In The Penguin Episode 7, “Top Hat,” we flashed back in time to 1988 to meet a Young Oswald Cobb (Ryder Allen), his mother Francis Cobb (Emily Meade), and even Oz’s brothers, Jack (Owen Asztalos) and Benny (Nico Tirozzi). But there’s one other character we got to meet… An intriguing and mysterious part of Oz’s mythology: Rex Calabrese, played by actor Louis Cancelmi.
Oz previously mentioned Rex in “After Hours,” the series premiere. There he told a story about how Rex was beloved by the whole neighborhood. He also, according to Oz, died of a heart attack when he was about 13 years old (when Oz was 13, not Rex; the latter was not some sort of Doogie Gangster, M.D.), his cigar still in his hand.
While we don’t know how true that all is, given Oz’s penchant for lying, we do find out more in “Top Hat.” Rex was a low-level crime boss working out of Oz’s neighborhood, and Francis was his accountant. It’s also pretty clear that Oz didn’t like him — at all.
The show wasn’t done with Rex yet: he popped back up again in the finale, “A Great Or Little Thing,” providing another key part of the story between Oz and Francis. As the episode opens up, and spoilers past this point, Francis is reeling from the deaths of Jack and Benny. She also knows that Oz left them to drown in a tunnel underneath Gotham, and it’s tearing her apart.
Rex offers to take Oz in because he’s seen wild killers like Oz before, and can use them — point them in the right direction so they can kill for him, instead of just themselves. Rex offers another possibility though, that Francis could make him her own weapon because Oz is already fiercely devoted to her.
Francis, though, doesn’t want either option. She asks if there’s another way to take care of Oz, and he explains that she names the time and the place, and he’ll take Oz for a drive… And she’ll never see him again. That time and place ends up being Monroe’s, where she takes Oz out for one night of dinner and dancing. While there, Rex gives her the nod, ready to kill her son. But she ultimately can’t do it after Oz gives her a speech about how he’ll give her everything she’s ever wanted. And that’s the last we see of Rex in the series.
However, there are still a number of dangling questions around Rex.
Was Rex Oz’s Father? And Did Oz Kill Rex?
File both of these under the heading of “theory,” but was Rex actually Oz’s father? And did Oz kill Rex? To be clear, there’s nothing explicitly in the text of the show that indicates either of these things is true. But they seem plausible, nonetheless.
For the first, we don’t know who is the father of any of Francis’s children. But Rex delivers a speech to Francis about how he gives kids in the neighborhood the father figures they’re looking for. And Oz doesn’t really look anything like Jack or Benny… His dark hair and Italian build are much closer to Rex’s, than anyone else. That’s not a done deal by any means. But it seems possible that Rex was more than a father figure to Oz, he was a father… And perhaps knowing that, or suspecting that, is why Oz hates him.
But did Oz kill Rex? Oz tells the story about Rex dying of a heart attack, but he also lies about the whole neighborhood loving Rex and pretty much everything else. Oz does so many horrible things over the course of the show — and in this episode in particular — that what’s one more for the pile? Even if Rex isn’t Oz’s father, Oz doesn’t like him, and he’s close with his mother. He doesn’t seem to know about Rex being part of a plan to kill him when Sofia Gigante (Cristin Milioti) reveals that in this episode. But he has every reason to eliminate Rex. It again seems plausible that Rex didn’t die of a heart attack, he died of an Oz attack.
Who Is Rex Calabrese From DC Comics?
The comic book version of Rex really has nothing to do with the screen version. He was introduced in Batman Eternal #14 in 2014, created by Scott Snyder and Jason Fabok. A gangster nicknamed “The Lion” because of his lion tattoo and sharp teeth, in that version of DC continuity he was Selina Kyle’s father (she was born Selina Calabrese). He also was a member of Carmine Falcone’s gang, before he was driven out. That’s pretty much the whole thing!
Who Is Louis Cancelmi, The Actor Who Plays Rex Calabrese On The Penguin?
The actor playing Rex is Louis Cancelmi, who you might recognize from various projects similar to The Penguin. He starred in Billions as Victor Mateo, in Boardwalk Empire as Mike D’Angelo/Mike Malone, and was in two Martin Scorsese projects: The Irishman as Sally Bugs, and Killers of the Flower Moon as Kelsie Morrison. The Pittsburgh-born 46-year-old is a trained stage actor and married to Elizabeth Waterson, the daughter of Sam Waterson.
Upcoming he has a bunch of different projects including Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Frankenstein reinvention The Bride, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Christian Bale, and Mayday from Game Night directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, starring Ryan Reynolds, Maria Bakalova, and more.
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