman’ in theaters and all these little girls watching, it was very emotional, and I remember in that movie thinking, ‘Oh, ‘Kill Bill’ was my ‘Wonder Woman,’” she says.

A woman in a blue long-sleeve dress poses against a wall with her hands crossed above her head.

After dropping out of NYU, Milioti found that while she thrived in the New York theater scene, she wasn’t able to transform the way she wanted to in the television and film roles she was auditioning for: jobs like “girl found dead in a trunk” or “party guest at Blair Waldorf’s.” She never did book a job on “Gossip Girl.”

But fans of Milioti have long known her range. She’s had roles including the Czech songwriter in the Broadway musical “Once,” the titular “mother” on “How I Met Your Mother,” the writer with a “sexy baby” voice on an infamous episode of “30 Rock” and the wedding guest stuck in a time loop in the rom-com “Palm Springs.” In recent years, Milioti has been “incredibly grateful” that she’s gotten to work on projects she believes in — even if they haven’t found their audiences, like the short-lived Peacock series “The Resort” or Max’s surrealist dark comedy “Made for Love,” which has since been removed from the streaming platform. (She’s very frustrated about that development.)

Still, she knew she was waiting for something like “The Penguin.”

“A couple of months before this project came to me, I think this is just a part of getting older, I started to think about time more, how I want to spend my time,” she says. “I was always keeping an eye out and looking for a role like this. They’re just really hard to find.”

Usually, she adds, such roles also result in a metaphorical bloodbath involving dozens of actors. But “The Penguin” showrunner Lauren LeFranc and executive producers Craig Zobel and Reeves wanted to Zoom with her.

Even from the first script, Milioti could sense that there was a lot to mine from Sofia, despite not knowing her full backstory.

“There are incredible scenes where it’s like an iceberg, you’re just seeing the top, but there’s a lot roiling below,” she says.

Indeed, Sofia morphs multiple times over the course of the series. In a flashback episode, we see her as an innocent who learns about the murders of women committed by her father, Carmine (Mark Strong). She’s then framed for those killings. Later, she takes revenge on her entire clan — whom she considers complicit in keeping her committed at Arkham — by gassing them, strutting around her family’s mansion in a yellow gown and a gas mask. It’s a sequence that’s echoed in the finale when she burns the place down in a fabulous red coat, which was made for her by costume designer Helen Huang.

A woman in a red coat smoking a cigarette pours a bottle of liquor on the floor.

Milioti uses the word “collaborative” repeatedly to describe the process of working with LeFranc. She suspects the amount of input she had is unusual given how high-profile the series is.

“I don’t have any other franchise to compare it to because I haven’t been in anything like that, but I have to imagine that’s not the case,” she says. “I know what a blessing that was.”

With LeFranc and other department heads like hairstylist Brian Badie, Milioti figured out how Sofia would “bloom” throughout the episodes. As she asserts herself — and becomes more of a mob boss — Sofia gains confidence. Milioti pushed, for instance, for her hair to evolve from prim and pulled back into the sexy shag she has by the end. “It’s like a further sort of blossoming into an animal,” she explains.

I confess to Milioti that I was rooting for Sofia to beat Oz at his own game. It looks like she might when she bombs his warehouse. Alas, he gains the upper hand. As an actor, it’s her job to advocate for her characters, even the ones who do terrible things, but she admits she was cheering for Sofia too. Others on set were as well. “I even remember members of the crew feeling that way too,” she says. “‘But we wanted her to win.’”

A woman in a black cocktail dress and red scarf sits and leans on a set of black stairs.

Her final scene with Farrell was one of the last ones she shot, and it was an emotional day. “I could not have asked for a better partner to go to the depths of darkness with,” she says. “I think he also understood how devastating that was as well.”

There have already been rumors that Sofia might return for the sequel to “The Batman,” but Milioti says she hasn’t had any discussions with Reeves or LeFranc. “Everyone’s keeping it real locked down,” she says.

