Cómo Robin Lord Taylor de ‘Gotham’ es como el villano Pingüino
Por Chris Hayner at 01:09 PM 28 Sep, 2015
With “Gotham’s” “Rise of the Villains” set to take Oswald Cobblepot to even higher highs — and likely some desperate lows — star Robin Lord Taylor is in for a rollercoaster of a season on the FOX series.
Even still, there’s a lot more going on in the life of the actor outside the walls of the Bronx buildings that house the “Gotham” sets. Zap2it sat down with Taylor in a New York City coffee shop to discuss the evolution of not only his character, but himself since becoming the breakout star of the series.
This is the second half of a two-art interview with Taylor. You can read the first part here.
Zap2it: In walking around the ‘Gotham’ sets, it’s easy to revisit the beginning of Season 1 in your mind to see how much everything and everyone has changed. However, nobody’s quite as different now as Oswald.
Robin Lord Taylor: Back then was when he was working for Fish and holding the umbrella, he beats up his first dude in the alley. He’s finding his way, growing up in that world.
When I love the most about episode seven is we find out that the scene in the pilot on the pier where Penguin is convincing Gordon (Ben McKenzie) to save him that had already been set into motion through Falcone (John Doman), which was really one of my favorites.
Someone recently asked me what my favorite machination is that the Penguin had over the season and that’s my number one. It makes the pilot make sense otherwise you think about it. Why the f*** wouldn’t Bullock just put a bullet in my head? He had every opportunity to.
You understand why Gordon wouldn’t kill him but Bullock is kind of a scumbag.
Yeah and he hates Penguin. There’s no working together. He sees him like a bug sort of. But by the finale he’s involved and come into power. He’s the King of Gotham.
Where I relate to that progression is just weirdly … I’m not the ‘King of New York City’ in any regard but the thing where it ties to me or that I identify with his [arc], I’ve spent years trying to get to this point in my life. Then you get there and you think that you spent so many years focused on just being a series regular on a show and just getting any TV show and if I do that and all of my problems will be solved.
And yes, lots of problems are solved and life is infinitely better in this position than it was before, but it doesn’t solve all the problems. It’s new problems that arise and problems that you realize were always there percolate back up. Life still happens and anxiety still exists, in some ways greater and in some ways lesser.
Tying that to Oswald, that’s where he is now. He’s got it. He did it. He achieved what he’s always wanted but nothing prepares you for how to maintain that going into the season that’s going to be his main struggle.
He has to learn a whole new skill set. The way he’s operated up until now has been behind-the-scenes, low-profile, finding things about people to use against them. It’s all been under the table though, being unassuming and playing up his weaknesses so hopefully people underestimate him.
That s*** doesn’t fly when you’re the King of Gotham. So he has to adapt to that.
That’s where I identify with it, personally. Your identity changes. Who you are as a person changes when your status changes. Figuring out who you are and how you’re going to navigate with this whole new skill set, you know?
It’s an evolution of him as a person in Gotham City.
So the changes that you’re facing in your life as a result of the show, does it help you understand Oswald’s thought process?
Oh yes, very much. All of us on the show, the way we’re approaching it — really trying to understand these characters as people and really trying to stay true to Batman.
One of the things about Batman that we always cling to is it’s not supernatural. Gravity still exists, physics still exists. It delves into the psychology and how these regular people became these iconic characters. It makes it so much easier for me to come to set and bring that internal conflict inside of him now that I understand him so much better.
It must be a completely different experience than a show or movie where you don’t really have that connection to the characters. You can tell, in looking at ‘Gotham,’ the characters come to life in a way you don’t see sometimes.
Give it up to [executive producers] Bruno [Heller], Danny [Cannon], John [Stephens] and our writers. Especially now that we don’t have to adhere to this procedural thing. It’s really about these people and that’s the primary focus this season.
As actors, that’s the most fun to play and really delve into. When the conflicts are bigger and lasts over multiple episodes, as opposed to here’s this guy we’re going to have to deal with and he’ll be gone at the end of the episode. It doesn’t resonate as deeply when you don’t spend as much time with it.
What’s really interesting is, in a way, ‘Gotham’ is a lot like ‘Bates Motel.’ It’s very hard to figure out what year it’s happening in. You’ll see old box cars from the ’80s, then somebody will have a flip phone.
Yeah and you’ve seen the GCPD set, filled with these old giant IBM computers and typewriters. The only thing that’s missing are cigarettes. If we could, it really should be like full-on ‘Mad Men.’
