How ‘The Penguin’ Production Designer Kalina Ivanov Turned New York Into Gotham

Over the last 50-plus years, everywhere from Hollywood soundstages to locales like Chicago and Pittsburgh have stood in for Gotham City. Now, the creators of HBO’s “The Penguin,” a spinoff of Matt Reeves’ 2022 film “The Batman,” are transforming New York City and its environs into DC Comics’ moodiest metropolis. While Reeves primarily shot the movie in the U.K., Lauren LeFranc’s limited series was filmed on location in Queens, the Bronx, and Yonkers. 

The story centers on the villainous Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Colin Farrell) as he fights to seize power following the assassination of infamous crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) in “The Batman.”

To avoid retreading ground covered in the film, production designer Kalina Ivanov—who won an Emmy for her work on 2009’s “Grey Gardens”—was tasked with conceiving a previously unseen side of Gotham. We spoke with her about the cultural influences that went into the “Penguin” sets, collaborating with Farrell and Reeves, and her impressive body of work.

What was your jumping-off point when it came to maintaining the movie’s vision in a different filming location?

Matt, [who executive produced the series,] wanted to shoot in New York; he originally wanted to shoot “The Batman” in New York. He said to us that he wanted to create “The French Connection” meets “Scarface.” When you take these two concepts, you see we’re looking at a very different kind of New York: the New York of the ’70s and early ’80s. Lauren and Matt felt very strongly that everything needed to be grounded in reality.

Because we were in New York, it was very liberating because I knew I couldn’t do the look of England; I was free to take a different direction. We also agreed that we were in a neighborhood not portrayed in the movie called Crown Point, which is where [teenager] Victor Aguilar [Rhenzy Feliz] lives and where Oz used to live on the East Side. It was great for me because I could create my own interpretation of these environments; but it all needed to feel very grounded.

What was the visual inspiration for the Falcone crime family’s estate?

We all agreed that Carmine Falcone [played by Mark Strong on the series] was a third-generation gangster; he came from a long lineage of gangsters who probably started in the town of Falcone in Sicily and came to America—very “Godfather”-like. He was a gentleman gangster, so he had good taste; and he took over this great villa, in my mind, from the “Gatsby” era. We ended up using a real turn-of-the-century Italian villa for the exteriors, and it was beautiful.

It was very much the kind of estate that Carmine would have. Finding the exterior first informed what the interior would look like. When I was doing my research, I stumbled upon a villa on Lake Como [in Italy] that blew me away because it had darker colors—a lot of black and gold. There’s a lot of gold in that place, but it doesn’t feel overwhelming. It’s not tacky; it’s extremely tastefully done. 

Then I thought, Carmine would go back to Italy and buy—or rip—real frescoes off the walls and have them shipped to America, which many Gilded Age barons did at the turn of the century. I felt like Carmine had that mindset, so I settled on pre-Renaissance. I wanted it to be right before [the time of] Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. I wanted that Italian school because it’s a little bit more primitive and interesting. It’s just a little bit less known. 

You could see right behind whoever sits at the head of the table—which would have been Carmine—there’s a giant fresco of the Duke of Mantua, and it’s beautiful. We grounded our own made-up backstory in real Italian history.

The Falcone estate contrasts with Oz’s mother Francis’ (Deirdre O’Connell) house, which feels small and lived-in.

The interesting thing is that everybody thinks this is Francis’ house, but it isn’t—it is a hideaway. The very first time you see mom when Oz goes there with Victor to visit her, the Penguin has hidden her because she has dementia. But he’s brought a lot of the stuff from her original home so she feels that she’s in a familiar environment. 

I played a lot with the theme of flowers and patterns for the walls for the three main women [in the story]. Sofia Falcone [Cristin Milioti] has much more geometric and stronger lines in her arc, because that’s who she is. Then Eve [Carmen Ejogo], who is Oz’s paramore, lives in a very flower-child, bohemian world. Then there is mom, who has kind of a classical ’80s style; but really, she’s in the mindset of the ’60s and ’70s. It was really interesting to give all three female characters very different visual arcs. It’s a lot of wallpaper.

Credit: Macall Polay/HBO

The show doesn’t feature colors that are bold or in-your-face. What kind of conversations did you have with the cinematographer about that, considering it’s filmed primarily in low light? 

When you look at the movie, the film is so dark—so you realize immediately it’s a process. It’s lit in a certain way, but then it’s also processed at the end, so your colors will change. Darran Tiernan, the DP, and Craig Zobel, the director of the first three episodes, spent a lot of time talking about color, laying out color, and testing color. 

I wanted to see what it did when they processed [the footage] so that I could understand [how the color changed]. It’s almost like we did a color study so that I could understand: If I use this particular shade of lavender or purple, is it going to look plum, blue, or black [on camera]? I don’t know where it’s going to go. [The process] was very interesting. It also allowed me to use colors I would never use since [the lighting] changed them so much.

Oz’s apartment has what looks like a bank vault for a bedroom. Can you talk about this space?

Oz’s loft was described as being in bad taste, which means a lot of things to a lot of people. When Colin got to us, I had already designed a set. Because it was set in Gotham’s Diamond District, I said to Lauren, “On the ground floor, you see the jewelry stores, but when you get on a second or third floor in the same building, it is repair jewelry stores.” 