The character, however, means so much to Milioti that she was deeply stressed when she was initially on set. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is a needle in a haystack,’” she remembers. “And it certainly contributed to my absolutely crippling nerves for the first couple of months that we shot. I just was so aware that opportunities like this don’t come around a lot.”

When did the nerves dissipate for her?

“By the time I realized that there was so much of me in the can that if they were going to fire me, it was going to be a huge pain in the ass for them.”

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “THE BRIDE!” – Assignment X

Published

5 hours ago

March 9, 2026

Press Room

Movie Review: “THE BRIDE!” – Assignment X

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: March 8th, 2026 / 08:00 PM

Rating: R
Stars: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Penelope Cruz, Jeannie Berlin, Zlatko Burić
Writer: Maggie Gyllenhaal, based on characters created by Mary Shelley and William Hurlbut and John Balderston
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Release Date: March 6, 2026

“THE BRIDE!” (as with the recent “WUTHERING HEIGHTS,” the quotation marks are part of the title) is awash in homages, and not just the ones we might reasonably expect in a movie that takes its most obvious inspiration from 1935’s BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

There’s that, of course, plus its source, Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel FRANKENSTEIN; OR THE MODERN PROMETHEUS, and its sober 1931 film adaptation FRANKENSTEIN. But there are also big nods to wilder takes on the legend, including YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and even movies that have nothing to do with FRANKENSTEIN, like BONNIE AND CLYDE.

Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal casts a wide net in metaphors and ideas and looks. Sometimes “THE BRIDE!” is a comedy, sometimes it’s a crime drama, sometimes it’s a love story, occasionally, it’s even a musical.

Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley) narrates the tale to us from beyond the grave. She is haughty and naughty, intoxicated by verbiage and her own literary genius. She is going to tell us a story, she says, that she didn’t even dare imagine while alive.

We’re in 1930s Chicago, where a young escort (also Buckley) is having a really awful evening out at a fancy restaurant with some of her peers and a bunch of crass gangsters. Shelley dubs the woman “Ida” and takes possession of her, causing her to speak and act in ways that get her escorted outside. There she stumbles and takes a fatal fall.

The two goons who were with Ida are happy to describe her tumble as the result of their intentional actions to their horrible gangster boss (Zlatko Burić). Ida was suspected of talking to the cops.

Around the same time, Frankenstein’s creation (Christian Bale) – let’s just call him “Frank,” like everybody else does – comes to Chicago to seek out the groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), whose published works he has read.

Frank wants the doctor to create a companion for him. His appearance is unusual, but the most alarming injuries are covered by clothing, so he’s not as extreme-looking as, say, Boris Karloff in the role. This isn’t about sex, Frank explains when Euphronious asks why he doesn’t just hire a prostitute. After over a century of loneliness, he seeks a soulmate, and he is sure this can only be achieved by reviving a corpse.

So, Euphronious and Frank dig up the grave that turns out to belong to Ida (we never do learn how they know it belongs to a soulmate candidate as opposed to a shot-and-dumped male gangster). Euphronius revives her. Ida remembers how to walk and talk, but not who she is or what happened, so Frank and the doc tell her she’s been in an accident.

Even without Ida’s beauty, Frank is already devoted to the very notion of her. A more accommodating suitor would be hard to find. Frank has another passion, the musical films of Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal, the filmmaker’s brother), a Fred Astaire-like star. Frank imagines himself in the midst of those dance routines, and we get some more within “THE BRIDE!”’s “real” action.

One thing leads to another, Frank and Ida go on the run, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. They are pursued all over the country. Among those seeking them are sad-eyed police detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his secretary Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), who’s better at this whole crime-solving business than he is.

It’s all very kaleidoscopic and energetic, occasionally impressive and sometimes very funny. Bening as the frazzled, worldly Euphronious has some great moments. Buckley, currently and justifiably Oscar-nominated leading performance in HAMNET, juggles the very unalike personas of Mary and Ida with impact.

Oddly, Bale underplays Frank. We get that he is trying his hardest not to spook Ida (or anyone else), but it seems like he should have a bit more spark. Cruz, going for a snappy ‘30s working woman, has her own style that works.

