At this week’s New York Comic Con, I and a few other reporters had the opportunity to sit down and talk with the cast of The Penguin. Each of them were wonderfully gracious and answered our questions to give more insight into what went into making the show. Below is our conversation with Rhenzy Feliz, who plays Victor Aguilar. You can see our coverage of the public panel here, as well as our interview with Cristin Milioti, who plays Sophia Falcone, and showrunner Lauren LeFranc.

I don't know how aware you are of the online buzz around your character -

I try to stay away from it, haha.

There are a lot of comparisons between Vic Aguilar and the character of Robin in other media. It's kind of like a dark reflection of that, and I want to know what you make of it.

I think that's interesting. I don't know a lot about the history about Robin as a character, so I don't know if I'm the best person to ask about the comparisons or contrasts about it. I never thought about it while shooting it, that it was kind of the sidekick thing going on. Now sitting back and people mentioning that to me, I can see it a bit more. I guess he is kind of like a sidekick to Oz in a way. You know, he's like his guy, his right hand man. It's fun hearing those kind of things now.

How important is the fact that you're creating this character that is an unknown. There's not years and decades of Batman baggage behind it. So how do you approach that knowing that people are going to look back on this character?

It's like most of the projects that you sign on to. You don't have a Bible on the character or anything. You go into it and create it. You said how does it feel thinking about the fact that people were going to go back, and it's gonna kind be a thing now in the Batman world. That was the last thing on my mind, thinking that my character would sort of leave an impact in the greater universe of what Batman is, and The Penguin story. So it's kind of exciting.

I guess if people if people do take it that way and they do kind of see it as this important thing and really cool thing, a really cool character, but you get so specific when you're working on something that it's not so much about what are people going to think or that it has to fit into the larger picture. You're thinking about why is he so scared of Oz, or what just happened with family. It's so specific and then you let other people put you into a bigger frame or something.

In The Penguin, at least so far, I won't push you for spoilers on what will happen next, Vic is such a little fish in a big pond with all these huge, terrifying people around him. How do you play that into the character of having him navigate his way through that world?

Yeah, I think it's exactly that. I think it's just a wide-eyed fish out of water. You just don't know what the hell's going on and you just kind of try and stick as close to Oz as possible because he gets the game, he knows what's going on. Whatever tells me to do, I'll just do it. Cool, what do you need? You need that? I gotcha. He's just staying under under Oz's wing the entire time, no pun intended. Staying as close to him as possible because it is a dangerous world. Sometimes it's just as dangerous being near Oz as it is being near this other psychopaths. Well the devil you know, right?

You mentioned Victor's past, in terms of the trauma that you kind of dealt with, and I was curious when it came to working with Lauren the showrunner, how much of the backstory behind Victor was established. Was it this developed thing or was it something you guys just came together and improvised on? Also how you portrayed the stuttering issue that Victor had. What were the challenges with that?

So definitely we knew about the backstory into Victor's life before we started shooting. Establishment we talked about when I first met with Lauren about a month before I started shooting. Right after I'd gotten the part, we dove into really the entire arc of Victor's journey, so I knew the entirety of it from the very beginning.

As far as the stutter, I knew about that halfway through the audition process. I did one audition without it, but I didn't know that existed. And then another one I met with Craig, our director for the first three and producer on it as well, and he tells me halfway through the audition, "hey, we're thinking about the character having a stutter. You want to try one?" What do you say as an actor? You say yes. So I just said, okay, fine, but I was nervous as Hell to do a stutter improvised. I don't know how to do that.

I guess it was decent enough they wanted me to be with Colin. By the time Colin came around I had had enough time to go and meet with someone outside and get a dialect coach and work on the stutter. The same person who worked with Colin Firth on The King's Speech. I found them, I sent them an email that said I need you, please. I know we can get on for a few hours before I do this audition. He said great, so he helped me out.

Then the audition was good enough, I moved to New York, started, and then had about a month with a fluency consultant; his name's Mark Lewinski. He and I worked tirelessly on this thing to try and get it to a place that felt more comfortable and more organic and natural. I think that was the most thing I was most nervous about with the reaction of the audience. It wasn't even the Batman thing or Victor being a part of it. It was like, are people gonna make fun of me for the stutter thing? Like, is it going to seem ridiculous? I just hope that it didn't seem like you were trying to make fun of it in any way or anything like that. I've been very lucky with the responses that I've gotten from people reaching out to me through social media and stuff. Thankfully that community has been very, very positive.

