The Penguin star Deidre O’Connell on the “responsibility” of playing someone with dementia: “I just want to honor these people that are going through this sh*t”

The Penguin star Deidre O’Connell says she felt a responsibility when playing Francis Cobb, the mother of Colin Farrell’s titular villain.

“I know more about it than I would like to know about it because my dad had it and my mom’s got it. I felt a responsibility to talk about that in being Francis. I was lucky enough to find a PT nurse for Parkinson’s who let me into their homes to watch them doing their PT sessions,” O’Connell revealed at a New York City Comic Con roundtable attended by GamesRadar+. “I unfortunately also know a bunch of people with Parkinson’s, so I knew the feel of that, I knew the feel of everybody. I just felt a huge responsibility to not ever soft-sell it, but not be showy with it, and give her the dignity of being someone who did not want people to know about it and did not want to be in this situation and was not playing the dependence card at all.”

The New York Times once called O’Connell the “master of the melancholy mom,” though this is the actor’s first time playing a character quite like Francis Cobb. In the series, Francis has Lewy Body Dementia, which is related to Parkinson’s Disease and is often misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s. Oz is uncomfortable with letting anyone else know that his mother is sick, except for Vic (Rhenzy Feliz). Vic takes care of Francis, and is patient and understanding when it comes to her memory loss and confusion – something that might be a bit healing for viewers watching at home.

Some people have compared Francis to Tony’s mother in The Sopranos, though there’s something darker and grittier to Francis Cobb – rather than Livia Soprano’s flat-out and unrelenting misery. As we reach beyond the halfway point of The Penguin, Francis’s condition has significantly deteriorated, and it brings out a side of Oz that the average Gotham thug would never be privy to see.

Continued O’Connell: “Lauren [LeFranc] and I worked a lot with, like, okay, when is that helping you with the writing? Because you can make these leaps because you can all of a sudden have me hallucinate. And how can I make that all very real for myself? How can I make all those steps work so that we’re not just using a trick? I just want to honor these people that are going through this shit as well as I possibly can. There’s one moment when Oz and Vic are both taking care of her and Oz starts to get angry at her for hallucinating something that’s not happening. And Vic is like, oh, no, he’s going along with it. And it was so clear to me the memory of the moment when I stopped fighting with my dad to be like, I’ll be whoever you want me to be.”

The Penguin is streaming now on Max. To keep up to date with the episodes, check out our guide to The Penguin release schedule,

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