Alison Stewart: This is All of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm grateful you're here. On today's show, the Doc NYC Film Festival kicks off tomorrow. We'll preview some of the featured documentaries and speak to the director of one of them titled Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story. We'll also talk to the author of the new book Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel's Tween Empire. Theater photographer Joan Marcus will be here. If you've seen a still photo or a Broadway production, it was probably taken by her. She joins us to discuss how she does it. That's the plan. Let's get this started with actor Cristin Milioti.

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Alison Stewart: It is time for an All of It watch party when we all check out a series and then we together to discuss. With the Penguin, we are not alone. The season finale of The Penguin earned huge numbers, making it one of the most-watched HBO Max series. It is the grim and gritty origin story of a Batman villain. The Penguin starts as a low-level gangster with big dreams named Oz Cobb. He wants to run all of Gotham and be loved. He has a little competition from Sophia Gigante Falcone, a once institutionalized daughter of a mob boss.

People think she's been a serial killer, but she was framed. After spending 10 years in a brutal psych ward, when she's released, she has turned into a woman with her own set of standards, shall we say? She's played by our guest, Cristin Milioti. Yes, the Tony Award-nominated actor from Once. No singing here though. Sophia walks, stalks, and sashays through the series, shooting and killing with great aplomb and a spectacular wardrobe. Let's hear a little bit of dialogue between Sophia and Oz, played by Colin Farrell.

Cristin Milioti: You think what's best for me? Hmm? You think that's what I need? How are you any different than those in there? It's very, very convenient that all of a sudden you're on my side. Will you look at that? Right? My little helper.

Colin Farrell: All right.

Cristin Milioti: You're desperate. You are scrambling for whatever dignity you have left and you're hoping I will save you. Not going to happen.

Alison Stewart: Milioti’s performance is described as scene-stealing in the Rotten Tomatoes consensus. One reviewer called her performance the secret weapon of the series. Cristin, welcome.

Cristin Milioti: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: We're going to get into the show. We're going to get into spoilers later on, in 20 minutes. We'll give you a hard heads-up, everybody.

Cristin Milioti: Sure.

Alison Stewart: You get the part. You read the script. When you think about Sophia's arc in the show, how would you describe it?

Cristin Milioti: My gosh. I'm wanting to answer that in two separate parts because I only got the first script when I signed on. Even in that first script, I could tell that a type of role like this is extremely rare. Then as I read more of them, that hunch was confirmed that a role like this is a needle in a haystack. It does not come along. It'd been something that I'd been hoping for and wishing for. I've also been incredibly lucky. I've gotten to play a lot of roles that I felt that way about, but this, I understood how special and unique and singular it was because she gets to go through so much.

Alison Stewart: She's like a Shakespearean character.

Cristin Milioti: Yes. When Colin and I were shooting it, we would refer to it as an opera all the time because it felt very operatic. That, that world toes a fine line. It's heightened, but you can believe that it would be happening right around you today. Gotham has always been slightly adjacent to New York City. Yes, it felt very Shakespearean. Operatic.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we're talking with Christian Milioti. She played Sophia on the Penguin. It dropped its finale on Sunday. If you've been watching, call in and tell us what your favorite part of the series is. What it is? What behind-the-scenes question do you have for Cristin, who plays Sophia, the want-to-be mob boss? Call in and talk about it. 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. You can call in or you can text to that number. She's so complex. She's angry, she's hurt, she's feral. Your makeup and costumes are outrageous. Let's give a shout-out to your designer, Helen Wong.

Cristin Milioti: Yes. Incredible. Hair and makeup here too. Brian Body and Martha Melendez. Those three departments and I were obviously in constant communication and collaboration. I will always be grateful to them for how collaborative it was. Which I think is also a rarity in these franchise worlds. That's also a testament to our showrunner, Lauren LaFranc, whose praises I can't sing enough. I'll never have the proper words. It was a big collaboration. Usually, that stuff is put on you. It's set by what a comic looks like or what they want a toy to look like. I don't know. This is my first time in a franchise. I was going in there, expecting one thing. I came with a lot of ideas and they had ideas. It was so cool.

Alison Stewart: How did you understand how Sophia's wardrobe would affect your performance? First, how much did the wardrobe affect it? Then also, how did it help us

understand her better?

