"SUPERGIRL", nueva serie en la CBS/CW

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- Behind the scenes in Kara's apartment with @MehcadBrooks! (20-10-15):

https://amp.twimg.com/v/3dddd650-e5e6-4 ... 436c708994

[Shelby]

- TVGuide Magazine Cover (Oct 2015):




- Supergirl 2015! Cover shoot with Melissa Benoist! (TVGuide):

[Shelby]

- Jefes de Supergirl adelantan las mayores amenazas de Kara, los crossovers con la CW y más (TVLine):

Jefes de Supergirl adelantan las mayores amenazas de Kara, los crossovers con la CW y más
Por Rebecca Iannucci / 21 Octubre 2015, 10:33 AM PDT

Kara Danvers isn’t the only one warding off villains on Supergirl. The executive producers behind the CBS drama have an enemy of their own to face down, and it’s called CGI.

“The biggest surprise is really how hard it is to pull these shows off, week in and week out, with the visual effects and the stunts and the hyper-amount of planning that goes into them,” EP Greg Berlanti told reporters during a conference call on Monday.

Berlanti — who also oversees Arrow, The Flash and The CW’s upcoming Legends of Tomorrow offshoot — has experience making technically demanding television. But Supergirl‘s freshman season has nonetheless proven a challenge.

“You think, ‘Oh, we pulled off Arrow, so we’ll be able to do The Flash‘… and this has turned out to be a lot bigger than Flash,” he continued. “Every one of these shows has had a very steep and unforgiving learning curve. We’ve been incredibly proud and excited by the results and, hopefully, everyone out there will be, too.”

Ahead of Supergirl‘s Oct. 26 launch (8:30/7:30c), Berlanti — along with fellow EPs Ali Adler and Andrew Kreisberg — offered up a whole slew of teasers for the Melissa Benoist starrer. Read on for the highlights:

KARA, YOU IN DANGER, GIRL | Don’t be fooled by Kara’s super-strength, heat vision or that whole flying thing she can do. Those powers will hardly make her invincible against the series’ many villains.

“We’ve shown that [Supergirl] is fighting certain aliens, and she fights Livewire, who has electrical powers. She has enough electricity to stop Supergirl’s heart,” Berlanti teased. “On the old series, unless you had a rock of kryptonite, it was pretty much a wipeout for the bad guys — we certainly don’t want that. We always want to feel like our hero is in jeopardy.”

WHERE MY GIRLS AT? | Although Kara’s relationship with her sister, Alex (Chyler Leigh), will be central to the series, the titular heroine will enjoy female bonding elsewhere — even in the unlikeliest of places. “[Kara’s boss] Cat [Grant], in the pilot, is definitely a voice of wisdom,” Adler shared. “Whether she says it in a kind way or not, she’s always inspiring Supergirl to achieve higher heights.”

Kara will also befriend Lucy Lane, played by Witches of East End alumna Jenna Dewan-Tatum. According to Berlanti, “She comes to the show as a former love interest of Jimmy [Olsen]’s, to add some complications. But with Kara being the nicest person in the world, Lucy really likes her, and the two of them have some adventures together.”

THE POWERS THAT BE | Just because Supergirl literally carries the weight of a plane on her shoulders in the series premiere doesn’t mean she’ll understand the extent of her powers all at once. “Our collective gut is that she’s very much at the beginning of her journey,” Berlanti said, adding that Kara will continue to have questions “not just about her powers, but about her backstory and where she comes from. There’s always a bit of mystery around her origins and around what her capacities are.”

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS | As for the million-dollar question — “Will there be a Supergirl/Arrow/Flash crossover?” — Berlanti confirmed there are currently no plans for his CW superheroes to meet Kara anytime soon. (In August, CBS Entertainment chair Nina Tassler said the three series would only cross over in promos for the time being.)

