EXCLUSIVE: 'Pennyworth' star Jack Bannon breaks down the meticulous approach he took while constructing Alfred's character for the series
If anything, 'Pennyworth' was audacious, unpredictable, and downright epic. The series, simply put, cuts to the chase early on. It was one of the shows that had its pilot screened during the San Diego Comic-Con 2019 and received rave, positive reviews. Produced by Bruno Heller and Danny Cannon, the producers behind 'Gotham', another Batman prequel series that focussed on a young James Gordon, the police commissioner, this one sees a dapper Jack Bannon essay the role of a suave, former SAS soldier.
Nine episodes of 'Pennyworth' have aired so far and we're pretty sure the finale will be an absolute blockbuster. 'Gotham' and 'Krypton' are a couple of examples of some successful prequels and 'Pennyworth' with an average score of 72% on Rotten Tomatoes and a whopping 96% audience score has established itself as one of EPIX's hit shows this year. Ahead of the season finale, 'Marianne Faithfull', MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) spoke exclusively to Bannon, who shed valuable insights on the '60s prequel and the way he went about prepping to play the iconic butler.
When asked how important it was for the world to know Alfred's story, "I think it's very important. I always thought of Alfred as a primary character anyway and 'Pennyworth' is different to a lot of shows, in its style and it's setting," Bannon explained. "We're exploring not only the backstory of Alfred but also giving DC fans what London looked like at the time. We know what Gotham and Metropolis looked like anyway, but we've never been to the other side of the ocean and so it's interesting. I think that's one of the strongest things about the show is this world in which Bruno (Heller) set it and we all sort of created it — The '60s London. So I think it's very important for those reasons."
For Bannon, there wasn't a lot of source material to go through while prepping for playing the character. "No, not really because this takes place all before the comics. So, Danny Cannon, our director and Bruno, the head of the showrunners... they quite often like giving people film recommendations or music and other sorts of pop culture references and obviously the sixties was a rich tapestry of lots of various things like that," he opined.
"So they gave me a point to the Michael Caine's Alfred would be the one to give a nod to if there were any because he said I'll play Butler as long as he's ex-SAS and obviously our story explores that so we were looking towards him anyway and that was helpful, because, obviously, he was like Britain's movie star of the sixties."
"There were lots of films that he did, like 'The Ipcress File' and other Harry Palmer spy films that we watched, listened to music from the time and a lot of that because when you're doing the first season of anything, especially something that's set somewhere that we've never seen before. You' building this whole world so we have lots of discussions about how the doorknob should look like or the filing cabinet or which tie to wear, which jacket and I was brought on for all of this, which was fantastic," he remarked.
This isn't surprising considering the attention that's paid to in detail. Bannon also revealed that there were two full days of different camera tests. "I think I tried on a hundred different outfits," he said. We did a little catwalk on each set and the team trying to look at the aesthetics of the show," he added.
"But that was also an opportunity to think about how Alfred would move because when you go on different clothes you move differently. How he might move... how we might walk... and bit by bit, from the voice early on, through the movement, and then eventually onto the big sets and the locations that we were on. We pieced it together that way rather than taking from comics or many other films."
Guess the meticulousness has paid off. Whether 'Pennyworth' ends with a strong finish remains to be seen.
The final episode, 'Marianne Faithfull' will air on Sunday at 9 pm on EPIX.