Cristin Milioti: I think I learned how it affected it in real time as we were shooting it. In the beginning, she's in these buttoned-up looks. She's covered up. I knew what she was covering up. We'd been in discussions about that. In these pseudo-Chanel, that's what they were based on. Very proper, very wealthy, but constrained. I think something Helen and I talked about a lot was a luxurious straight jacket, essentially. Which is what you meet her in when you first see her. She's in that white, pure, nothing to see here. Something I felt very strongly about, and so did Helen and so did Lauren, was that if this woman grows up in the world of this extremely patriarchal Mafia family, where women are allowed to express themselves through hair, makeup, and clothes.

Then if this person goes through what they go through, how would you then express that through those tools that she's been given her whole life? Those were the set of things that she was taught. You're also in this heightened world of Gotham where, because I've been a lifelong Batman fan, I'm also like, "You can turn everything up to a 12 out of 10, including how someone looks." That's what's so incredible to me about the villains in these things. There's no superpowers. There's no mystical helmet that gets delivered by the God of whatever. It's people making these costumes in their homes in order to go out and face the world that they are angry at. I think that that also, it's an endless playground.

Alison Stewart: I thought-- I'm sorry.

Cristin Milioti: No, go, go. Go ahead.

Alison Stewart: I thought your makeup looked Cleopatra's at one point, and I wondered if that was--?

Cristin Milioti: I came in with-- I felt very strongly about that eyeliner that she first starts wearing in the yellow dressing. I was, again, so grateful to Martha for being so open about that and to Lauren. Because you're still having to put these choices up many rungs of a ladder of people who have to approve it and blah, blah, blah. It is a giant franchise thing. They somehow let me do it. I always felt-- I didn't base it on Cleopatra per se, but I wanted it to be like a war paint. I wanted it to be in conjunction with this gown that we'd had so many different fittings about.

I knew the gas mask would be on its way. What would you be able to see through the viewfinder of the gas mask? I wanted it to seem like this was truly her sitting down with this battle makeup on, except that they don't know that they're about to go into battle. That was a very-- That was the first time. Her makeup leading up to that is very much what that family would expect of her, or what she would have grown up doing. It was the first tiptoe into then what it becomes for the rest of the show.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Chris is calling from Nassau County. Hi, Chris. Thanks for calling, All of It. You're on with Cristin Milioti.

Cristin Milioti: Hi.

Chris: I want to say what a great performance. It was obvious that you really delved into the character. Really, really awesome. I was wondering if you made any changes from the original script due to all that knowledge that you built up about this character. Were you able to add something here, something there?

Cristin Milioti: I've got to say, I was in such locks up with Lauren that there was never really a moment where I didn't totally feel like this felt right. There were definitely things that we improvised that made it in, which they were also really lovely about. There's a moment in episode four where I was trying to make the woman who plays my cousin, I was trying to make her laugh. I said that my uncle had gotten his wife on portugal.com or something. They were very open to little bits that. Then Colin and I, every now and then, in the section of the show where we're buddies before it all goes absolutely terribly, were allowed to open it up a little bit.

Other than that, there was nothing I ever read where I was like, "Oh, no." I think that was also one of the gifts of collaborating with Lauren, as well. We both are so protective and utterly obsessed with this character. That's the only thing-- I'm racking my brain and I don't think I ever had a moment where I was like, "This doesn't feel like her."

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Eliana, I believe, from Westchester. Hi, thanks for calling in.

Eliana: Hi, thanks. I wanted to comment on how beautiful I thought Sophia is portraying a woman. She's so deeply feeling and she's so strong at the same time. I feel like women's weaknesses are always much more highlighted or much more paid attention to than their strengths. Women have so many different sides of them, and it is a beautiful thing. Sophia keeps coming back within these positions of power and it feels so good to see that. That she can still coexist in these both parts of her personality and her lived-in experience.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for the call. Yes, I was struck by the feminism of Sophia's character, as wild as that may be. She goes from being this mob daughter to this real mob boss at the end.

Cristin Milioti: That caller was-- That was so meaningful for me. I got a little emotional because I certainly feel that way. Something that I've been talking about, especially when I talk to other women about it. This was the type of role that I wish I had seen growing up, for sure. Not that there haven't been great villains-- I think of Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns, it’s incredible. That was also part of the rarity of it. It feels like it's also a reflection of the time that we're living in. I'm not condoning this action, but there's that scene in that episode where I'm in front of the family. This is a spoiler for anyone who hasn't seen it.

Alison Stewart: Okay. Spoiler, spoiler, spoiler.