“Flash and Arrow [fans] know we have not mentioned the existence of Superman on those shows, and he does exist on [Supergirl],” Berlanti continued. “Storytelling-wise, that would be something we’d have to overcome. We’re just focused on getting this one launched and hope that it enjoys some of the same success… with the same quality and commitment of fans. And if all those things happen, who knows?”


http://tvline.com/2015/10/21/supergirl- ... ilers-cbs/

- Productores de "Supergirl" y la protagonista Melissa Benoist revelan cómo su heroína se diferencia de los demás (blastr):

Productores de "Supergirl" y la protagonista Melissa Benoist revelan cómo su heroína se diferencia de los demás
Por Tara Bennett 22 Oct, 2015 5:50pm

Supergirl is ready to swoop onto TV screens on Monday, Oct. 26 (8:30 ET/PT) on CBS with actress Melissa Benoist wearing the cape enthusiastically. That word alone - enthusiastic - is a departure from most of the existing superhero shows, in which angst and darkness are often the prevailing tone. Yet Supergirl is the antithesis of that model, with Benoist playing Kara Danvers as a Millennial-era woman ready to embrace her Kryptonian ancestry and powers after a decade of pretending to be a normal earthling.

In a recent call with journalists, executive producers Greg Berlanti, Ali Adler, Andrew Kreisberg, and Melissa Benoist gathered to explain why Supergirl is forging its own path as the positive and hopeful alternative of the current slate of television superhero shows.

Supergirl is inherently a great role model character but is maintaining that as important as making this series a good action show?

Melissa Benoist: I guess how I approach it every day is as long as Kara and Supergirl are enjoying themselves and finding the joy in being a hero and the joy in using her powers, finally after so long, that everything stems from that. I always keep in mind her bravery, her hope, her positivity and her strength. I think it will be hard for girls not to look up to that.

Greg Berlanti: One thing that I would add that Melissa can't say about herself, is now having worked with her for a few months, for any little girls we would want them all to grow up like Melissa. She's such a delight to work with from top to bottom. She exemplifies grace under pressure. In some ways, and I mean this seriously, as we've moved ahead writing Kara, we've just tried to capture what is special about Melissa. She personifies the qualities of the character.

In the pilot, Kara's publishing empire boss, Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart) has a very pointed speech about using the term "girl". How did that come into the narrative?

Berlanti: That speech was in the original pitch for the show. One thing I have found is sometimes the temptation is there by executives to alter things that are part of the DNA of what was so great about the comic book. We really wanted to be protective of the name of the show. We wanted to have a conversation with our characters that we believed our audience may be having and a few others might be having in terms of, she's an adult woman, why isn't she called Superwoman? That was the origin of it. It was pretty much always in existence.

Do you feel any burden keeping up the female empowerment elements of the character?

Benoist: I don't think of it as a burden but an asset. I don't focus on it too much because I just want people to have fun watching the show and enjoy Kara's journey as much as I do playing it. Truly to me it doesn't matter that she's a girl because she kicks some serious ass. In my day to day life, women are the majority and we outnumber the men in my family by far. All of the women in my family are superheroes of mine. Growing up Judy Garland was a hero and Rosemary Clooney, as I watched a lot of old movies with my grandma.

Will there be a central villain to Season 1?

Andrew Kreisberg: We always have a traditional big bad for the season, a sort of über villain setting the plans in motion. But just like the other shows, there will also be villains of the week. The pilot sets up the idea that there is an alien prison from Krypton that crash landed on earth and all those prisoners escaped. We are going to be meeting some of those alien villains. There will also be some human villains. We have announced that the Toyman is going to be appearing on the show. Additionally, we have some major Kryptonians who are going to be the big bads for the season.

Since Kara is almost invincible, will Kryptonite be her main vulnerability and how to do keep that fresh?

Kreisberg: I think it is a little bit of a collective mistake that kryptonite is the only thing that can hurt a Kryptonian. In the comic books and, especially, other adaptation, specifically the Superman animated series, we see that Superman, himself, can be hurt by a lot more than kryptonite. On this show, we've show that fighting certain aliens -- she fights Livewire, who has electrical powers and enough electricity to stop Supergirl's heart. There are other things on the show that are beyond just kryptonite. Again, on the old series, unless you had a rock of kryptonite, it was pretty much lights out for the bad guys. We certainly don't want that. We always want to feel as if our hero is in jeopardy.

