For a superhero show to work, youve got to have a solid actor or actress in the lead, and Glee vet Melissa Benoist is positively charming as Kara Danvers née Zor-El.
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Geoff Johns, chief creative officer for DC Entertainment, and “Supergirl” executive producers Berlanti, Ali Adler, Andrew Kreisberg and Sarah Schechter have tried to expand the appeal of the show with supporting cast members. Diehard fans should appreciate that, like The Flash, and unlike most previous female superhero adaptations, Supergirl is true to the original comics and is filled with characters from their pages. She’s already seen her planet blown up (along with its economy and job opportunities) – so what else you got? She exemplifies grace under pressure.
Another inspired casting is scene-stealing Calista Flockhart (Ally McBeal) as media mogul Cat Grant. How did that come into the narrative? That was the origin of it. It was pretty much always in existence.
“I wouldn’t say I think of it as a burden”.
“I don’t really tend to focus on it too much”, Benoist said in a recent conference call.
Will there be a central villain to Season 1? The pilot sets up the idea that there is an alien prison from Krypton that crash-landed on Earth, and all those prisoners escaped. For a second, she’s nearly Wendy in “Peter Pan”. But we’ve seen that a million times. But when the jetliner carrying her adoptive sister Alex (Chyler Leigh) runs into trouble, Kara flies up, up, and away and saves the day. “She’s all about hope and being good and kindness and doing the right thing, helping others. You can go off-planet and (have) flashbacks to Krypton”, he says. “We didn’t want to be the same iteration”. “So we think of this as trying to produce a Supergirl movie every single week”.
Will Supergirl have a lot of control of her powers in Season 1?
Berlanti: I think our collective gut is that she is at the beginning of her journey. Will her allies eventually work together to form a team of sorts?
Part of (Supergirl) feels this responsibility to save people and to help people, but I love that she’s a dork. It’s a gauntlet rather brazenly thrown down to sexist fanboys – many of whom will refuse to watch this series because it’s about a young woman who cries sometimes and still misses her dead mother and is still learning how to be a superhero, though of course they’ll say it’s for a few other reason.
“What I love about her”, admits the star, “is she’s this young, spirited hero and really wants to make a difference in the world”.
Kara’s sudden “outing” as Supergirl (a name with which she’s not all that pleased) comes in a thrill-packed action sequence worthy of the big screen.
Also working for Cat is Kara’s friend and IT technician Winn Scott (Jeremy Jordan, Smash). His “Arrow” and “The Flash” are hits with the CW Network. The show gets a bit of a jump start with “Big Bang Theory” as its lead-in for the premiere episode, but after that, “Big Bang” moves back to Thursdays on November 5 and the new show is on its own. Kara learns very different things from these worlds. We wanted to have a conversation with our characters that we believed the audience would be having, and that others might be having. She plays Kara with the same cute level of bumbling that Reeve brought to his civilian alter ego. That is an incredible female relationship as well.
One of the biggest issues the pilot faces is its incredible pace.
Compare all of this to what the old “Wonder Woman” looked like in the jiggle-rific prime-time schedule of the mid-’70s; it feels like Kara/Supergirl says more – in literal dialogue – than Lynda Carter’s heroine would say in an entire season.
“It was important for us, especially to have a weekly TV show, to put her in situations where she isn’t all powerful, so that you can root for her”, Mr. Kreisberg said. “As soon as we saw her, we just knew she was the one”. “This is not relaxed girl, it’s Supergirl”, Adler jokingly said.
Fox has the Batman-ish Gotham. We’re certainly guilty of putting a very dark hero on television in Arrow.
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But over time, Simone said, these characters “were defanged”.