Cristin Milioti: I'm interrupted over and over and over and over by Johnny Vitti, and I take out a gun and shoot him in the head. I have talked to a lot of women about, not that anyone wants to do that, but that impulse of being like, "Stop it. I'm speaking." We’ve seen it on the national stage. We've seen it on the international stage. We've seen it our whole lives. There is something, I think, that is wish fulfillment. Again, not condoning an act. No one should be shooting anyone in the head, but we've seen so many movies where men do that. You see Scarface. You see all these things where that type of power and unhingedness, or whatever you want to call it, is celebrated.

To see a woman be like, "No, this is efficient. I got what I needed out of you. I need you to be done. I need to show up some power. I'm in a fabulous fur." It makes you-- I felt that playing her. I was like, "I don't ever want to give this up." Then, there's parts of her that are also very complicated and steeped in grief and loneliness and all these things that we all feel. There's a part of her where you're like, "Oh, my God." You root for her. Because we've all felt on different scales the things that she goes through, and then she lets people know what they've done is wrong. Again, I don't condone what she does, but you're like, "Whoa. Damn." Yes.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Christian Milioti. She stars as Sophia in The Penguin. If you watched the series finale of Penguin on Sunday and you have any questions, give us a call. 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. You can text us at that number, or you can call in and you can talk with Cristin. I have to ask about this choice, whether it was you or the writer. Sophia eats like a trucker. She eats with her hands. She fills her glass all the way to the top. Why does Sophia eat this?

Cristin Milioti: That was something that Lauren had always put in the script. It was in different, multiple, episodes. Then it was something we would play with more as we went forward. A lot of it was that this is someone who-- The way she eats. First of all, she hasn't had good food or softness or luxury of any kind in 10 years. There's also this need to have as much-- She has a taste for the finer things. That's why she dresses the way she does. She's back in the world for the first time and there's a bottomlessness to her, too. You get the sense that nothing would ever fill what has happened to her, which is part of her journey.

I think one of the ways in which she tries to fill that is with food. She's also been used to eating in the mess hall of an insane asylum for 10 years, where he would want to eat as quickly as humanly possible in order to get your ration or whatever. I also wanted to keep that in mind, too, which was that this is someone who has had to live like an animal for 10 years. How would that person eat? Even if they're at a fancy restaurant, in a brand-new setting, for them. Then the alcohol is that she has been without that for 10 years. There's a certain amount of numbing and wanting to again, fill that void.

That was something that we-- Especially in those early episodes when you don't know her story, they were windows into being like, "Wow, this woman is in this white Chanel suit and she's eating a salad with her hands." It was just ways to show these little windows into the type of-- What was roiling beneath.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask you about after she's released from the mental institution. What was it like, or what was the challenge of playing a woman who was unraveling?

Cristin Milioti: I would say there's always challenges with making things or staying inside of an intense mindset. I was so thrilled the entire time to get to play with this complexity. That challenge wasn't necessarily-- Doesn't feel like the right word.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Cristin Milioti: It was more-- I will say, it does feel right for-- I was always extremely afraid that I wasn't going to be doing her justice. This sounds so actory, but I was very protective of her. I love this character, and I really wanted to thread the needle correctly of showing the ways in which she is slowly driven mad and showing the ways that she is slowly brought to the brink when she's out. Really wanting to take care with each beat and each level of rage and humiliation and grief that she is put through. It was more-- A lot of the challenge was probably getting out of my own way and getting out of my own crippling nerves about, "Oh, God, I'm going to mess this up," to be honest. I'd say that was exhausting.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Chris from the Upper West Side. Hi, Chris. Thanks for calling All of It.

Chris: Oh, man, what a trip. I've had to watch each episode twice and probably more. There's so much going on. I think the heart of the show is this character. She's tough and she's crazy and she's animalistic in some ways, but the moral heart of the show is there. The empathy. You talked about the strength of her feminist strength, but the bonding of women and the feminist bonding that goes on, these moments of empathy for Eve-- That episode with Eve, the mom at the end, when she reaches out to her and says, "Where are you now?" Gets spat upon for that. Slapped in the face. Her niece that she saves. All levels, all age levels, class levels, that she has this inherent empathy for others that can be played. To me, that's the heart of the show. When the Penguin shows empathy, you never quite trust him that he's not playing people. With her, you feel it's real.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling. Yes, that history-- Go ahead.

Cristin Milioti: I was going to say that's one of the things I really love about our show and love about Sophia and honestly love about the Batman Universe. I've always thought that these villains or, even Batman himself, even Bruce Wayne, it all comes from broken hearts. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's why they're acting the way they're acting. Especially with Sophia, you hopefully, understand that it's from such a place of having a heart broken. This is what happens when care isn't taken. Even in that scene that you referenced with the niece. That was one of my favorite scenes to film.