Melissa, what Supergirl comics did you read in preparation for production?

Benoist: I read some of the New 52 but what I love about what [the writers] have created is that I truly feel we are making the modern, 2016 version of her so I wanted to know the world but I wanted to separate myself from it to make her my own.

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. Even the stuff that she thinks she knows will come into question. Not just about her powers, but her backstory and where she comes from. So, there is always a bit of mystery around that, her origins and just around what her capacities are.

Kara already has some strong support in her sister Alex (Chyler Leigh) and Metropolis transplant Jimmy Olsen (Mehcad Brooks). Will her allies eventually work together to form a team of sorts?

Ali Adler: I think something that separates Superman from Supergirl is that he is autonomous. He flies in Metropolis by himself. Something we are really proud of is that our episode two is titled, "Stronger Together." It really is maybe not just about a woman that is more readily able to accept help, but Kara really embracing that and getting that help from her sister, and Hank (David Harewood) and other forces at CatCo.

Kreisberg: I think one of the fun things about the show in the beginning is she does have very differentiated parts of her world. She has the DEO [Department of Extranormal Operations] led by Hank and where her sister works at, where she works as an unofficial agent of the DEO as Supergirl. But she also has Jimmy Olsen and Winn (Jeremy Jordan) and, whether she realizes it or not, Cat at CatCo in her day life. Part of the fun of the show is she is keeping these things very separate. As the show moves forward, they start to bleed into one another and you get the fun complications of the people who consider themselves the professional alien hunters having to deal with what they consider to be the civilian amateur alien hunter. What is great about the show is everybody has something to contribute, everybody has value, and everyone is constantly learning from each other. Kara learns very different things from these worlds. With the DEO, her sister and Hank, she learns to hone her powers and become an even better superhero, but from her friends at Cat Co, she learns the importance of being Kara Danvers, being a woman and being a human being, and staying ground and tied to the people, she is sworn to protect.

Will you be adding other female characters for Kara to bond with?

Adler: Absolutely. We talk about her relationship with Cat Grant as a very important woman of power in her life. Ultimately, Cat Grant is a superhero too, as is her sister a superhero. But Cat in the pilot is the voice of wisdom, whether she says it in a kind way or not. She is always inspiring Supergirl to achieve higher heights. That is an amazing female relationship as well.

Berlanti: She is also going to become friends with Lucy Wayne, played by Jenna Dewan Tatum, who comes to the show as a former love interest of Jimmy's to add some complications. Part of the fun of it is Kara being the nicest person in the world, Lucy really likes her. The two of them have some adventures together.

The pace of the pilot is incredibly fast and action-packed. Is that the goal for the entire season?

Kreisberg: We are intending to keep up that pace. We don't know another way to do it. At any given moment there's a feature film on the Avengers or the Dark Knight or Man of Steel or Thor so you can get your kicks from this stuff anywhere. You really have to provide something special and singular every week to keep people entertained. We produce a Supergirl movie every week.

Adler: It's not Relaxedgirl. It's Supergirl. (Laughs)

Do you think the hopeful nature of this show will resonate with viewers more accustomed to dark superhero stories like Arrow or Gotham?

Kreisberg: Superman has always more than a hero but inspiration and a beacon of hope and something to aspire to. We're certainly guilty of putting a very dark hero on television in Arrow. But there is something about Supergirl that represents the light and hope and goodness in people. It's important for our times and our world and so tied into the character. There's a tendency to not embrace what things are and you do that at your peril, so we've embraced that and not only Melissa but the show itself can be an inspiration.



http://www.blastr.com/2015-10-22/superg ... ands-apart

- Cómo 'Supergirl' está poniendo nuevos giros a los personajes y las tropas antiguas (THR):

Cómo 'Supergirl' está poniendo nuevos giros a los personajes y las tropas antiguas
Por Sydney Bucksbaum 22 Oct, 2015 10:00am PT

CBS is ready to fly.

