Before he served an integral role alongside Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth had plenty of other adventures in his youth, and the new Epix series Pennyworth explores those early days for the character.
Pennyworth stars Jack Bannon, Ben Aldridge, and Paloma Faith stopped by Fandom recently for a chat with Danielle Radford about what to expect in the series, which finds former British SAS soldier Alfred Pennyworth (Bannon) forming a security company and going to work with Thomas Wayne (Aldridge) in 1960s London. Faith in the meantime plays the villainous Bet Sykes.
Action and Music
Filled with action and suspense, Pennyworth finds its title character at a point where he is jumping right into the middle of a fight on a frequent basis, and Bannon recalled, “When I eventurally got the role, I had two or three weeks until we started filming, so I decided, through my own vanity, that I needed to go to the gym. So I hired myself a personal trainer, I went to the gym, but because I was trying to do too much in two weeks, I ended up in the hopsital.”
An acclaimed singer herself, Faith noted the important use of music in Pennyworth, both offscreen and off, explaining, “I’ve had quite a few scenes where they played the music in the room because it’s so important to the atmosphere. Two main scenes of mine they had the music blarring out and that’s quite unusual in the filming process because usually they’d add it later.”
The Past and Future
As for how Pennyworth will set itself apart from previous stories featuring Alfred or the Waynes, Aldridge remarked, “Although we’re very honored to be joining that canon of work, I don’t even know if you can call it a spinoff. It’s not really spun off of anything. It’s starting something. And the material is really original, so we’re just respinding to what’s on the page.”
That being said, he added there are some Easter eggs and other visual nods to what’s in store for the characters and world they live in.
Check out our full video interview with the Pennyworth cast at the top of the page for more, including which previous onscreen version of Alfred Bannon was influenced by!
Pennyworth premieres Sunday, July 28th at 9:oopm ET/PT on Epix.
