Danny DeVito Admits He 'Lusted After' Michelle Pfeiffer on Batman Returns Set

Published: June 3, 2025

Danny DeVito is getting candid about his former co-star Michelle Pfeiffer. In his conversation with Colin Farrell for Variety's Actors on Actors series, DeVito, 80, admitted that he lusted after Pfeiffer while the two were filming 1992's Tim Burton-directed Batman Returns.

“She was a goddess,” said DeVito, who played the villainous Penguin opposite Pfeiffer’s Catwoman and Michael Keaton’s Batman. “If I knew she was going to be in a scene that day …” he trailed off.

Farrell, 49, quipped, “Did you brush your teeth that morning?”

“I got all flushed,” responded the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia star. “Put extra makeup on — ‘Give me another pound of makeup.’ It was very difficult.”

Pfeiffer, now 67, was “just so wonderful. And I lusted after her,” DeVito added. He then agreed with Farrell that it was his character, Oswald Cobblepot a.k.a. the Penguin, who was doing the lusting.

“I kind of feel like she liked it. She liked Oswald," DeVito said.

In Batman Returns, Selina Kyle a.k.a. Catwoman rejects Oswald’s advances. In 2021, however, DeVito wrote a short story in which the two characters were romantically involved. It was featured in DC Comics' Gotham City Villains, an anthology comic celebrating Batman's rogues gallery.

“I got into the fact that I've always been a big fan of Michelle Pfeiffer's, and the Penguin obviously lusts after Catwoman,” the Oscar nominee told Entertainment Weekly at the time. “So I figured I'd put those two together.”

Farrell, who played the same role in HBO’s drama The Penguin, which aired last fall, asked DeVito if he'd play the DC Comics villain again.

“Absolutely,” answered DeVito. “You can go off the rails with something. The operatic element of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns was my favorite thing about it — the music and sets and the whole thing. The Shakespeare of it — ‘All the world’s a stage.’ Oswald’s realm and his penguins and his minions and his passion. I loved that.”

DeVito later added that his character "would be very content" within his sewer kingdom in Batman Returns — “as long as I could get Catwoman to visit me every once in a while: Be still my beating Penguin heart.”

After a recent guest star role in a crossover episode with Abbott Elementary, DeVito will continue as a main cast member of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, airing its 17th season beginning July 9 on FXX.

FOLLOWING HIS 2024 SERIES THE PENGUIN AND SUGAR, FARRELL WILL NEXT STAR IN KOGONADA'S A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY (IN THEATERS SEPT. 19) AND EDWARD BERGER'S THE BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER. HE WILL ALSO REPRISE HIS ROLE AS THE PENGUIN IN THE PLANNED SEQUEL TO MATT REEVES' 2022 HIT THE BATMAN STARRING ROBERT PATTINSON.

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