With the TV landscape flooded with comic book dramas, CBS is throwing its hat in the DC Comics ring Monday with what it hopes is a different take on the genre in Supergirl. Although the series hails from the DC-tested, viewer-approved minds of Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg (Arrow, The Flash), don't expect Supergirl to start sharing big crossover events with The CW series and its midseason spinoff, Legends of Tomorrow.

"Right now there are no plans [for crossovers]," Kreisberg tells The Hollywood Reporter. "Obviously [Fox's DC Comics take] Gotham exists outside the continuity of all these shows, and right now Supergirl is its own show. Who knows what will happen in the future though, with whatever legal stuff has to happen since it would have to happen across two different networks."

While the crossovers are off the table for now, Supergirl executive producer Ali Adler — who collaborated with Berlanti on superhero-themed No Ordinary Family — reveals that they aren't going to completely ignore the DC fare that have come before it.

"We are inspired by producers like Andrew Kreisberg and Greg Berlanti who have such a vast body of superhero knowledge," Adler says. "It's really inspirational and we look at those shows as touchstones of success. We will pull elements from them and appreciate them as well as shows like Buffy and Alias."

It's that freedom that has Adler the most excited about bringing a strong female hero to primetime in Melissa Benoist's (Glee) Kara.

"What's amazing about Supergirl is that whatever you expect, whatever those traditional superhero tropes are, we get to twist them invariably," Adler says. "Superman would handle a situation totally different than she does, so we are having fun twisting all those traditions whenever we can. What's really unique about Kara is that she was born on another planet and she has 12 years of knowing the memories of not only Krypton but her parents and how she crashed here. She is someone who has quelled her powers for a long time and has now decided to join the world as a superhero."

While Arrow and The Flash had to hone their skills, Supergirl finds Kara in a different predicament: aware of her super abilities but unwilling to use them — at first.

"What you're going to see from the beginning of the season certainly is that she's green. She hasn't practiced. She's inexperienced," Adler says. "As strong and brave as she is and as well-meaning as her intentions are, they're not always going to be the perfect execution unlike her cousin [Superman]. She'll live in his shadow a little bit."

Adds Berlanti: “She’s very much at the beginning of her journey. There’s always a bit of mystery around her origins and around what her capacities are.”

One big change that the producers didn't want to shy away from is that Kara will have more than one weakness.

"It's a bit of a collective mystique that kryptonite is the only thing that can hurt a Kryptonian," Kreisberg says. "Superman himself can be hurt by a lot more than kryptonite. On the show, we’ve shown that she is fighting certain aliens, and she fights Livewire, who has electrical powers and has enough electricity to stop Supergirl’s heart. There are other things on the show beyond just kryptonite. On the old series, unless you had a rock of kryptonite, it was pretty much just lights out for the bad guys and we certainly don’t want that. We always want to feel like our hero is in jeopardy."

But despite that, Adler says, viewers can expect a much lighter fare than other, more brooding superhero shows.

"There's still going to be dramatic moments and there will be huge action set pieces and danger and people's metal will be tested," Adler says. "This is not just some light rom-com. But don't be afraid to embrace the parts of it that are at times scary because we'll balance it out with truthful character moments. Melissa Benoist just brings this lightness to the show naturally, and we'll definitely use that."

Adler also stressed that Supegirl is a series that will appeal to fanboys and families alike.

"She's just so inspirational," Adler says of her heroine's appeal. "She brings this golden sunlight into everyone's lives that she touches. It's going to be so nice to see if that's contagious for America."

Although there has been criticism over how female superheroes have been handled in pop culture in recent years, Supergirl's producers aren't worried about how viewers will react to Kara.

"Some have gotten it wrong, but I can honestly think of so many like Buffy and Sydney Bristow and Salt and Lara Croft. There are so many female superheroes or even just heroes who have gotten it right," Adler says. "But what is exciting about Supergirl in particular is you come in and you forget immediately the whole aspect of, 'This is a girl.' All you see from Melissa Benoist's character is strength and power and a true hero. That doesn't have a gender."

Another way that Supergirl is going to flip the script of classic TV tropes is by presenting a love triangle with no clear "right" choice when Jenna Dewan-Tatum joins the show as Lucy Lane.

"She comes to the show as a former love interest of Jimmy Olsen’s [played by Mehcad Brooks], to add some complications," Berlanti says. "But with Kara being the nicest person in the world, Lucy really likes her, and the two of them have some adventures together."

Adds Kreisberg: "It's a tricky thing when you do a love triangle, the most successful ones are where everyone is rooting for everyone. We really needed to find someone who was beautiful but different from Melissa, but had a vibrancy and a heart and warmth that you didn't hate Jimmy for being with this girl. She's completely likeable but is also a little more sophisticated and mature. Everyone is going to be torn."

But Lucy isn't just coming on the show as a love interest/foil. She also represents a major part of the Superman/Supergirl lore.

"A lot of times, the characters that we cast are avatars for people we don't have on the show," Kreisberg says. "As much as Mehcad represents the hopefulness and the curiosity and vibrancy of Jimmy Olsen, he also is, in a way, standing in for Superman, and similarly with Lucy, she in a way steps in for Lois Lane. And honestly, Jenna just looks like Lois Lane come to life."


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-f ... new-833819

- 7 preguntas con…David Harewood (backstage.com):

7 preguntas con…David Harewood
Por Briana Rodriguez | 22 Oct, 2015, 11 a.m.

Known primarily for his roles as David Estes on “Homeland” and Captain Poison in 2006’s “Blood Diamond,” British actor David Harewood is taking on a new character on the CBS series “Supergirl,” premiering Oct. 26. Starring opposite Melissa Benoist as the titular character, Harewood talks to Backstage about his acting crushes, his worst audition ever, and the big secret that’s keeping him hush-hush.

Tell us about your role on “Supergirl.”
I play Hank Henshaw. He’s a hard character and probably comes across as a bit of a ballbreaker. But he’s actually got quite a big secret that will be revealed somewhere in the season. The challenge has been to keep his secret. If I delve more into the character, I might give it away. You’ll see a little bit in Episode 1 of what I’m talking about, but it’s a fantastic character. I’m really, really excited about it.

What have you learned about your acting on this project?
Most of the characters I’ve played have been very dark, but this guy has lots of different levels and it’s fun to be able to jump between them.

What is your worst audition horror story?
I remember doing one audition where it was supposed to be for the Commission for Racial Equality, and obviously it was written by somebody who had no idea about racial politics. I ended up questioning why they found [the material] funny, and going into the room and speaking to the clients who had arranged for this thing to be done and kind of arguing with them. It was supposed to be a black person being interviewed by someone. I just found it stupid, really. And of course they’re arguing with me, the only black person in the room, and they’re trying to tell me it was funny and it honestly was offensive. So it got quite heated and I ended up leaving.

On whom do you have an acting crush?
Denzel [Washington]. I just think he’s a fantastic actor. I love his work and I admire the way he works the camera and the audience. I watch a lot of his work and try to learn as much as I can from him.

Which of your performances has left a lasting mark on you?
I would say playing David Estes. It was a really breakthrough character for me, in the way that it broke into the international market. And I spent most of my time working with some brilliant actors. Most of my scenes were with Claire Danes or Mandy Patinkin, and I learned an enormous amount from just watching them on days I wasn’t working. I’d come in early just to watch them work and learned a hell of a lot.

What do you wish you’d known before you started acting?
That there would be extremely tough times as well as extremely good times. When you go into [acting] you don’t quite have an idea of what the job’s going to be. I’ve had a very good run. Inevitably, you just keep going because of the passion, but it’s still a very difficult experience.