Something that Vic seems to have in common with Oz, is that a lot of your actions throughout the show that we've seen so far have been driven by impulsive spur of the moment - just whatever occurred to you in that moment in time. I have to ask, does Vic have any core principles at all?

I think he's 17 years old and he's figuring that out. I think that ultimately he doesn't want to do bad things, but he also wants a better life. He wants a better life than what his parents had. He wants a better life than his grandparents and he wants a better life than what his peers have had. He sees a route to that through this and he doesn't see any other road. He doesn't know what other road he's gonna take to where he can make a lot of money, where he can have a nice life so he can be able to give his girlfriend 300 bucks on a whim and say "go put yourself up somewhere nice tonight".

I think he wants that life, and I don't think he sees another way to it. So yes, he makes spur of the moment decision. Screw it, I'm not going to California. I'm staying here. Yes he has a lot more spur of the moment decisions as the series goes on and we get deeper into the story, but you're right. I think Oz is better thinking on his feet than Victor is, but Victor tries his best.

What is it about Victor that Oz doesn't kill him after every time, you know?

Colin answered something like that on the panel, so I'll take his answer because he knows better why wouldn't Oz do something. I think he sees Victor as a kindred spirit is what Colin said. He also has a disability. Oz has got his own disability and I think he sees something in that. They came from the same neighborhood in Crown Point. You know, they both grew up on the East Side and so I think he sees a bit of himself in him, and I think he wishes that he had gotten opportunities when he was younger. The kid with the bum leg, nobody really wanted to pay much attention to him, and he sees Victor and goes, "oh, you know I'll help him".

I think it's a bit of an ego thing as well. I think Oz likes having somebody around that he can kind of boss around and can have someone that looks up to him. You can see it even in the clip that they showed, when he makes fun of Milos for wearing the lifts, Victor kind of looks over at the crew, kind of laughing about the joke that Oz made. I think he finds Oz funny. I think he likes Oz and I think that feeds Oz's ego. So there's many reasons why I think it keeps him around, but those are a few.

He seems sort of like a surrogate father figure as well in the absence of what happened to him.

Yeah, there's also something familial as well, and as the show goes on I think that grows and that bond kind of strengthens. Yeah, he has gone through a lot recently, Victor, and Oz is stepping into a role in his life.

You bring some Afro-Latino representation to comic books and to DC Comics. How do you generally feel about that? I loved all of the scenes with Victor's family. What was it like for you?

It means I have a job. I love it. I think it's great. I think it's important to see that. I think that there's not much of it in TV and media, so it's awesome to get to show it a bit. I love that it's not the show. The show isn't "here's my Dominican Mexican family. Here's my Afro-Latino family". The show is about Oz and The Penguin and everything going on. This happens to be a character the same way that it happens to be for most characters in most shows. It's not about them being white or Italian. That's in there, right? Something like Goodfellas, them being Italian matters, and it's important, and it's a part of the story, but it's not the story. The story isn't the fact that they're all Italian people, or people of Italian descent. I think it's just cool that we get to have a story where it's not the purpose of the story. We're just a part of the story. I think it's awesome.

Vic, like so many other people in the show, is driven a lot by the trauma that he's experienced. How did you work that into how you play the character?

We talked about that, me, Craig, and and Lauren, about how much is this weighing on the character throughout the entire show. I think that one of the things that we talked about was he just wears this baggage a bit. I think he hunches his shoulders, I think you can see it physically. He's going through a lot. He's not constantly smiling all the time. He's not in a great mood. I think there's pain in his life and I think there's wounds and there's pain and there's hurts. I think that with the constant threat on their lives and the constant moving of what's going on around them, I don't think has much time to sit and wallow in it or sit and think in it. I think it's left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. You know, someone's about to kill me. Let me focus on that. Because if you don't focus on it, you end up dead.

Stay tuned for more Batman News coverage of NYCC, including interviews, news, and panels.