Actress Cristin Milioti Has Entered Her Villain Era, and It's So Good


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Cristin Milioti’s love of Batman dates back to 1992. It was early summer, and the New Jersey native saw Batman Returns in theaters for the first time. Directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer, the film made a huge impression on the then 7-year-old. She was Catwoman for Halloween that year and became infatuated with the original 1989 Batman starring Keaton and Jack Nicholson. When Batman Forever came out three years later, Milioti saw it in theaters more times than she can remember. Then followed Batman: The Animated Series, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, and 2022’s The Batman directed by Matt Reeves—she consumed and loved them all. Milioti is no fair-weather Batman fan; she’s the real deal.

When the actress got a call to meet with the creators of The Penguin, a new HBO Batman spinoff series starring Colin Farrell, she came prepared. “We had this really beautiful two-hour-long Zoom call, and I got to geek out about how much I love Batman and this whole world,” Milioti shares with us the day after The Penguin‘s NYC premiere. She had plenty of questions about the role of Sofia Falcone, a Gotham mafia family heiress seeking control of the city, and shared what she would do with the character. Her excitement following the call quickly turned to devastation when three weeks had passed and she heard nothing. Her Batman dreams seemed all but dashed until she got a call out of the blue to come out to Los Angeles and screen-test with Farrell. Within 24 hours, she was told the part was hers.

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“The villains are always the best roles,” Milioti says with a cheeky smile. Batman villains—all delinquent, diabolical, and nostalgic in their own right—take the cake. Having grown up loving the likes of Catwoman (“Michelle Pfeiffer is pretty burned into me”) and Jim Carrey’s Riddler, Milioti was ecstatic to lift another Gotham antihero off the page, and what a deliciously complicated and layered villain Ms. Falcone is.