But in addition to being entertaining and eye-catching, Gyllenhaal has a message that gets very muddled. This is less because it’s so familiar by now that it feels a little redundant, and more because a crucial part of the set-up collides head-on with the feminist slant.

Ida seeks to be her own person, but she is literally bodily controlled by Mary Shelley, who puts her creation in danger with her outbursts. This may help get Ida out of the clutches of the mob, but it is possession, the aftereffects of which the character understandably finds confusing and upsetting.

If Gyllenhaal wanted to discuss or dramatize the clash between what Mary, as a woman, is doing to this other woman, that would make sense, but it seems we’re just meant to somehow overlook this while being immersed in how men control women. The resulting cognitive dissonance adds another layer to a movie that already has more than it can comfortably service.

Additionally, when Mary has one of her outbursts while inhabiting Ida, the plot comes to a screeching halt until she’s finished. Many viewers will wish Mary would stop declaiming and just let Ida be herself.

“THE BRIDE!” succeeds in being trippy and some of it is memorable. By the end, though, it is more disjointed than even a movie about experiments and a character made up of multiple people’s body parts ought to be.

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Entertainment

‘Sinners,’ ‘The Pitt’ win big at Writers Guild Awards after L.A. ceremony cancellation

Published

7 hours ago

March 9, 2026

Press Room

‘Sinners,’ ‘The Pitt’ win big at Writers Guild Awards after L.A. ceremony cancellation

The already highly decorated “Sinners” was among the top winners at the 78th Writers Guild Awards on Sunday in New York City.

The horror film, directed and written by Ryan Coogler, won the award for original screenplay, and its biggest competitor for the best picture Oscar, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” clinched the win for adapted screenplay. “Sinners” star Miles Caton accepted the award for the former, and “One Battle” cast member Shayna McHayle for the latter.

“Sinners” star Miles Caton and “One Battle After Another” actor Shayna McHale accepted the awards for original and adapted screenplay, respectively.

(Cindy Ord / Getty Images for Writers Guild of America East)

In the TV realm, “The Pitt” made a splash with awards for drama series, new series and episodic drama.

As for lifetime achievement honors, Robert Smigel presented Stephen Colbert with the Walter Bernstein Award for critiquing the power elite on his late-night show, which will air its final episode in May. Terry George received the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement from Don Cheadle, and Diana Son earned the Richard B. Jablow Award for Devoted Service to the Guild from last year’s recipient, Kathy McGee.

Most years, the Writers Guild holds simultaneous ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles. But the East Coast edition became a solo affair after WGA West canceled its ceremony amid an ongoing strike by its own staff union, who claimed guild management had “surveilled workers for union activity, terminated union supporters, and engaged in bad faith surface bargaining.”

The L.A. ceremony was set to honor James Cameron with the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement, Don Reo with the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement and Mstyslav Chernov with the Paul Selvin Award for “2,000 Meters to Andriivka,” which won the award for documentary screenplay Sunday evening.

While WGA West’s board of directors said the ceremony was postponed to give members “an uncomplicated celebration of their achievements,” the Writers Guild Staff Union characterized the cancellation as an attempt to sow division between management and unionized staff, which is ill-timed given upcoming contraction negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents Hollywood studios and streamers. In 2023, the WGA went on its longest-ever strike, lasting 148 days.

Comedian and Emmy-nominated producer Roy Wood Jr., who this year hosted the WGA’s East Coast ceremony for the third time, during his opening monologue offered (in jest) his predictions for the negotiations, which begin later this month.

“First, I predict somebody’s gonna lose their s—,” the host said. “Cooler heads are gonna prevail, and then somebody else is gonna lose their s—.”

