In the past 10+ years of the “Arrowverse” Tom Cavanagh has acted as a number of characters. He’s been a Thawne, a Wells, another Wells, even another Wells, Pariah, and many more characters… but on the November 18 episode of Superman & Lois, we were able to see him as a completely different character.
Please do not read until or unless you’ve finished the Superman & Lois episode “Sharp Dressed Man” as some SPOILERS are within!
Viewers of the show discovered that Cavanagh was not playing, say, Milton Fine as they might have expected, but he was instead playing unscrupulous talk show host G. Gordon Godfrey. The character has quite a history in DC Comics, particularly in relation to New Gods lore, and Godfrey has been seen in other media as well, including Smallville, Young Justice, and more. That New Gods connection confirms that yes, this is a character originally created by the influential Jack Kirby who had created or co-created several of comics’ most iconic figures. Captain America, Thor, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Darekseid, Mister Miracle, Maxwell Lord… this was a very prolific man.
In many versions of the story Godfrey has been a talk show host of some sort, and on Superman & Lois it was no exception. The on-air graphics resembled the FOX show Gutfeld! in many ways, right down to the exclamation point. Interestingly, though, this look for Cavanagh was slightly different than anything we’ve seen for any Wells incarnation.
When we interviewed Michael Cudlitz (Lex Luthor actor and director of “Sharp Dressed Man” – read the whole interview at KSiteTV, our general TV news site), we asked if it was purposeful that he took on a different look, perhaps to separate him from those other parts.
“No, I left that up to the showrunners,” Cudlitz said about picking a look. “To me, he was this sort of weird mix between Tucker Carlson and a Jerry Springer sort of host. He was just a complete opportunist. I was more aware of the kind of person that he was going to be, more than what Tom was going to specifically look like compared to the other [shows],” Cudlitz told us.
He had nothing but praise for Cavanagh’s performance as Godfrey on this episode: “He was so wonderful to have on set. He came in with a bunch of ideas, and he’s a director’s dream. That’s what you want to have… every actor to come on set, ready to play. Have something planned, but be ready to throw it all out,” he said.
New episodes of Superman & Lois air Mondays on The CW.