Cristin Milioti Had a Pop-Diva Playlist for The Penguin

Mother. Photo: Getty Images for Vulture

Who do you listen to when you need to light three cigarettes at once or bite into a handful of pasta like it’s a human heart? At a Vulture Festival panel unpacking her performance in The Penguin, Cristin Milioti described her character, Sofia Falcone, as someone who goes from being held “in a Chanel straitjacket, almost” to someone who is “free and skipping.” To prepare for the role, she said, she made a playlist with a lot of Rosalía, SZA, and Lana Del Rey songs. “They’re like sea witches or something. I can’t believe what they conjure,” she said. “And certainly that did help lock in the sort of energy we were going for.”

All three artists are people Milioti is “obsessed with” in real life (she saw SZA, for instance, twice last year — right before and after filming The Penguin). And Milioti thinks their music has something in common. “You kind of feel like you can really fuck shit up when you listen to them, but there’s also this thing underneath that almost feels like a beating of a drum underground. You’re like, Oh my God, something big is on its way,” she explained. “They’re all pop, but it’s also mystical in some way? I just love them. It’s alien, but it’s earthy too.” Sounds like the perfect fit for a character that Milioti suggested was a “feral fatale.”