Expectations are always high when taking on the visual identity of Gotham, a city that has been imagined and reimagined across generations of films and television. With HBO’s “The Penguin,” those expectations were met with acclaim, as the series became the most nominated show in HBO Max history at this year’s Emmys. At the center of that recognition is production designer Kalina Ivanov, whose work gave Gotham a new and distinctly grounded perspective.
Ivanov is no stranger to prestige projects. She is an Emmy winner for HBO’s “Grey Gardens” and has designed acclaimed productions such as “Nine Perfect Strangers” and “Little Miss Sunshine.” With “The Penguin,” she faced the challenge of crafting a Gotham that felt connected to Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” while also establishing a visual identity of its own. That achievement was rewarded with one of the show’s twenty-four Emmy nominations, placing Ivanov in a category where “The Penguin” is the only limited series represented.
The series, created by Lauren LeFranc with Reeves as executive producer, follows Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb in the aftermath of “The Batman.” The cast includes Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, Michael Kelly as Johnny Viti, and Rhenzy Feliz as Victor Aguilar. Across eight episodes, the show explores Cobblepot’s rise in a Gotham still reeling from the floods triggered by the Riddler in “The Batman” film by Reeves.
Ivanov worked closely with Reeves, LeFranc, and the film’s production designer James Chinlund to define Gotham’s look for the series. She explained, “What was most important is our show was from the ground looking up. The Penguin looks up. Batman looks down.” That shift in perspective allowed the design to highlight Gotham’s working-class neighborhoods and depict the city at its most devastated. Crown Point, a central location in the series, was built from a Yonkers street that Ivanov and her team transformed with 40 tons of dirt, garbage, and a fabricated building facade to convey the scars of the flood.
Her sets are as psychologically rich as they are visually striking. Oz’s residence was inspired by Manhattan’s Diamond District and designed as a loft that once served as a jewelry repair shop. “I thought, oh my God, that is perfect. That is the Penguin. He would love that. He would love to be the big guy, shiny,” Ivanov recalled. The detail of a vault for jewels became a symbol of Cobb’s ambition, while arches—first discovered in a location under the West Side Highway—emerged as a recurring visual motif across sets from churches to depots.
Other memorable environments include the recreation of Arkham, which combined new builds with repurposed locations, and the sprawling trolley depot, which Ivanov described as a “cathedral of the poor man.” Her ability to scale from massive sets to intimate spaces gave the series a visual identity that was both cinematic and character-driven. “Production design is like building a house during a hurricane,” she noted, reflecting on the challenges of creating Gotham across New York locations during weather delays and strikes.
Kalina Ivanov spoke to Awards Focus about her reaction to the Emmy nomination, the process of designing Gotham’s shattered neighborhoods, and the storytelling power of sets that reflect the psychology of the Penguin and those who cross his path.
Awards Focus: Thank you so much for joining, and it’s wonderful to meet you. I do a lot of interviews, and often I’m covering shows that are important but not necessarily ones I’m a huge fan of. With “The Penguin,” I can honestly say I’m a big fan. It feels rare in the Emmy world for a project like this to receive such recognition.
Kalina Ivanov: Yeah, it’s really… yeah. I mean, my big competition is “Severance.” So I don’t know how it’s going to go.
AF: Let’s start with your reaction. Comic book stories are a fixture of popular culture, but they’re seldom recognized by major awards. “The Penguin” is one of the most nominated shows this year, including your own nomination. How surprising was that recognition for you?
Ivanov: Well, I was surprised very pleasantly, I must say, and absolutely elated. I mean, it’s going to be a party that night at the Emmys. I know a lot of the designers, and we’re going to party.
AF: You didn’t work on “The Batman” with Matt Reeves, though I understand it was one of the first films you saw after Covid and you were a fan. Was it daunting to step into a franchise with such high expectations?
Kalina Ivanov: Yes, absolutely. The good thing was that they shot in London, Scotland, and Liverpool, and we were shooting in New York. So right off the bat, I knew I had more creative freedom than the movie offered. Matt put me at ease by saying that he wanted the show to look like “The French Connection.” And I ran with that idea.
I also spoke with a designer friend of mine, James Chinlund, and got his notes about the characters. We took it from there. But really, only the first few scenes repeated sets, and only Arkham remained the way it was in the movie.
AF: Gotham has been reinvented many times on screen. How would you define the version you and Matt Reeves created for “The Penguin”?
Ivanov: Lauren Lefranc, our writer and showrunner, and Matt were very concerned that Gotham doesn’t really look like Manhattan, so it’s not a grid right away. I had the map of the city from James Chinlund, the designer of the movie, and it’s three islands strung together with bridges. On that map, we pinpointed Crown Point, the area we were going to focus on, and we also placed where the club was, etc.
What was most important was that our show was from the ground looking up. The Penguin looks up. Batman looks down. So in that sense, the show had a very different point of view. We had the street point of view and the poor people’s point of view.
When the flood happens—when the Riddler sets off the bombs—the devastation is tremendous. My task was to create the city after the devastation. So not only was it Gotham, but it was Gotham at its worst.
AF: Crown Point in particular looks exactly like your early sketches. How did you find the right location to bring it to life?
Ivanov: Crown Point is a major lynchpin in the movie. Our location manager took me to Yonkers. We both discussed that we didn’t want to have a grid, so we were looking for five corners or three corners. He said, I have this place in mind, take a look. And I loved it.
It was amazing because the stores were really decrepit, almost nonexistent on the street. We added our own stores there. It was a marvelous location. The credit first goes to the location manager and scouts. After that, we brought in 40 tons of dirt, leaves, and garbage, and we dressed two blocks.
Because it had an empty lot across from the entrance of the apartment, my decorator bought a fake building from another show, and we got to destroy it. So we put up this facade, destroyed it, and really highlighted the unintended or intended cruelty of the Riddler.
AF: The scale of your work is remarkable. You created an enormous number of sets and locations in only eight episodes. If I’m right, “The Penguin” was the only limited series nominated in your category?
Ivanov: Yes, I am. I think that was the most surprising fact. I was really like, wow, okay. Limited. Yeah, we got in.
AF: Many of the sets feel like psychological extensions of the characters. Can you walk me through designing Oz’s residence, which has such a strong Diamond District influence?
Ivanov: Exactly. It’s in the Diamond District. It’s called Burgess Jewelry, an homage to Meredith Burgess. It was on the third floor, a loft that used to be an old jewelry repair shop.
In my research, one shop had a vault where they locked jewels in little boxes. And I thought, oh my God, that is perfect. That is the Penguin. He would love that. He would love to be the big guy, shiny. But it’s not like Carmine. Carmine has taste. The Penguin doesn’t. He just likes shiny things.
I spent an hour talking about that set with Colin. We conversed at length, and he loved the idea. The character came alive to him when he saw it in the concepts. We even framed an ad for the jewelry repair shop to deepen the history of the place.
AF: Arkham is one of the show’s most memorable locations. Did you inherit those designs from “The Batman,” or were they recreated for the series?
Ivanov: The interiors of the cells and the corridor were a recreation. We changed the angles slightly to align with James Chinlund’s original idea, which was based on a New York hospital that no longer exists. It was octagonal, so I honored that and kept the angled corridor.
It also helped us because we didn’t have as much money as they did. In that episode, the mess hall interior was a location. I married that with built areas for serving food and the guard’s booth to mimic the movie. So it’s a combination of location and set, and my interpretation of it.
AF: I noticed arches became a recurring aesthetic across both exteriors and interiors. How did that visual theme develop?
Ivanov: First of all, the subway. Underneath the subway, you’re always in shadow. That came from “The French Connection.” We took the elevated line in Queens and shot underneath it. That gave us the red-light district.
The first location I had to find was a match for the Iceberg Lounge, a set built in London. I only had one location, and it was perfect—on 138th Street and 12th Avenue under the West Side Highway. It had gigantic arches.
From that location came the idea of arches. We carried them into stone, iron, churches. In Sophia’s funeral scene, Craig Zobel, the pilot’s director, framed her under the arches. By the time we built the abandoned depot, I called it the cathedral of the poor man, with brick arches. That set was 4,500 square feet.
AF: How deep did you go into Batman lore before taking on this project?
Ivanov: I have watched all the Batman movies. In terms of comic books, I don’t read them because it’s not my generation, but I knew Matt Reeves had based “The Batman” on the graphic novel “Year One.” So I read that, and it’s very good actually.
I was mainly looking at ideas and at the character. But I fell in love with Batman in the Christopher Nolan versions, although the Tim Burton one with Jack Nicholson in the Guggenheim is pretty remarkable. I think Christopher Nolan was the first one to show that comic book characters can be real characters. We took it from there and did our own version.
AF: In the film, Penguin only appears briefly. In the series, he’s at the center. How did you approach defining his identity through the design?
Ivanov: The identity of the Penguin is that he’s a wannabe. He wants to become the top dog. He’s not there yet, and he’s insecure, vulnerable to a degree, and extremely manipulative. He will sell you down the river, but he’s also charismatic.
He’s not handsome. He’s deeply wounded from childhood. He has a limp. He is what we would call damaged goods. But it is the streak of cruelty that slowly shows through in the series that I think is the most defining part of the character.
AF: Do you have a favorite set that best captured your vision for Gotham?
Ivanov: It’s a very hard question because they’re all my children. I love the little sets and the big sets. I would say the Falcone mansion, with the Renaissance paintings, gold, and darkness. I really feel I got Falcone across as powerful, elegant, yet cruel and sadistic.
The trolley depot is another one, just because it was so big. But there are wonderful little sets too: the boys’ drowning scene, the two-story set, the jazz club with the chandelier fall, the mother’s apartment, even the bedroom at the beginning. I love them all.
AF: Given that so many sets are torn down after shooting, did you keep any mementos from the production?
Ivanov: Yes, I kept the seal from the trolley depot. I felt that was a wonderful thing to keep.
AF: For viewers who may not catch every detail, what is one design choice you’re especially proud of?
Ivanov: The end of the series, the last scene. I designed not only the set he graduates to, but the entire building. I named it La Couronne, the Crown, after Crown Point. You see it throughout the show.
I’m very proud of that set because it was Beaux-Arts. I talked Lauren into the French name. It was a white box at first, and we transformed it with columns, paintings, floors, everything. It became something else entirely.
AF: One last question. “The Penguin” leaves the door open for more stories, though the next project in this universe is “The Batman Part II.” Do you see yourself returning for another season or for the film?
Ivanov: I would love to. It’s up to Colin if he can handle the makeup every day. They got it down to two hours, but it was taxing. He only did five days on the movie, but this was 165 days of shooting. It’s up to him.
AF: Congratulations again, and thanks for the time.
Ivanov: Thank you so much.