Get the scoop on Anire Kim Amoda, who guest starred on The Penguin's most recent episode.
Max’s The Penguin, a spin-off series of Matt Reeves’ The Batman, follows the exploits and misadventures of Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb. The Penguin manages to humanize Colin Farrell's hardened criminal alongside a growing cast.
Anire Kim Amoda - Biography Details
Anire Kim Amoda is Korean, Nigerian, & French
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Anire Kim Amoda has ancestors from everywhere! Her mother, for example, is Korean American. In May 2023, Amoda spoke to a project called Voices From the Peninsula: Oral Histories of Korea about the many facets of her ethnicity.
In response to a question about the generational definition of being Korean, she admitted “feeling very disconnected” to her culture due to not speaking the language and not "[understanding] the cultural nuances:"
"I feel like there's a level of me feeling very disconnected from Korean culture in that way because I don't speak the language and I don't understand the cultural nuances and there are a lot of Korean words and stuff that don't have direct English translations. My mom's brother married a Korean woman and they're raising their child to speak both Korean and English and they eat Korean food for many meals and so there's kind of a—not a direct comparison—but there's [the thought that] they're more maybe in tune with their Korean culture, whereas we don't speak it, we don't really eat Korean food for every meal or necessarily know how to cook everything or get those cultural nuances."
Anire Performed in Plays at Oberlin College
Amoda, who is around 22 or 23 years old, acted as the lead in a comedic play called Or while she was a fourth-year student at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio.
In Or, she played real-life Restoration-era playwright Aphra Behn. According to a piece from The Oberlin Review, the play featured several fourth wall breaks as Amoda addressed the audience.
As of 2023, Amoda was studying theater at Oberlin.
The Penguin is Anire's First Major Role
During The Penguin Episode 3, alongside the rest of the rest of the installment’s cast, Anire Kim Amoda played Graciela, Victor Aguilar’s love interest whom he left high and dry so the young man could follow in Oz Cobb’s footsteps (read more about why Colin Farrell's Oz has a limp).
As it turns out, Amoda’s role in The Penguin is her first on-screen role. But that doesn’t mean that The Penguin is the only production she’s worked on.
Anire Will Next Star in The Snare
In the pipeline, Amoda currently has one other non-Penguin project in post-production: A movie called The Snare. The film follows an overachieving student, played by The Walking Dead’s Cassady McClincy, as her scholarship aspirations are disastrously derailed when she’s coerced into becoming a police informant.
The Snare is described as an indie dramatic thriller (via Deadline). Anire Kim Amoda plays a character named Carla.
The Penguin airs every Sunday on HBO and streams on Max at 9 p.m. ET. The next episode drops on Sunday, October 13.
