Warning: Spoilers for The Penguin episode 3.
I’m sitting in the green room of StyleCaster’s studio on 5th Avenue, Manhattan, but there’s a tinge of desperation in Rhenzy Feliz’s voice, “Can we speak anywhere else?” he asks. You see, his mom, Joelis Vallejo is also his groomer, and when I say we’re here to talk about spoilers for The Penguin, he panics. “She doesn’t know what happens,” he says. It’s OK, she insists, she’ll put on headphones and listen to Karol G while we do the interview and she lays out her hairstyling tools. It takes a second more convincing, but he agrees.
Related Stories
Feliz has had a handful of acting roles before this one. His breakout role came in the young adult series Runaways for 33 episodes, but you get the strong feeling that HBO’s gritty mob drama—a spinoff of Matt Reeve’s The Batman—will push him into the big leagues. Colin Farrell, with whom Feliz spends the majority of his screentime, reprises his role as Oswald Cobb, a middle management mobster with ambitions for grandeur.
Feliz plays Victor Aguilar, a teenager from a low-income neighborhood in Gotham. In episode one, he and his friends try to steal the rims off the wrong guy’s purple—sorry, “technically it’s plum”—Maserati. Shots are fired, and Vic’s buddies flee, but Oz has him cornered. In exchange for his life, Vic offers to help Oz with whatever he needs, and his apprenticeship in the world of organized crime begins. “Oz loves this idea of being revered, being admired. He wants it,” observes Feliz, “and so I think he finds that in Vic. He likes having him around because of what it does to his ego.”
While there’s certainly a power imbalance between them, Oz and Vic share a few fundamental similarities. Both are from modest backgrounds and both are often underestimated because of their impediments. For Oz, it’s his limp; a symptom of a birth defect known as Club Foot. For Vic, it’s his stutter. Feliz worked extensively with fluency consultant, Marc Winski, who grew up with a stutter himself and is an advocate in the community, as a key part of Victor’s character development. “I would either make phone calls to delis in a stutter, or I would go to I would go to grocery stores and order stuff in a stutter. You can feel embarrassed and ashamed to speak because you feel like you’re taking up someone’s time,” he says. “The stutter had 75 to 80% of understanding who Victor was because it really shapes who you are as a human being.”
What has struck so many viewers in the opening few episodes of The Penguin is how, unexpectedly, it’s made them laugh. Between Oz and his new protégé, some touching moments will also catch the viewer off-balance. One in particular from episode 3, which we spoke about in great detail, reduced Winski to tears.
I want to start off by asking you what elements of Vic’s character you can empathize with.
I also didn’t grow up with much.
Where did you grow up?
I spent five years up in the Bronx. When I was five, I moved out of the Bronx. We lived up in the projects on 183rd St. Then we moved to a housing community in Florida. Then when I was 15, we moved to LA, and that was when my mom met my stepdad, so they joined the family, and we moved out to LA, and that was when it started getting a little more middle-class, and it was decent. But until I was 15, I lived in not the greatest circumstances. And I think that growing up that way, I can understand why Victor might go down this path.
Oz loves this idea of being revered, being admired. He wants it. And so I think he finds that in Vic. He likes having him around because of what it does to his ego
Rhenzy Feliz
At the beginning of episode 3, Victor’s family is killed in a flood caused by the Riddler’s bombs. He and his girlfriend Graciela have nothing left. His home is destroyed. She offers him an out, to go to California. Why do you think he chooses not to leave with her?
To not just get on that bus in episode three and leave with Graciela, money is a massive motivating factor. He hasn’t had a lot of agency or a lot of power in his life. He has been able to do much. He’s never been looked at like he’s able to accomplish much. I think that’s one of the things in episode one, where he goes, “I got ambition, and I’m not a waste.” I think at that moment in episode three he realizes, “This is my chance to get things I want things. I want to be someone, I want to be part of something.”
That’s what Oz sees in him too, right? Both of them want something more out of life. Do you think his affinity for Vic is genuine?
That’s probably more of a question for Colin, but do I think it’s real? I think at the beginning, he does feel like he can help this kid, he’s like, “This kid needs me.” I think it’s an ego boost. I think he likes the fact that this kid is looking up to him and that he’s helping him.
I loved the scene in the French restaurant where Vic and Oz are having lunch. Vic’s ordering the steak frites but because of his stutter, he can’t quite get the “frites” out right away. The waiter interrupts and Oz tells the waiter off. Can you walk me through that scene?
That scene is really nice because it takes some dips and valleys. I’m telling Oz a story, and then it becomes this whole, “Hey, stand up for yourself, take up space. Stop fucking cowering.” I remember Marc pulling me aside when he read the scene, and he said, “The scene is going to be really special for a lot of people.”
Once we shot it, he said, “You guys were shooting and I had tears in my eyes.” I think that, hopefully, one of the things that can come to that scene is this idea that it’s okay to take up time and to take up space, that people can just give you an extra second and get the word out.
There’s another moment where Oz tells Vic his dad would be proud of him when we know from meeting his dad briefly that that wouldn’t be the case.
Yeah, exactly. Vic knows who his father is, and knows he would not want him chopping off pinkies and stuffing dead bodies in the trunks of cars. But it’s one of the things that I think human beings do; push things to the side when deep down we know we’re doing something wrong. I think that’s what Vic has been doing, he’s been shoving it down and Oz brings it all back up. It’s a reminder that he’s not doing the right thing.
I love it when Oz starts Vic on $1,000 a week and Vic asks for two. Oz loves that. You can see the allure for sure.
Yeah, I think Vic sees Oz, and he admires how Oz is. He’s got this face with a big scar, and he’s got this limp, and yet he’s the loudest guy in the room. He comes in and he can harm anybody, but he comes in and makes a joke, makes people laugh. And I think Victor admires that. I think that there’s also this idea of power that Oz has, he’s got people working for him, and he’s a smart dude. He’s playing chess, and everyone else is playing checkers.
You and Colin have such great chemistry and he’s been in the industry for a long time. Did he offer you any advice?
I would ask him questions every now and then. I’d ask him sometimes, like, “Is it too far in one direction? Is it not enough?” He would give me advice on that, but only when I asked. He was very careful not to make it feel like there was this sort of hierarchy, even though he, deservingly, is up on a bit of a pedestal, but he was very aware to not make it feel like that.
There were a couple of times when, artistically, I didn’t want to do something. Maybe they’d ask me to say something, and I’m like, “I didn’t feel right.” I think he’d see it on my face, and a couple of times he pulled me aside to say, “Hey, if you don’t want to say it, don’t say it. Your instincts are good. I’ve seen you.” Those moments where I’d be afraid to speak up because I’m the younger actor on set, and he’s telling me to trust my instincts. It’s funny, it’s really similar to what Oz says to Victor.
Editors note: After we wrapped the interview, we checked to see if Rhenzy’s mom had heard anything. Rest assured, she hadn’t.
The Penguin airs each Sunday on HBO at 9 pm ET.
Photographer: George Chinsee
Entertainment Editor: Sophie Hanson
Grooming: Joelis Vallejo
Styling: Raziel Martinez
Rhenzy wears Ferragamo