Bruce Timm says Batman: Caped Crusader gender-flipped The Penguin as Batman had “a lack of good villains” and he wanted more female ones

One of the biggest talking points surrounding Batman: Caped Crusader was the gender-flipping of The Penguin. 

Often portrayed as a diminutive, gruesome-looking gangster, the villain (voiced by Minnie Driver) was reinvented in the Prime Video animated series as a bawdy, show-stopping cabaret artist moonlighting as the head of a criminal organization.

Caped Crusader’s Penguin, then, was the result of creator Bruce Timm and executive producer James Tucker working at rounding out Batman’s rogues’ gallery.

“James and I were talking about the overview of the show, and we said, ‘One of the problems with Batman, as he is, is there’s a lack of good villains.'” Timm recalled in an interview with the Emmys.

“You’ve got Catwoman, you’ve got Poison Ivy, you’ve got Harley Quinn. But it would be really good to have more female villains. And off the top of my head, I said… ‘What if we gender-flip The Penguin?'”

That, in turn, sparked Tucker – who spearheaded Caped Crusader’s 1940s-style character designs – into action.

“When he said ‘Maybe we can gender-flip Penguin’ I just got this flood of ideas,” Tucker said, who went on to outline some of his inspiration for the bold reworking. 

“I was thinking of Marlene Dietrich in her tuxedo and Cabaret the musical and the art form of cabaret, and I just started drawing… Also, I was thinking a little bit of Harvey Fierstein and Hairspray and Divine. It just was like I knew instantly what it could be.”

Speaking to GamesRadar+ at San Diego Comic-Con, Driver insists that the new Penguin is a “great reimagining” that fits into Batman’s history.

“It’s amazing as, a lot of times today, we are trying to redress the balance of representation and you sometimes feel that things have been shoehorned in – it’s more performative than organic,” Driver said. 

“This is organic. It’s believable that this bizarre, strange, larger than life character is genderless because it’s the essence of The Penguin. What we are looking at is the essence of the original comics and animation. When you look at her she’s weirdly genderless, she’s a creature, and I love that that’s what we are exploring now.”

The first season of Caped Crusader is now streaming on Prime Video. For our verdict, check out our Batman: Caped Crusader review. Then take a look ahead to what the rest of the year has in store with our guide to new TV shows.