VFK: Now Serving – SUPERGIRL
Transcript
We may come from the past and the future. There is nothing wrong with your radio. Listen. With the single most important interviews in Scott Talk-a-Mosis. The voices you are hearing are…
The voices from Krypton. I'm Ed Gross, this is Voices from Krypton, and we my friends are living in a world of angst filled superheroes and villains, where Superman is breaking necks and Ultron is threatening us with extinction level events. This is probably one of the main reasons that the CBS series Supergirl is so much fun.
The show feels like a Richard Donner Superman film given a modern sensibility. As it turns out, that was exactly the intention of series executive producers, Ali Adler and Andrew Kreisberg. So pleased that you felt that. Yeah, we absolutely invoked Richard Donner's name so many times in talking about his word
verisimilitude and really trying to honor that, making it real for 2015, making this woman be a powerful woman, but ultimately who cares that she's a woman. We just want to see a hero. And that was really our challenge. I'd say this with zero disrespect to any iteration of Superman that came after the Donner, but
for us that was the one that really touched us as children. And there is something about it like being part of your DNA. And that was always sort of the star that we were guided by because there was a… There was a truth to the Donner version and a reality and ironically a groundedness that we felt very strongly that we wanted to capture.
And truthfully, that wasn't really what was out there right now in the comic book world. In the comic book world, that sort of unabashed hope and brightness and light. And that was very important to us. And it was funny, Peter Roth runs Warner Brothers television after Melissa, after he saw the pilot, he said, Melissa, the closest I've seen to Christopher, the closest feeling
I've gotten to see with anybody with that S that I've gotten since Christopher Reeve. And we really feel that too. It's that feeling of hope that attracted Melissa Benoist to the role of Kara Zor-El. Oh, I definitely think she has that too. You know, that is one of the key words that comes to mind.
When we were shooting the pilot, that I had to feel that almost internally. I always had to feel hopeful. And there's never… she doesn't quit. She doesn't quit. So I definitely think she has a beat to hope.
For us and the family. For Superman fans, one of the most exciting aspects of Supergirl is that it's going to reveal more about Krypton than we've ever known before. And speaking of Superman, Ali and Andrew most definitely have a plan in mind to deal with the world in which the man who still exists along with his cousin.
Obviously the show starts on Krypton. I think one of the most interesting things about Kara as opposed to Clark is that for all practical purposes, Clark is from Kansas. He was born on Krypton and obviously he brings his powers with him. But from the time he was a baby, he grew up here.
Jonathan and Martha Kent are his parents. And Jor-El and Laura are more of an abstract. But for Kara, Kara lived on Krypton until she was 13 years old. She grew up on this alien planet with alien things. She grew up on a planet where she knew that they weren't alone in the universe.
That from her perspective, that there were millions of planets full of life. And then all of a sudden all that was taken away from her. Her parents died, her friends, her home and her world. So we're able to talk about Krypton in the present tense in a way because she remembers all the different guilds which are mentioned throughout the second episode.
And she's able to, we're able to have flashbacks in the show to her time on Krypton. So we get to see a little bit more Krypton. But we also get to see it like, most times you see it, it's the last day of its existence. You get to see it when it was like a normal place and it was thriving. And a lot of Kara's experiences there help influence, sometimes she remembers the clue
that she needs to solve a case here on Earth. And other times it's just getting to understand her background and why she is who she is. We actually, one of our early episodes kind of addresses why he's not on the show every week. You know, it was really Greg from the beginning said, if we're going to do a show about Supergirl, it has to be in the world that Superman exists.
And one of the themes of the show is that for everybody in our lives, there's always that person who's doing it better than you are. So it's like, it's your boss, it's your friend, your brother, there's always that person that you compare yourself to. And am I good enough? And they're having success doing it their way.
Can I have success doing it my way? So we sort of, in a way, you know, we treat the idea of Superman as this sort of like, that's the perfect way to do it. And that's the way Kara sees it, that he's sort of doing it the perfect way. And she's learning that like, that's not how she wants to do it.
And that in some way, she can be more successful than him because she has allies, she has friends, she has these relationships, she has relationships with her sister, which are, you know, all things that the Superman that we've sort of created is a bit more of a loner. We'll answer that very quickly in series, because I think that's a really fair question. And I think this is a woman trying to make it, not always on her own, but I think she can't rely on the fact that her cousin will come in and save her.
And we'll address that almost immediately. Naturally, much of the show's success will rest on Melissa's shoulders, and she's quick to point out that she's well aware of the responsibility she faces. It's a responsibility she felt from the moment she first put on the iconic Supergirl costume. The feeling about being cast is just overwhelming.
It is a lot of things. Obviously, I'm excited. I'm overjoyed. I feel so grateful and privileged to be taking this on, but it is a scary thing. It feels really big.
And it feels like a responsibility, a good one. But the character, I love Kara already. I think she is such a ray of light. First time I put on the suit, it was like automatically this instant kind of chemical change inside of me. Like something changed, and I feel like a different person every time I put it on.
I feel like Kara Banners in my day to day life. I feel like such a awkward, weird girl. And that goes away when I put the suit on. Really? Yeah, it's weird.
It's funny what a leotard and cape and tights will do. Did you have fun with all the various versions? Because they had done like those three or four versions. I wouldn't wear this at the beach. Actually, that one, that version, the midriff version,
I wanted to do that to kind of get that out of the way. To be like, look, this is what I know some people expect from the character, but this is not what we're doing. But we did have a hairdo. Originally my hair was like teased. And this tie with the headband, and I was so into it, but they mixed it.
I know, I know. It was so funny, right? Voices from Krypton. The Voices from Krypton.
