(This story contains spoilers for the first seven episodes of The Penguin.)

Cristin Milioti was widely acclaimed for her role in the HBO series The Penguinplaying the Sofia Falcone, heiress to the intense crime family. Although it would be difficult for anyone to pick Milioti’s best scene in the series, the actress herself has two favorites from the first seven episodes.

“I find looking at myself excruciating,” says Milioti The Hollywood Reporter. “I think a lot of actors feel that way. But I will say that there are definitely scenes that I’ve done that I’ve loved doing and then watched and felt (how the performance was perceived) how I felt – which is sometimes rare. This doesn’t always translate.

The first was the sequence in episode four where Sofia joins her family for their last supper – although her victims don’t know it yet. “I would say the speech at dinner with my family and the aftermath that followed,” she said, “that whole sequence from the minute I walked into the dining room until the very end of the episode was very, very exciting.”

The second scene takes place in Sunday night’s seventh episode, when Sofia visits the only potential witness to her family’s killing spree, a young girl who is now in an orphanage. Sofia tells the girl that her family deserved her fate and threatens her to keep quiet, before realizing that she is doing exactly what her scorned father would have done.

“I remember reading that scene and thinking ‘damn,’ that’s such a brutal scene,” Milioti says. “But I was so excited and so moved by it; it’s so complicated. But of course, that’s what this person would do. What’s beautiful about this scene too is that she’s literally trying to burn her father’s legacy and saying, “I’m nothing like him, he’s a monster,” and she’s doing the exact same thing. thing to this little girl. She’s sentencing her to the exact same death sentence, in a way, but she really believes she’s doing this child a favor. In her mind, she’s doing the right thing: “I’m saving you from something you don’t know exists” – while ruining this child’s life. »

Previously, Milioti spoke with THR landing the role and its process to become the terrifying gangster. “I’ve dreamed of playing someone like that for a long time” she said. “I’m also a huge Batman fan and have dreamed of playing a villain in the Batman universe since I was little. I used to pretend to be Batman villains in my backyard when I was little. And so when this first happened to me, I wanted it in a way that felt very deep. Once I got online and read more and more scripts, I was blown away that I could do this. It was very deep. I just love him. It’s one of my favorite things in my entire life.

***

The Penguin airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. on HBO. The finale of the show will take place next week.