This weekend, Supergirl’s “Lex Luthor” actor Jon Cryer did a pretty long interview with Deadline which you can read here, but as this website started out with Smallville, we felt it would be fun to share Cryer’s quote about Smallville’s Michael Rosenbaum and his Lex appeal, when asked about how there are different portrayals of the character that may not always match what’s in the comics.
“Obviously Gene Hackman was a big departure from the comics,” Cryer said. “[Smallville actor] Michael Rosenbaum, who’s one of my favorite Luthors – if not my all-time favorite. I mean, that’s tough because [to me] Gene Hackman’s Luthor had been so formative simply for being “him” when I was 13, and on top of that I got to actually work with him eventually, and in the role and all that stuff. But Michael Rosenbaum’s Lex was so good. Neither he nor Hackman was anything like the guy from the comics. Well, Rosenbaum was perhaps like the Superboy comics. That was the closest analog of him from the comics, but they were really going for the complexity of seeing somebody turn evil over the course of many years. The Lex that we’re working with [on Supergirl] is a full-formed sociopath, and that’s a different guy, and for me, in many ways, that’s more faithful to the comics than he’s been on film yet, so that was what excited me about it. That and just the cast is great, and they’re just great folks to work with,” the actor added.
The interview is really good and talks about Cryer’s Luthor journey that began with Lenny in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace all the way through to his casting and performance in Supergirl Season 4. You can read the full interview here.