Here is the full list of Writers Guild Award winners:

Original screenplay: “Sinners,” written by Ryan Coogler; Warner Bro. Pictures

Adapted screenplay: “One Battle After Another,” screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson, screen story by Paul Thomas Anderson, inspired by the novel “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon; Warner Bros. Pictures

Documentary screenplay: “2,000 Meters to Andriivka,” written by Mstyslav Chernov; Frontline Features

Drama series: “The Pitt,” written by Cynthia Adarkwa, Simran Baidwan, Valerie Chu, R. Scott Gemmill, Elyssa Gershman, Joe Sachs, Noah Wyle; HBO Max

Comedy series: “The Studio,” written by Evan Goldberg, Alex Gregory, Peter Huyck, Frida Perez, Seth Rogen; Apple TV

New series: “The Pitt,” written by Cynthia Adarkwa, Simran Baidwan, Valerie Chu, R. Scott Gemmill, Elyssa Gershman, Joe Sachs, Noah Wyle; HBO Max

Limited series: “Dying for Sex,” written by Sheila Callaghan, Harris Danow, Madeleine George, Elizabeth Meriwether, Amelia Roper, Kim Rosenstock, Sasha Stewart, Sabrina Wu, Keisha Zollar; FX/Hulu

TV & streaming motion pictures: “Deep Cover,” written by Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow; Prime Video

Animation: “Shira Can’t Cook” (“Long Story Short”), written by Mehar Sethi; Netflix

Episodic drama: “7:00 A.M.” (“The Pitt”), written by R. Scott Gemmill; HBO Max

Episodic comedy: “Prelude” (“The Righteous Gemstones”), written by John Carcieri, Jeff Fradley, Danny R. McBride; HBO Max

Comedy/variety series – talk or sketch: “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” senior writers: Daniel O’Brien, Owen Parsons, Charlie Redd, Joanna Rothkopf, Seena Vali; writers: Johnathan Appel, Ali Barthwell, Tim Carvell, Liz Hynes, Ryan Ken, Sofía Manfredi, John Oliver, Taylor Kay Phillips, Chrissy Shackelford; HBO Max

Comedy/variety specials: “Marc Maron: Panicked,” written by Marc Maron; HBO Max

Quiz and audience participation: “Celebrity Jeopardy!”, head writer: Bobby Patton; writers: Kyle Beakley, Michael Davies, Terence Gray, Amy Ozols, Tim Siedell, David Levinson-Wilk; ABC

Daytime drama: “The Young and the Restless,” associate head writers: Jeff Beldner, Marla Kanelos, Dave Ryan; writers: Susan Banks, Amanda L. Beall, Marin Gazzaniga, Rebecca McCarty, Madeleine Phillips; CBS/Paramount+

Children’s episodic, long form and specials: “When We Lose Someone” (“Tab Time”), written by Sean Presant; YouTube

Short form streaming: “The Rabbit Hole with Jimmy Kimmel,” writers: Jimmy Kimmel and Jesse Joyce; YouTube

Documentary script — current events: “Trump’s Power & the Rule of Law” (“Frontline”), written by Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser; PBS

Documentary script — other than current events: “Forgotten Hero: Walter White and the NAACP” (“American Experience”), written by Rob Rapley; PBS

News script — regularly scheduled, bulletin or breaking report: “Devastating Flooding in Texas” (“World News Tonight with David Muir”), written by David Muir, Karen Mooney and Dave Bloch; ABC News

News script — analysis, feature or commentary: “Remembering Palestinian Journalists Killed by Israeli Forces” (“Ayman”), written by Lisa Salinas; MSNBC

Digital news: “An Isolated Boarding School Promised to Help Troubled Girls. Former Students Say They Were Abused.,” written by Sebastian Murdock and Taiyler Mitchell; HuffPost

Radio/audio documentary: “Jerry Lewis’ Lost Holocaust Clown Movie” (“Decoder Ring”), written by Max Freedman; Slate

Radio/audio news script — regularly scheduled, bulletin or breaking report: “ABC News Radio Top of the Hour News”, written by Robert Hawley; ABC News Radio

Radio/audio news script — analysis, feature or commentary: “The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter,” written by Gail Lee; CBS News Radio

On air promotion: “CBS Comedy,” written by Dan Greenberger; CBS

Times staff writers Stacy Perman and Cerys Davies contributed to this report.

Movie Reviews

‘Heel’ Review: Why Did Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough Sign on for This Contrived Debacle?

