The cast and creators of Fox’s Batman Prequel look back
There have been many Batman TV series over the years. Both animated and live action. Fox’s Gotham, however, is one of the most outlandish series. A prequel that focuses on Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie), who is investigating the Waynes murders while Bruce (David Mazouz), is still a child? And his future Rogues Gallery is either around his age or young adults?
Despite that odd premise, things paid off. Gotham was a five-year series that spanned 100 episodes. It also had a prequel called Pennyworth: The Origin of Batman’s Butler and a fanbase who still loves it. IGN has published an extensive retrospective of the series ahead of its 10-year anniversary, which will be celebrated on September 22. It features interviews with the cast, Bruno Heller (the creator), and Danny Cannon, executive producer, director/writer, and recurring director/writer. Heller says that he had been considering what to do next after Warner Bros., CBS and McKenzie passed on his legal thriller The Advocates. He’d settled on a Batman series because the character was so TV-ready, but he said his son Felix (an avid comics reader) helped him realize the show should focus on Gordon rather than Batman himself.
“From that, a young detective investigating the Wayne murders was a natural concentration of ideas,” said Heller. The whole series was there as soon as the idea hit that he would be the detective who investigates the deaths of the Waynes. It’s Batman as a boy, the origin stories of all those characters like the Joker and the Riddler and the Penguin, but as young people.”
Cannon said Heller had two firm ideas for the first season: Gordon trying to keep his promise to Bruce to investigate the Wayne murders, and the story of Penguin’s (Robin Lord Taylor) rise to power. He told IGN, “You have one kid going through the loss of his parents and another kid with nothing.” The first was going to be a man and a person who is inquisitive about his parents’ deaths, with the help of his butler Jim Gordon.
The other, the only thing that would make him a man, was to tread on the skulls and kill people. The majority of the cast admit that they did not realize that they were auditioning for a Batman series. Heller told McKenzie that Gordon was specifically written for him, while Sean Pertwee learned about Alfred in a discussion with Heller and Cannon before the audition. And Camren Bicondova’s (Selina) realization came when she heard she had landed the role. “I thought they said ‘You are Catwoman’, but the first word they said was a’meow. ‘” And I was like, “What? I don’t understand,'” she recalled.[…]Like McKenzie, Mazouz knew he was auditioning for Bruce, even as he admitted to not remembering how he learned that information. Heller says he was “very early on” at the top, and Cannon was lucky to have Mazouz as a leading actor in Fox’s two season series Touch. His creators had recommended him to Cannon & Heller. Mazouz was cast in the role early 2014 and recalls seeing his friends wearing Batman clothing at his Bar Mitzvah. He said that moment was the first time he really felt like he would be Batman, whether or not he wore the suit. Pertwee says he keeps in touch with his former co-stars and that many people think it’s a show which couldn’t happen today. Taylor said that a big budget, 22-episode superhero show on network television “doesn’t sound like something coming back any time soon”, to say nothing about the freedom to play with the Batman mythos every week. “We were able play with canon, and with these classic stories in a brave and unexpected way for many fans. Ultimately,
prove to be just an endlessly refreshing take on these stories that have been around for 80 years.”
Bicondova said the show “brought an edge to comic book stories” you couldn’t find in other shows back then, or even now. Pertwee agreed with this sentiment, believing that people would find aspects of the show which were “correct”, and “humanized” the craziness of the Batman corner in the DC universe. Speaking to those characters, he added the show’s backstories on Batman and his rogues would reverberate through other incarnations across media.
McKenzie paid respect to other DC shows in the years since, but believed Gotham was “quite different from a lot of the others that existed then and now. McKenzie said that without Gotham I doubt they would have made a show on the Penguin. “[it’ll] a testimony to both Robin’s portrayal and also showing that you can create what is essentially PG-13 if not R rated show on Network Television by not dumbing down the audience, keeping the plots intricate, and the characters three dimensional. “The legacy of a TV show is whether people enjoyed doing it and walked away feeling that they were treated well, had a great time, made friends with other people, and felt proud,” said Heller. He said that “
was a small part of a huge Batman mythology.” Comparing Batman to a pop-culture saint, he added, “I hope we did justice
and took it seriously enough honor that and took it lightly enough to make it work for a television show.” You can also look back at Gotham, and all its Gotham-ness, in the comments. Want more io9 news?