So I said, “What if he combined a couple of these stores and turned that into his loft?” It’s a jewelry repair vault, but it can be like a bank vault. If you look closely, a framed ad on the wall tells the history. We came up with a name for the jeweler. We created a whole newspaper article for this person that doesn’t exist, and Oz has it framed. When I showed it to Colin, he absolutely loved it. As he is a producer, I showed him the entire design book, and he loved it so much that he took it with him. 

The wonderful thing about Colin is that he sent me ideas for the bad art in Oz’s loft. There is a key purplish painting that came from a reference Colin gave us, and we did our own version of it. It is wonderful when actors are deeply involved in their characters, down to thinking about the paintings on the walls.

Lauren came up with the idea of the fake fireplace. We all had a lot of fun trying to discuss what “bad taste” meant, because he’s got these aspirations of being like Carmine. He sees himself like, “I’m the nice Carmine”; but he gets it wrong. Carmine has taste. Oz is like, “Ooh, that looks the same,” but it’s definitely not.

You have training in theater and film design and got a BFA and MFA from Tisch. How did this help you pursue your career in production design?

When I fell in love with film, I decided I needed to know more about film, and I went to the film program at NYU. It was very helpful, because when you do production design for film, you have to understand the camera. You need to think like the camera—how the camera sees the set versus just making an environment; [if you don’t,] you can make a great set that’s unsuitable [for filming]. You need to know what’s going to look great on camera and what proportions are going to look great on camera. It was great to get that education.

One of your early jobs was working as a storyboard artist on Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs.” How did that opportunity come about, and what was it like to be part of such a seminal film?

To put myself through film school, I worked as a storyboard artist—because a theater person said, “Hey, you draw fast. Why don’t you try this storyboard thing?” That’s how I ended up in film and [fell in love with] film. When I was in my last year of film school, Jonathan Demme came to our school to do a workshop with us. We were the crew, and he was the director doing an avant-garde production of “Uncle Vanya” set in a radio station in Minnesota, and it was going to be a 10-minute movie. Who’s going to be the designer? Me!—because I was the only person that knew anything about design. 

One thing I did that grabbed his attention was the clocks on the wall. So London was, let’s say, 9 o’clock, but New York was 3:15, and Tokyo was 5:17 or 5:35; I changed the minutes, not just the hours. And he got such a kick out of that. I remember him coming and saying, “Why did you do that?” I said, “Why are you doing ‘Uncle Vanya’ in a radio station in Minnesota? It’s as absurdist as that.” We laughed our heads off, and that’s how we bonded. 

During those conversations, I said, “I hear you’re going to have a new project. I’ve been working as a storyboard artist in films, and I would love a shot at it.” He said, “Sure. Write to me.” This was before email, so I wrote a letter. And 45 days later, I got a letter going, “We’d like to give you a try.” I said, “Well, I charge this much money per day.” I know what a try means, but I’m an immigrant, and I gotta get paid. I was charging half of what a normal storyboard artist does because I didn’t even know the rates. That’s how I ended up working on “The Silence of the Lambs,” and it was an amazing experience. 

A year later, the movie wins all these awards. No one expected that; we were not making [what we thought of as] an Oscar-winning movie. We have a party; we’re all drinking and congratulating Jonathan. The next day, my phone rings, and it’s like, “Hi, I am Rich Guay, Nancy Savoca’s husband. We’re doing a movie called ‘Household Saints,’ and Jonathan Demme is our executive producer, and he thought you might be interested in production designing it.” And I went, “Absolutely!” I put the phone down, turned to my husband, and said, “I have no idea what just happened.” 

I had to go and win the interview, but it became my first production design job. And it was a beautiful experience on every level. Overnight, I became a production designer. I had the skills, but when Jonathan gave me the first tryouts for “Silence of the Lambs,” there were no locations and no designs. It was just pages. I started creating my own little environments, because where do you put the camera? You’re not gonna put the camera in the void. He saw that I was a designer. He literally saw throughout the process how I was working, and he clocked it. He was this amazing person who recognized talent and did a lot of good things for a lot of people.

You’ve worked in a range of genres over your career on projects like “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Grey Gardens,” “Lovecraft Country,” and the upcoming second season of “Peacemaker.” How does this mix inform your work?  

I’m a theater designer by training; and in theater, one month you’re doing Shakespeare, the next month a ballet, then a musical, and then Arthur Miller. You get trained to pivot into different genres and approaches. 

[That experience] was immensely helpful during “Lovecraft Country,” because it had everything in it, from dance to science fiction to [18th century] lodges. I’ve always been very interested in experimenting with different genres. I have always made a point of not getting stuck in a genre. For a while, I was doing rom-coms. And then one day, I said, “No, I have to turn this down. I cannot do rom-coms anymore.” 

I once told a producer, “My next thing is going to be an art movie.” And he said, “Oh, so you don’t want to make money.” And I said, “No, I want to win awards.” And that was “Grey Gardens,” [which I won an Emmy for]. But what drives me is that I love challenging myself. For the last five or six years, I’ve only wanted to do fantasy and period pieces. I reached the point where I literally had nothing more to say about contemporary life. Some of it is in your control; you have to decide what you want to do. I want the challenge. I want something I haven’t done before.

This story originally appeared in the Oct. 3 issue of Backstage Magazine.