Working closely with Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter is an Executive Producer and one of the driving forces behind bringing Supergirl to television.
We spoke with the talented producer at this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego about this thrilling new project, and how Supergirl came to be.
First, though, Schechter was asked about the new wave of heroic women that [ideally] has Supergirl leading the charge.
“I think that this genre is just catching up to the reality of how powerful, interesting, and complicated women are, which as women, we know, but it’s really nice to see that reflection. So I’m happy that it’s the dawn of the female superhero, so to speak, but for me, it’s about time. My hope is that there will be so many female heroes that you won’t even have to talk about the fact that they are female heroes. They’ll just be heroes,” she said.
Schechter was present when Supergirl became a possibility to bring to television, and she talked to us about her enthusiasm for taking Kara to the screen. “It came up, and I turned to Greg, and I said ‘Supergirl! Supergirl! Supergirl! We have to do Supergirl!’ and he was like ‘uhhh..’ and then he called me and he said ‘I figured it out! It’s Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Ginger Rogers had to do everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels.’ And I think Greg being able to craft that as a model, it proved to us how interesting the story about Kara Zor-El could be; that it’s more complicated and more interesting. It’s just been a tremendous amount of fun,” she enthused.
“This is not a story about Superman,” Schechter promised. “This is a story about Supergirl, who people really should know about. What’s great about Supergirl as opposed to Superman is that she spent 13 years living on Krypton as a normal girl with no powers, and then not only does she have the trauma of everyone that she knows being killed, she comes to a world that tells teenage girls to suppress what makes them special. She comes to a world that tells teenage girls ‘you should fit in. You shouldn’t be all of you if it’s different or weird.’ So what’s great about this story – and what makes it so interesting and so rich and so fun – is that for me, that’s more relatable. I wasn’t born with super powers, but what Kara’s experiencing in this show is coming to terms with everything that she can be, and embracing who she is, and the things that make her different are also that make her great, and I think that as a message is so important and so relatable,” she said.
Finally, there’s been a lot of support on the show on Twitter from the previous actress to embody the Maid of Might, Laura Vandervoort, who played Kara on Smallville. Might we see her on the new show? “Anything is possible. We’re big fans of hers,” Schechter told us.
You can see the video below, where Schechter also talks about reclaiming the word “Girl” for Supergirl, the coup of casting Calista Flockhart as Cat Grant, redefining Jimmy Olsen, and more. Enjoy: