Gotham Showrunner Talks Tone, Characters And More

In a recent interview to EW, Gotham showrunner Bruno Heller spoke about making the series, the tone of it, the characters, Joker, Bruce Wayne, Alfred and more.

When reading your script, I kept thinking how difficult this must have been to write — there’s so many tough decisions that need to be made, so many ways to do this idea wrong. How did you decide the tone, how realistic vs. comic, which villains you would use? Can you talk me through the creative process?

The first thing was starting with Jim Gordon, who is the most human and real and normal person in the DC pantheon. What would the city of Gotham look like to a young rookie cop coming into this world? And that’s where we calibrated. This is a world that’s going to become that familiar world of Batman, but it’s not there yet. It’s an embryo. A lot of the work was reverse engineering the story to look at what these characters were like when younger. Penguin, for instance, is not a powerful gang leader, he’s a gofer for a gangster. It’s about giving the world room to grow, but at the same time giving the fun and pleasure and drama of that heightened world. One of the great things about the Batman world is [the characters] have no super powers. Nobody flies or leaps over buildings. You start with psychology and that’s where we build from.

Which Batman characters are you likely to introduce this season?

Obviously, the Penguin, Riddler, young Catwoman, Alfred. Possibly Harvey Dent. Poison Ivy. Um … and then there will be others, but I hate to — I’m so used to doing a police procedural, so I’m used to telling, “Next week he’s going to go there.” With this, it’s very much storytelling. So I would be remiss to tell you who will show up when. I will say we’re not going to skimp on giving people the characters they want and expect from Gotham. But when and how they’re going to show up is half the fun. Penguin is one of those guys that, as soon as you see him, you go, “Oh, that’s the Penguin.” It would be hard to disguise him as somebody else.

So you might stealth introduce somebody who later becomes somebody else.

Exactly. Because we’re starting way before these villains even themselves knew they were villains. Some of them started out as good guys. So there will be a lot of that.

You mentioned The Killing Joke. So you’ll bring in The Joker?
He’s the crown jewel of the Batman villains. He will be brought in with great care and a lot of thought.

The script was more violent than I expected for a broadcast show. Was that a conversation at all, how dark to make it? 

Certainly that will be a discussion down the road, I’m sure. Tone is one of those things you try not to think about too much. It just comes out that way. For this world, the people and violence — if that’s the right word for it — needs to be as tough as the city. It’s a high stakes life-or-death place.

The decision to make Alfred into a tough Marine — there are hints of that in the canon, as well, but I thought that was a cool move.

That was part of the story that I had to reverse engineer. What kind of man would allow their teenage charge to turn into Batman? Obviously, someone with very original parenting notions. So yeah, he’s both a father figure and a dangerous father figure. He’s a tough character, and Sean Pertwee plays Alfred with gravity and humor. We’re lucky to have him.

With Bruce Wayne, in the pilot we see him as we’ve seen him before — as a victim of a tragedy. And of course we know where he goes eventually. What function he serves in the series is unclear. 

Well, I will say [actor] David Mazouz is, without doubt, the best actor ever to play the part of Bruce Wayne. Without doubt — including the people who played Batman. He is a genuine prodigy of an actor, as you will see on screen. Frankly, before David was cast, I was ambivalent about how much we would use Bruce Wayne in the series.

                         

Gotham will explore the origin stories of Commissioner Gordon and the villains that call Gotham home.

Gotham stars Ben McKenzie (Detective Gordon), Donal Logue (Detective Bullock), Zabryna Guevara (Captain Essen), Sean Pertwee (Alfred),Jada Pinkett Smith (Fish Mooney), Robin Lord Taylor (Penguin), Erin Richards (Barbara Kean), Drew Powell (Butch Gilzean), David Mazouz (Bruce Wayne), Camren Bicondova (Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman), and Corey Michael Smith (The Riddler).

Danny Cannon (CSI, Nikita) directed the pilot and will, alongside Heller executive produce the show.

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