I see a typewriter from the ’70s and the first thing that goes through my mind is I should see an ashtray next to it full of cigarette butts, you know? It’s all I picture.
Smoking is such a weird thing for TV. They sort of got away with it on ‘Constantine,’ but very limited. You can see him blowing out smoke, with it in his mouth, but not taking a drag.
Yeah, we had one cigar smoking scene — with Cobblepot and Falcone . We were supposed to be smoking them. They cut my cigar right away, then the standards and practices guy comes up to John Doman and is like, ‘Here’s the deal. You can take it out of your mouth, you can’t put it in your mouth. You can’t pull on it but you can exhale when the cigar is out of the frame.’
Then, meanwhile, I can stab someone 40 times and then Fish will scoop out her eye.
You can get away with a lot in terms of violence.
It’s really crazy. It’s so funny, Camren [Bicondova] was just talking about in some ways people’s bodies, or the inability to show people’s bodies and how they are in the world — not nudity, but just showing certain things — versus extreme violence. In a way, it’s almost demeaning, especially for females. You’re saying that the female form is more dangerous to show than that.
It’s sort of what Miley Cyrus was saying in her interview about revenge violence in the ‘Bad Blood’ music video compared to what she faces when taking off her shirt.
Right, she has nipples! We all have nipples.
When you start to see works of art on TV being censored … Imagine a Titian nude, it’ll be gone through in post-production to erase the nipples. It’s a work of art that’s existed for hundreds of years. It’s so bizarre and it’s so arbitrary.
I don’t have kids, so I don’t purport to really know how I would treat the situation if I did. The weird thing is a lot of these decisions in terms of what is acceptable to see are decided by the corporations who advertise on the network.
We have these corporations deciding what is acceptable to see and that’s just jittery to me. It’s the antithesis of expression to me and it is a form of censorship, which is coming down from this enormous entity that is deciding what you can see. It makes me feel weird.
You don’t necessarily want Snickers telling you what is and isn’t okay to watch.
Totally, but I love Snickers, thank you very much! If [they] want to give me a commercial deal …
You mention Camren and it’s funny. Talking to her or anyone on the cast — from regulars to guest stars — everyone is so happy and excited to be playing around in the Batman world.
It’s remarkable. I think the subject matter just gets everyone really jazzed, so ego on our set has been minimal at the most. Everyone — from the day players to Ben [McKenzie] and Jada [Pinkett Smith] — everyone was like, “We’re doing this. We’re in this. It’s not about me, it’s about this world.” We’ve created this community of actors who are all in this one world trying to illuminate as best we can.
Because there’s so much enthusiasm about the project, it makes it hard for someone else to come in and have a bunch of issues.
Especially, people coming in on Season 2 when you’ve already created this family
Yeah, come on in! Get in here and let’s do it! It’s funny seeing other casts and guest starring on things. It’s not always this way, especially when you have a couple of years — which hopefully we will — complacency sets in. I don’t see that happening here.
The day I become complacent, I’m leaving it up to you to come up to me and say so. Because that’s when I should quite, when it stops being fun. I know you can get onto a shot where you’re maybe not into the material, but if you can’t find joy and the magic — you can find goodness in any project, even if it’s the worst f***ing thing.
You’re going to work to make pretend!
Right! What a f***ing dream! It’s insane!
I would say the only time I’ve ever experienced what we have on ‘Gotham’ is when I was on ‘The Walking Dead.’ It was a very similar, familial thing. We’re in this together, making this amazing thing.
I give a lot of credit to Sherry Thomas and Sherry Bialy. They cast ‘The Walking Dead,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Gotham.’ They’re some of the best casting directors in their entire business. Their goal is finding interesting people who also really enjoy working and creating.
They’re not really interested in somebody who’s been on 12 different shows back-to-back. Some of them maybe, but then they see with people like that complacency tends to fall into place and it becomes more about, ‘Well, what’s this show going to do for me’ as opposed to, ‘What can I do for this show?’
Beyond just the show itself, the cast had a very busy summer going to conventions around the world, which seems like such a strangely unique experience.
Yes … You know, I’d say about 98% of it is fantastic — the ones I do on my own, not through Warner Bros.
You really seemed to hit a lot of them.
Yeah, Melbourne, the Gold Coast, Shanghai, Dallas, Orlando, everywhere. It was like, you’re sitting at the table and people are coming up and they’re paying money to meet you, get an autograph and photo and they’re so excited to see you.
