John Turturro Skipped DC's Penguin Series Due To All The 'Violence Towards Women'

Last month, The Penguin premiered on HBO to rave reviews. The DC series starring Colin Farrell as the titular criminal character is a spin-off of WB’s 2022 The Batman. However, while Farrell returned for the series, another actor, John Turturro, didn’t. And he recently said it’s because he doesn’t have time to do everything and he wasn’t into all the violence directed towards women in the series.

Directed by Matt Reeves, The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson as the Dark Knight, was a smash hit for DC and helped it launch a new, grittier Batman universe. The next part of this new Batman franchise focuses on Farrell’s take on Penguin villain and builds an epic, Sopranos-like mafia show around the character and other criminals in Gotham. One of these criminals was the powerful Carmine Falcone, played by John Turturro in the film. But in the series, he’s played by someone else. Turturro recently explained why.

In a new interview with Variety, Turturro explained that he didn’t reprise his role as Falcone in the HBO series because he had already done what he “wanted” with the character. He also wasn’t a fan of the show’s violence.

“In the show, there was a lot of violence towards women, and that’s not my thing,” said the actor. While the character was brutal and dangerous in the 2022 movie, the violence “happens off-screen” claimed Turturro. “It’s scarier that way.” In the HBO show, Falcone is played by Mark Strong.

Finally, he told Variety that another reason he ultimately turned down the chance to return as Falcone in the new Penguin series was that he claimed to have too many projects he was interested in and not enough time to be a part of all of them, adding: “You can’t do everything you want to.”

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