By Lucas Siegel
It seems Batman origin stories are all the rage.
The population of Gotham, Fox’s upcoming Batman origin drama, is rising fast after the weekend announcement of Ben McKenzie being cast as the lead role, James Gordon .
THR reports that four more actors have joined the cast, including a police captain, a love interest, a butler, and a villain. Robin Lord Taylor, Zabryna Guevara, Sean Pertwee, and Erin Richards come into Gotham with three out of the four characters being very recognizable names to comic book fans.
Pertwee is the newest person to play Alfred Pennyworth, the butler who also takes care of Bruce Wayne after his parents are killed. Jeremy Irons was also recently cast as Alfred, but for the film version in Man of Steel 2.
In Gotham Alfred will be “a tough-as-nails ex-Marine from East London, who has loyally served the Wayne family. Now, in the wake of their tragic deaths, he is fiercely protective of the young Bruce Wayne.”
Erin Richards, meanwhile, is Barbara Kean, a “sophisticated ER doctor who is engaged to marry Jim Gordon.”
“She’s joyful but with an edge of vulnerability who stands by her future husband … which can be difficult in a world as corrupt as Gotham.”
Guevara will play Captain Essen, Gordon’s boss and the head of the Homicide Squad at Gotham PD, “who balances the two worlds of police and politics with a Machiavellian skill that is as much corporate litigator as cop.”
Perhaps the biggest casting news, though, is of the first Batman villain for the show, as Robin Lord Taylor becomes the newest Oswald Cobblepot. Cobblepot, the youngest of an old Gotham family, is better known to the public as The Penguin. In the show he’ll be a “low-level psychopath for gangster Fish Mooney” who has “the brains of a chess grandmaster and the morals of a jackal,” and who “hides his sadistic lust for power behind an exquisitely polite demeanor.”
Gotham was picked up straight to series by Fox, with Bruno Heller (The Mentalist) show running, and Danny Cannon (CSI) directing the pilot.
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