PENNYWORTH
BUT(LER) SERIOUSLY, FOLKS: HERE COMES BAT-PREQUEL PENNYWORTH...
Find out what the butler was up to before he waited on Batman.
Teen Titans Go! To The Movies mocked the idea of an Alfred spin-off (“The ultimate grime-fighter”), but the edgy, surprising Pennyworth is no joke. Set in an alt-’60s London, the DC series follows Batman’s future butler (played by Jack Bannon) as he starts a security firm and gets drawn into a secret civil war, encountering baddie Bet Sykes (Paloma Faith) and a US agent by the name of Thomas Wayne (Ben Aldridge)…
How was the show pitched to you?
JACK BANNON: It was quite clever; sometimes when you audition you get sent a premise but no script. But with this, I think they made a conscious decision to send out the pilot script with the email, because
BEN ALDRIDGE: Because it could sound a bit cheesy! Yeah. Like, “What? You’re doing a show about the butler?!” But as soon as I read the script, and read a big description of the world in which it’s set, it grabbed me.
PALOMA FAITH: I was sent a character synopsis, very little information, which was deliberate; they’d failed to cast Bet, because, I think, when [other actors] heard ‘Batman’ they were hamming up the villain thing. In my mind, I was in a Mike Leigh film, a gritty British drama.
What’s the dynamic between the characters?
BA: You might expect it to be this buddy TV series – two unlikely friends starting a security firm together. But really,
Thomas and Alfred are quite unsure and suspicious of each other. Thomas definitely needs Alfred because he’s a Yank in this twisted version of London and doesn’t know his way around.
PF: Alfred and Bet are enemies – he hates her – but then the show asks the question: maybe they have more in common than meets the eye?
How do you get audiences to invest in characters whose fates they know?
BA: They know where they end up, but not where they began. And really, very little is known about Thomas and Martha [Wayne], other than them dying and being noble.
PF: And you don’t actually have to be a comic-book or superhero fan to watch the show. If you are you can go, “Well, this means this,” but you can watch it as a standalone drama. It’s good TV.
JB: You could see it as just being about a lad who leaves the army and sets up a security firm, who just happens to be called Alfred!
The tone is tougher than a lot of superhero-related shows…
BA: There’s violence, but there’s this kind of kitsch, slightly wry feel to it.
JB: It’s set in a really weird, dangerous world, so I think the violence fits. And it’s never like, “We’ve got an R-rating, let’s just kick someone’s head in for the sake of it.”
PF: And thankfully we live in a culture of desensitisation, so nobody even notices anymore! [laughs]
Ben, is it cool being Batman’s dad?
BA: Well, high status is fun to play, but Thomas is definitely uncool! JB: You’ll get there!
PF: I don’t think he should be cool. I feel like Batman wouldn’t have become a superhero if he’d had these perfect parents, would he? He’d probably have worked in HR or something instead.
What are your hopes for a potential Season 2?
BA: To have a Season 2!
PF: I think more killing for me. I haven’t killed enough people. I’ve just hurt a lot of them. Matthew Leyland