'The Penguin' snags top Creative Arts Emmy awards for technical performance

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Penguin” made a splash during Saturday’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards, taking home eight awards for the “Batman” spin-off’s craft and technical work.

The show, which is up for outstanding limited or anthology series at next weekend's main Primetime Emmy Awards, took awards for hairstyling, costumes, prosthetic makeup, visual effects, sound editing and sound mixing.

Various award winners stressed the importance of behind-the-scenes studio work to the HBO show's success.

“It’s not just me. It’s all of these people, it’s many more in the studio who are really working their hardest to do something very special," said Mike Marino, the show’s prosthetic designer, accepting an award for prosthetic makeup.

The technical awards give “The Penguin” a healthy lead among other highly-nominated limited series ahead of the Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 14. The show also snagged major acting nominations, including Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti for outstanding lead actors.

The spin-off miniseries follows 2022’s “The Batman,” exploring the rise to power of Oz Cobb, known as The Penguin, in Gotham City’s criminal underworld.

Another spin-off from a major franchise, “Andor,” also ran up impressive numbers. The Disney+ show, part of the Star Wars franchise, took home four awards for editing, production design and costumes. The show earned 14 nominations, largely for technical categories, but was left out of the running for major acting awards.

Yan Miles, who won outstanding picture editing for “Andor,” said working on the show was nerve-wracking given the franchise’s wide-reaching success.

“You start seeing sort of stormtroopers on set and you start seeing those things you’re like, holy shit, I’m in Star Wars, right? I’m in that universe that I remember as an 8-year-old boy. And that’s pretty cool,” Miles said.

“Adolescence,” the year’s most critically acclaimed limited series, is still expected to win the top awards in the categories next week, but won just one on Saturday, for its cinematography.

Marino, “The Penguin” prosthetic designer, emphasized the importance of championing human-made artistry during his acceptance speech.

“We are all human, and we all are artists working hard to pay bills and you know, make beautiful art,” Marino said. “Even though, look, we’re not saving lives, maybe we’re making people’s lives better when they watch TV or when they attach themselves to a show or something.”

The makeup, Marino said, was paramount for the show's leading actor, Colin Farrell, who plays Oz Cobb, to bring the character to life.

“He had mentioned that when he looked in the mirror for the first time, when we first did the makeup test, he immediately knew who his character was," Marino said. "He immediately knew how to speak, he knew how to walk.”

Johnny Han, the overall visual effects supervisor for “The Penguin,” helped manage a large team stationed all over the world to create the show. The challenge, he said, was “trying to find a consistent vision among so many teams.”

“It took eight episodes for us to really dial that in," Han said.