Two Dumbo Co-Stars Swap Stories About Their Time Playing The Penguin | Actors On Actors

So, uh, yeah. All right. So here we are. It's good to see you. I miss you. I'm only a phone call away, Danny. No, I text you. We text each other. Okay. We text each other. Thank you. But anyway, I like I was saying, I miss you. It's good to see you. Because we spent a lot of time hanging out on Tim's movie. On Dumbo. Oh. That's still to this day, the most beautiful set I've ever worked on. Going to work every day in that big warehouse they had. Oh my God. And they built a whole fun park, a whole theme park inside a warehouse that they used to build Zeppelins in. Yeah, it was amazing. And they had cars and horses and 300 people in a building. It was the weirdest thing, but it was beautiful. He's got a vision, Tim. He's magic, Tim. Just a magic guy. How many films have you done with him? Five, I think. Batman, which we'll get to. Batman Returns. Yeah. Did you like doing the penguin? I did. Did you? I did. Was it a simple yes when he asked you to do it? Oh, yeah. How did he come to you about it? No, simple yes. And makeup tests and all that stuff? Because that was as extreme a look as I had on mine. It was very different, but just as extreme and just as arduous in the mornings. Well, the first time I saw yours, I said, oh my. It was a total transformation. How long did it take to do the makeup? Three. And the first makeup test was all in. We tested in the Warner Brothers lot about six months before we shot the film. And that was seven or eight hours. But that was the first time. And everyone was nervous. And they had a team of 15. And then they got it down to about three hours in the morning. Yeah. You're Oz. I'm Oswald. Straighten that out. My ritual was this. I get there in the morning, like 5 o'clock, 4, 4.30, 5 o'clock in the morning. And I'd go into the makeup room. I'd sit in the chair. And V Neal, who was the makeup artist, would be standing there with the thing of glue. Oh, that was. Okay. Once that went on. In the end, that was a bit depressing. That first paintbrush touching your skin. The first. And this was where she went first with me. She went right over the nose around here. Because they had to put that big prosthetic. That was the anchor. Yeah. That was the thing. The beak was the anchor. But once that went on and they stuck the prosthetic on with all the glue and powdered it. It felt like then it was an easier slope. It wasn't like downhill skiing from there. It was kind of like just gliding along for the next couple of hours, few hours. Yeah. How'd that feel for you? I was pretty much the same. At the start of it, yeah, I'd come in in my pajamas every morning. Because I just wasn't willing to commit to wearing a pair of jeans to work anymore. I was just in my pajamas. I'd come in every morning. I'd have a shave in the morning just to make sure the skin was totally soft. Because any little particles of hair, the pieces wouldn't stick to the eyes. And then Mike would come in with the first brush. And as soon as the glue would hit, it was a bit of a mood changer. It's a bit of a downer. But then as you say, once the pieces started to go on, transformation began. It wasn't that. But yeah, it was just the initial smack of here we go again. And then it was fine. It was comfortable, right? Yeah. I really enjoyed it. And I used it as an opportunity to... I mean, I could have learned my lines the night before and I tried. But I'd top up on the lines in the day's work. And then by the end, I had a hood. Because I had the head on and my body was skinny. Because I hadn't put the thing on yet. So it was very strange. There was this Oz head and then this little skinny Irish body beneath it. So I had like a John Merrick elephant man hood that they made with two eye holes. And I put that on because there was cameras outside. I mean, you were brilliant in that show. And there's so much emotion and so many different places to go with that character. Yeah, they really dug in because they had the eight hours. The five or six scenes in the film and then they had the eight hours. But you had a good backstory as well. I mean, you were totally thrown out of the nest, weren't you? Your Penguin was flung into the river at a very young age and raised by penguins. So yours was more heightened and more comic book based, which is not to say it wasn't branded, of course. Yeah. So yeah. So tell me about the character of Frank Reynolds. Frank Reynolds is amazing. Is he one of your favorites? One of my favorites. The thing about Always Sunny was like these guys, Charlie Day and Rob McElhaney and Glenn Howerton, they called me and asked me if I'd like to be part of it. And I didn't know how I was going to fit in. I said, what am I going to do? Just Danny DeVito going into this show? And so I met with the guys. I love them. They were terrific guys. And they're so creative. You know, ideas just zap out of them. So we know how to make it work. Here's the way. You're Dennis and Dee's dad. What? You know, they write the scripts. They come up with all these wacky ideas. They'll go with anything. Throw them off a building, do this, come out of the couch naked. And do you have story ideas as well? Do you bring it? Yeah. You can pitch to these guys. Oh, it's so fun. Oh, God, they're great. So it must be one of the most fun jobs you've had for the looseness and the creativity and the lack of preciousness. And I mean, that is a virtue. That's right. I mean, that is a virtue. You know? Yeah. You care about it. You go to work. You have a good time. It's like amazing. That's great, man. Really cool. Would you do The Penguin again if there was a revisitation, if Tim called you up? Absolutely. Would you? Oh, absolutely. What did you like about the character? Like, why would you do it again? I just loved it because it was, you know, it gave you a freedom to burst out. Well, you too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you can go off the rails with something. I mean, you had a little bit more restraints because you were in a totally other realm. The operatic element of Tim Burton's Batman Returns with the music and the sets and his penguins and his minions and his passion and all of that, I loved about it. And I mean, that's a character that you... Did you take it home with you at all? Like, do you take it home? Like, if a character you're playing is having very extreme thoughts, emotions, behaviors, it doesn't come home at all? No. It doesn't, I mean, come home. Go home to Ria and the kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lovely. Keep it separate. Yeah, otherwise it would be really... I played some really despicable characters. It would be hard to live with Louis. It would be hard to live with any of the characters that I played. You know, like, even Frank. Frank would be really ridiculous to live with.