John Turturro’s take on Gotham’s infamous crime lord Carmine Falcone was unforgettable in The Batman. His portrayal was dripping with quiet menace—a puppet master at the core of Gotham’s corruption. However, if you were hoping to see Turturro slip back into the role for HBO’s The Penguin, you’re out of luck. The actor turned down the role—and not because of scheduling conflicts. It was a conscious decision rooted in his discomfort with the portrayal of violence.
Anyone who’s caught the fourth episode of The Penguin might’ve noticed Carmine Falcone make a return—though this time, played by Mark Strong, looking suspiciously like he’s wearing a knockoff Turturro get-up. Strong’s Falcone dropped in for some plot-advancing backstory, but the absence of Turturro’s chilling presence felt pretty stark. The change sparked plenty of speculation—was it just bad timing or an issue of contract negotiations? Turns out, it was neither.
In a recent interview with Variety, Turturro opened up about his decision to stay away from the series, admitting that the show’s depiction of “a lot of violence towards women” led him to opt out. “I did what I wanted to with the role,” Turturro said of his original performance as Carmine Falcone. “In the show, there was a lot of violence towards women, and that’s not my thing.” For those paying attention, this isn’t exactly a wild plot twist—Falcone’s dark side was evident in The Batman, even if his violent actions were implied rather than explicitly shown. And yet, Turturro’s resistance is kind of fascinating, considering that The Penguin keeps Carmine’s nastiness largely in the background too.
In the series, Mark Strong’s Carmine isn’t so much cracking skulls directly as he is orchestrating the chaos from behind the scenes. He’s still manipulating and gaslighting his daughter Sofia, played by Cristin Milioti, and he’s still engineering abuses—it’s just that The Penguin prefers to keep the actual violence at arm’s length. For Turturro, though, arm’s length wasn’t far enough.
It wasn’t all talk of Gotham rogues and crime syndicates, though. Turturro also gave a hint about his future with Apple TV’s Severance, and it doesn’t sound like a bright one. While discussing his time as Irving in the unnervingly sterile Lumon office, Turturro casually dropped that Season 2 would likely be his last. “I didn’t like being in that office—the light there drove me insane,” he revealed, keeping it real. “I did my second go round, but I feel like I’ve had a full meal.” Apparently, those Lumon lights aren’t just creepy—they’re effective enough to drive a great actor to call it quits.
It seems John Turturro is done with characters who inhabit dark, corrupt worlds—at least for now. Between the morally repugnant Carmine Falcone and the soul-draining office of Lumon Industries, you can’t really blame him for wanting to move on to, perhaps, more illuminating projects.
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