I’m not one of those people who can shut that off, especially to these people who pay these money to see you.
It’s not easy maintaining that level of enthusiasm all day, but I do it and I bring it to everybody. Then I hear feedback and when I first started doing it people would say, “Thank you for talking to us and looking at us.” It’s very simple things, of course I do it. You’re coming up and you’re saying the nicest things you can say, why would I respond in kind and ask you about you and your life?
I just hear that some don’t look up from their photo … I just couldn’t do it.
And it seems like it would be hard not to be, as you’re there to meet your fans.
I can be totally trite, but I’m learning from this thing … The energy you put out, the positive energy you put out to people, the kindness and the connection and the welcoming you put out to them, it carries on.
In a way, even more so than it would have on Twitter and social media. The word gets out that, “Oh my God, he’s a cool dude who cares about his fans.” The more cons that you do, the more people know that and get excited to come out and see you.
The only tricky thing about that is it becomes you’re graduation parties times a million, where it’s all about you and takes a lot of energy.
Another thing I’m trying to learn is how to give back to people and be present with them and show them love the way they’re showing me love, but also not feeling like I’m giving away parts of myself, if that makes any sense.
This is a lesson I have to learn with everybody — being able to put yourself first, but still being present with other people.
Somehow in between traveling around the world for these various cons, you also managed to sneak in a movie over the summer. I have to know everything about working with James Franco as a film director.
Yes! Yes! He was doing two productions concurrently, producing one and directing and starring in the one I was in — “The Long Home.”
I think James is an incredibly inspiring person. His energy and his need to create at all times, I’ve never seen anything like it.
He would shoot all day long, directing and acting. It’s a period film and we’re shooting in a corn field in the middle of Ohio and he would go back and spend time doing work on the other film or paint or fly to LA for the night for his acting school he’s establishing there. It just never ends with him.
He has this incessant need to create and express himself.
I was so happy to have something else to do, just for my own well-being, because I’ve never played one character for so long. I was like, “Do I know how to do this anymore? Am I just a bag of Cobblepot ticks? Is that my whole thing now?”
Thankfully, no. I got this opportunity to break out of that and do something else. And also, to work with somebody like James who’s so free-flowing. I showed up for the first scene of mine and I’d read in the script that my character was kind of in the background and James calls over to me to get back to work.
Then I show up on set and James is shirtless, dressed as his character. He didn’t shower, because he didn’t want to wash the tattoos off, but he’s also playing this nasty, sick dude. He approaches me and it’s this all-sensory experience.
When we go to do the blocking I’m super nervous and he says, “I’m just going to come up to you and start f***ing with you. I’m just going to start talking to you and just go with it.”
[Gasps] I’m coming out of ‘Gotham,’ now I don’t even know where the camera was, there’s no lighting — maybe a bounce here or there — but “Gotham” lights everything so much.
To go to something so free-form and loose, which is how James likes to keep it … He likes to find moments in the unexpected.
I talked to him on the phone before I started the job and he had the privilege of working with Robert Altman, who was a huge influence on him. He wanted the actors to live and not just be hitting marks.
He didn’t want marks, he wanted the camera floating and finding these moments between the lines. It’s an amazing way to work.
When he told me he was just going to talk to me, I’d just met him. Courtney love is over there, Josh Hutcherson is right there, there’s an amazing group of people, 12 scantily clad women playing prostitutes. This is the world I’m in with this film.
I just felt like I unlocked something, tools I hadn’t really used in so long. I use my tools in “Gotham,” but just the way it’s shot it’s a very different approach to things. The way the camera moves, the lighting, it’s all very intricate.
After watching James take it on, is directing something you’d ever want to try?
Yeah, totally! it would have to be something really close to me. The script would just have to be right or I’d feel so much anxiety about creating someone else’s vision of things.
I’d just love to do something small in intimate with good actors. I know what I respond to as an actor and I love to see actors flourish on set when given the right role and the time to create it and given these moments where they can color them in, but in ways you’d never expect them to — find things only they could find.
Hopefully, we’ll see down the road. At the same time though, that would mean I have a lot of time off and [knocks on wood].
You never know, you could direct an episode of ‘Gotham’! People direct episodes of their shows all the time.
[Laughs] Oh my God, the fact that these guys can do it … The days can be insane. It’s really wild, but it’s really fun.
http://zap2it.com/2015/09/gotham-robin- ... ensorship/ 
