Cristin Milioti Knows Sofia Falcone Is an Iconic Batman Villain in The Penguin

The moment that Sofia Falcone walks into that fateful family dinner wearing that yellow dress in The Penguin‘s fourth episode, “Cent’anni,” actress Cristin Milioti solidified the character as one of the best Batman villains ever. Her canary in the coal mine moment is one of the show’s best scenes, and was crafted in a collaboration between Milioti, Penguin showrunner Lauren LeFranc, and director Helen Shaver.

By then we’d seen the events that led the mob heiress to be scapegoated by her father for the murders at the hands of the Hangman and her trauma at Arkham because of him; she was only freed of his sins after his death in The Batman. But even then, her freedom came with more bad juju, no thanks to Oz, as she quickly lost her brother and their drug empire plans in the present day. In “Cent’anni,” she was facing her family continuing to gaslight her by sending her off to Italy in an attempt to take her power like so many others before her.

In an interview with IndieWire, the actress shared how much of a team effort it was to create her dream Batman villain role with LeFranc. “Pretty much as soon as I signed on. I had an hours-long phone call with Lauren where she walked me through everything, and then I got the first four scripts in,” Milioti said. “I had time to call her and talk to her and really sit with them and study them, and she sort of walked me through the last four in terms of what happens, the big events there, but so I got them pretty soon after I signed on.”

From the start Milioti was game for anything. “I’m such a huge Batman fan, it’s lifelong dream of mine to be a Batman villain and to get to really show her entire story. For that to come from a woman’s brain—you can just like sense it, you can feel it,” she said.

The yellow dress launched many a Reddit thread on where to find it; in fact, it was created by costume designer Helen Huang especially for the moment Sofia steps into her power. “I had 10,000 fittings for that dress,” she said. “We were in constant conversation with Helen about what would be the most free flowing and let you see this body language—that’s the first time you see her breathe really, and experience joy, and experience lightness … and yet we wanted it to show all the scars, and then we also knew it was going with this gas mask eventually, so I also wanted to do something with her eyes where you could see it through the viewfinder of the gas mask.”

Milioti described Sofia’s entrance in the scene as showing off her”new war paint,” and signaling that “there’s been a shift in her. To combine all those things was so exciting. And also knowing we were building this Batman villain, like when do you get to do that?”

Milioti hopes she’ll get to return to the role as much as we all do, since there “infinite possibilities” on where Sofia can go next.

“Obviously I would want to see her get out of Arkham. That’s like number one. I don’t want her in there. So I want to see her get out there, and then exact revenge,” she said. “Maybe now she would be even more of a loose cannon, because before it was pretty focused on him and gaining power, but depending on what happens to her in there, it could be an even larger target. I would love to explore that.”

The Penguin is streaming on Max.

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