How do you typically prepare for an audition?
I don’t want to leave any opportunity [because of] forgetting my lines or nervousness. I like to make sure that I’m there early, and relaxed. I want to be as focused as I can. Just make sure you learn your lines; that’s the most important thing.


http://www.backstage.com/interview/7-qu ... -harewood/?

- Melissa Benoist está lista para despegar en Supergirl (TVInsider):

Melissa Benoist está lista para despegar en Supergirl
Damian Holbrook 23 Octubre, 2015 10:00 am

“It’s crazy. I went in for this the day after Halloween last year,” a smiling Melissa Benoist recalls of her audition for Supergirl, CBS’s bright new superhero show about the Man of Steel’s equally fortified cousin. “I thought there was no chance—I had brown hair,” and the DC Comics character is well known for her blonde locks. “I’m just a weird girl, and I think they liked that.”

It’s impossible not to like Benoist. Sitting outside her trailer on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California, while she plays with her dog, Farley, the newly blonded 27-year-old Littleton, Colorado, native is as effortlessly attractive as she is approachable. Her down-to-earth vibe is refreshing and a tad startling, given her high-profile gig on one of this season’s biggest gambles. After all, Supergirl—which finally takes off on October 26—is the first comic book-based, female-driven superhero drama on television since The WB’s short-lived Birds of Prey in 2002; the character’s 1984 big-screen debut was a dud; and it’s not airing on The CW, home to DC Comics’ current TV crown jewels, Arrow and The Flash.

Thankfully, the superfriends behind those heroic hits are the ones bringing Benoist’s Kara Zor-El, last daughter of Krypton, to the airwaves. Indeed, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. knew exactly who to ask about adapting another icon. “One of the executives mentioned the character of Supergirl,” says Greg Berlanti, teaming again with his Flash and Arrow executive producers Andrew Kreisberg and Sarah Schechter, along with Glee’s Ali Adler, one of his cohorts on the relatives-with-powers dramedy No Ordinary Family. “[But] they saw the show more as her without a cape, a teenage-girl-growing-up-on-a-farm kind of thing.” Not interested in doing Smallville: The Training-Bra Years, Berlanti and Co. pitched a more adult origin story with “the same size and scope as The Flash and Arrow but with its own adult identity. CBS loved it, and we got a show!”

Introduced in a 1959 issue of Action Comics, Kara has a backstory similar to her more famous kin. “She was 12 years old when Krypton was destroyed, and she escaped the destruction at the same time as her infant cousin,” Benoist explains. In the Supergirl premiere, she is sent to Earth by her parents, Zor-El (Robert Gant) and Alura (Laura Benanti), to watch over baby Kal-El, “but she gets stuck in space for a long time, and when she gets to Earth, he’s already matured. So she makes this decision that since Earth already has a hero, she doesn’t need to use her powers.”

Instead, Kara blends in as the adopted daughter of the Danvers (in a fun nod to the mythos, they are played by big-screen Supergirl Helen Slater and Lois & Clark’s Dean Cain), a family of scientists in the fictional and very Los Angeles-like National City. With a protective adoptive sister, Alex (Chyler Leigh), and the kind of glasses that have been known to hide secret identities, the Kara we meet in the pilot has grown up to become a sweetly nerdy assistant to media maven Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart) with undeveloped powers and no clue that her CatCo colleague Winn (Jeremy Jordan) has it bad for her.

Of course, even superheroes in denial can’t sit still when a plane carrying a loved one is about to go down, so before you can say, “It’s a bird…,” Kara takes to the friendly skies to rescue Alex. In the process, she attracts all sorts of attention—most notably from Hank Henshaw (David Harewood), head of the Department of Extra-Normal Operations, a shadowy government organization, and one James Olsen (Mehcad Brooks), who has been deployed from Metropolis by Supes himself to play Obi-Wan to the fledgling hero.