I think what's so sad about that scene is that she is trying to give this child care, but ends up sentencing her to the same life that she had. There's so many moments of, "Oh, my gosh, this is the way in which grief and pain can warp someone." Even when they're trying to do something good, it's coming out bad. I think that for a heightened world, it's so human. I love to hear that. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Cameron from Jersey City. Hi, Cameron. Thanks for calling All of It.

Cameron: Hey, guys. How's it going? Quick question for Cristin. I think you're a total rock star, intoxicating and all that. From back in the day, when used to work on The Sopranos, I'm curious how-- Working with James Gandolfini compared to working with Colin Farrell and how that old school, old gangster, show informed this new gangster show. I'm curious to see what you may have taken from that.

Cristin Milioti: Sadly, I don't think I took anything because I was in such a state of blackout panic. I'd never been on a big set. I was 19 when I did Sopranos and I had never seen the show, so I also didn't understand, blissfully, what I was a part of. I watched the Sopranos for the first time two years ago, and it is the best show ever made. The rumors are true. It's utterly incredible. I didn't really interact with anyone or with the main cast. I remember getting my makeup done next to James Gandolfini and knowing, of course, who he was and also not understanding totally the etiquette of being in a hair and makeup trailer or being on a set.

He was very sweet and shook my hand. I was so awestruck by everyone around me. I remember standing next to Edie Falco at one point and being awestruck, but also not knowing the show. It was really wild. Steve Buscemi was the director of that episode, and he was so unbelievably kind to me. I think it was probably clear that I was a fawn on the ice. I didn't know where anything was. I didn't know how cameras worked. I don't know if I could say I took anything from it other than my own sense of wonder that I've been able to work alongside people that are incredible.

Alison Stewart: All right, we're giving people a little bit of a spoiler warning because we have a couple of texts, for people who haven't watched yet. This says, "Your performance was so amazing. The level to which you showed empathy to the other woman was so graceful. The Oedipus complex that Oz has is so intense, and you press on that, and Oz still does not relent." What do you make of that?

Cristin Milioti: Oh, wow. I think part of what makes them such incredible adversaries is it has to do with their history and the fact that they both know how to hurt the other one the most. He ends up hurting her in the worst way possible, and vice versa. She understands that to him, the image he projects is everything. I think when she sees that, not even being confronted by the truth of his mother and her feelings about him and all these things that happen in that episode, it's probably a state of wonder. "Oh, my God. Look at how deep this illness goes."

It harkens back to what she says earlier to Dr. Rush at one point. She says, "I'm not broken. The world is broken. I'm not the one who's sick. It's everyone around me." I felt there were echoes of that in there. I don't know if that answered it. That's what came to my brain.

Alison Stewart: This text says, "I felt like the finale of the show mirrored the election. The smart woman who was better and deeper and smarter gets bested by the thug." What do you find people are connecting to when they talked to you about Sophia?

Cristin Milioti: Of course, that went through my mind as well. I sat there at a bar with friends watching the television, and that thought crossed my mind a few times. That was a heartbreaking episode to film because I hate to see that that's her fate. Also, I think it's so affecting because we've seen that time and time and time again. Certainly, the way in which this aired at the same exact time, a couple of days afterward, I think is an extra punch to the gut. I think that people's reactions to it, and my own reaction to it, it's horrifying and it's mystifying.

I will never understand this country's disdain toward women. I'll never understand it. I don't know how you sit with that and make sense of it. Certainly, the show reflecting that too, I think, reflects it for a reason. It feels very real.

Alison Stewart: Did anyone ever approach you about singing in the show? I know that sounds wacky.

Cristin Milioti: About singing?

Alison Stewart: Singing.

Cristin Milioti: No. I've been on other shows where people ask me to sing, and I'm always very flattered, but I'm always like, "I don't think this character would sing." I miss singing so much. I sing. I sang at a friend's show recently. I still do it, but I do miss the feeling of doing that regularly and as a piece inside of a piece.

Alison Stewart: Maybe there'll be a Penguin, the musical adaptation somewhere.

Cristin Milioti: Penguin on ice.

Alison Stewart: A Penguin on Ice. My guest has been Cristin Milioti. Thank you so much for spending time with us.

Cristin Milioti: This was my pleasure. I so appreciate everything you said and what the people who called in said. Very moving. Thank you.