Published

17 hours ago

March 8, 2026

Press Room

‘Heel’ Review: Why Did Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough Sign on for This Contrived Debacle?

The original title of “Heel” was “Good Boy.” The new title is probably more accurate, though an even more accurate title might be “Painfully Annoying Punk Idiot.” I jest (a bit), since the title of “Heel” is actually a verb. The film wants to tell the story of a budding hooligan who needs to be brought to heel. That said, does anyone seriously want to see a movie about a 19-year-old British sociopath who gets chained up in a basement so that the weird upper-middle-class couple who’ve kidnapped him can modify his behavior? “Heel” is like “A Clockwork Orange” remade as the year’s worst Sundance movie.

The opening sequence is actually promising. It depicts, in rapidly edited documentary-like montage, a reckless night out on the town by Tommy (Anson Boon) and his friends. They’re hopped-up club kids, and Tommy is their snarling, curly-haired, sexually coercive wastrel ringleader, living in the moment, pouring drinks down his throat, snorting coke and popping pills, dancing and carousing and puking and rutting in the bathroom, pushing himself to a higher and higher high, until he winds up collapsed on the sidewalk — a ritual, we gather, that has happened many times before. Only this time his crumpled body is gathered up by a mysterious stranger.

When Tommy wakes up, he’s in the basement of a stately stone house somewhere in the British countryside. He’s got a metal collar around his neck, and it’s chained to the ceiling. The film has barely gotten started, and already it’s cut to the second half of “A Clockwork Orange”: Can this monster delinquent be rehabilitated? Theoretically, that’s an interesting question, except that the way this happens is so garishly contrived that we can only go with the movie by putting any plea for reality on permanent hold.

Who are the people who have kidnapped Tommy? Chris (Stephen Graham) is a mild chap in a toupee who goes about his mission with a puckish vengeance disguised as gentility. His wife, Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), is so neurasthenic she’s like a ghost. (She has suffered some trauma that isn’t colored in.) The two have a cherubic preteen son they call Sunshine (Kit Rakusen). And why, exactly, are they doing what they’re doing? We have no idea. Trying to make a bad person into a good person is not, in itself, a terrible notion, but the conceit of “Heel” — that Tommy is locked in a dungeon, being treated like a dog, because that’s what it will take to change him — is like a toxic right-wing fantasy that the film somehow reconfigures into an implausible liberal “family” allegory.

Ah, plausibility! How unhip to gripe about the absence of it. Yet watching “Heel,” I found it impossible to suspend my disbelief for two seconds. The entire movie, directed by the Polish filmmaker Jan Komasa (“Corpus Christie”) from a script by Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid, is just a grimy monotonous conceit. It’s been thought out thematically but not in terms of recognizable human behavior. It’s like a film-student short stretched out to an agonizing 110 minutes.

Anson Boon, a charismatic actor who did an okay job of playing Johnny Rotten in Danny Boyle’s TV miniseries “Pistol” (though he never conjured Rotten’s homicidal gleam), infuses Tommy with a loutish energy that in the early scenes, at least, makes him a convincing candidate for either prison or the contemporary equivalent of shock therapy. And yet the character is exhaustingly obnoxious. As a filmmaker, Komasa doesn’t dramatize — he uses one-note traits to clobber the audience. Stephen Graham’s Chris is as quiet and circumspect as Tommy is abrasive. He tries to train Tommy by showing him motivational tapes, and by subjecting him to Tommy’s own depraved TikToks. He then rigs up an elaborate system of gutters on the ceiling so that Tommy, in his metal leash, can wander around the house, a sign that he’s been housebroken.

Tommy has to grow and change, since there wouldn’t be a movie otherwise. In the process, he gets less annoying but also less interesting, because “Heel” sentimentalizes his transformation. Komasa seems to have missed the key irony of “A Clockwork Orange”: that the behavior modification of Alex is as brutalizing as his original state of punk anarchy. In “Heel,” Tommy’s evolution is singularly unconvincing — by the end, he’s practically ready to be the suitor in a Jane Austen drama. But that’s all of a piece with a movie so false it puts the audience in the doghouse.