Not that she needs a man to save the day. Or a Superman. While plenty of DC characters, like Lucy Lane (Jenna Dewan-Tatum), Red Tornado (Iddo Goldberg), Maxwell Lord (Peter Facinelli) and Kryptonian villain Non (Chris Vance), are set to appear, the oft-mentioned boy scout in the sky is most definitely not one of them. “I compare him to Veep’s [unseen] president,” Berlanti jokes. “He is out there and Metropolis exists, but hopefully, people watching the series will quickly go, ‘We don’t even need him!’”

All Supergirl really needs is for viewers to see past the whole “girl” part. “Ultimately, what we want to do is appeal to everyone,” Schechter offers. “The notion that guys won’t watch girls has been completely destroyed by things like Frozen and Mad Max: Fury Road. For us, this is just a show about an incredibly interesting character going through something exceptional.”

Adler echoes that equal-rights-for-equal-flights sentiment. “The Supergirl property is the gold standard for female superheroes, but in watching the action and what Kara comes up against emotionally, you go in seeing a female superhero and you come out seeing a powerful superhero. Her gender doesn’t really matter. Ultimately, it’s just about this triumphant person.”

What did matter, however, was finding an ingenue capable of convincingly rocking a caped ensemble designed by Oscar winner Colleen Atwood (who also created the looks Stephen Amell and Grant Gustin sport on Arrow and The Flash), battling an array of aliens-of-the-week unleashed by Kara’s arrival on Earth and balancing comedy, drama, action and adorableness. For that magic combo, the producers turned to the unsung hero of DC Comics’ growing TV dynasty, casting director David Rapaport.

“We saw thousands of people, but I will say that all credit goes to David,” Schechter says of the man we have to thank for stocking The CW’s hero brigade. “He had a really good feeling about Melissa, just like he had a really good feeling about Stephen Amell and Grant Gustin.” And just like those two, Benoist—best known for her role as Glee’s sweet, shy Marley Rose—was the first to read for the role. “David actually made Melissa come back early from a trip and signed her in himself so she would be first because he knew that Greg is a little bit superstitious,” Schechter says.

“She is the female Grant,” Kreisberg adds. “Watching them on set, it’s not just the talent or how they inhabit the part; it’s their joy and enthusiasm that they get to do this, which is in a way who these characters are.”

Walking back into the soundstage to film the first scene with Jordan, Brooks and Leigh in what will become Team Supergirl’s secret CatCo control room, Benoist still seems genuinely astonished that she gets to do this for a living. “I love Kara,” she says, exuding the same sunny determination as the character. “She truly believes that she’s going to change and save the world. And I think she’s going to do it.”


http://www.tvinsider.com/article/47975/ ... supergirl/?

- Productores de "Supergirl" y protagonista dicen que están “haciendo una película cada semana” (comicbook):

Productores de "Supergirl" y protagonista dicen que están “haciendo una película cada semana”
Por Lucas Siegel 23/10/2015

Supergirl starts with a bang. In the pilot episode, Kara “Danvers” Zor-el goes from “I need to keep my powers hidden” to full-on Superhero working with a crazy alien-hunting government agency in 44 minutes that feel closer to 44 seconds. That kind of pace is what showrunners Andrew Kreisberg, Greg Berlanti, and Ali Adler are hoping to maintain for the entire season, though, much as they do on Kreisberg and Berlanti’s other superhero shows.

“We are intending to keep up that pace,” Kreisberg told ComicBook.com in a recent interview. “We sort of don’t know any other way to do it! We’ve often talked about, with the TV landscape, and honestly the feature landscape, too: at any given moment there’s a feature film on The Avengers or The Dark Knight or Man of Steel or Iron Man or Thor, and you can get your kicks from this stuff anywhere. So we really have to provide something special and singular every single week to keep people entertained. So we think of this as trying to produce a Supergirl movie every single week.”

“This is not relaxed girl, it’s Supergirl,” Adler cut in with a laugh.

“We just have to figure out a way to do it and not kill Melissa,” Kreisberg joked.

As for Melissa Benoist, the star of the show, she’s in “basically every scene” as the show’s ensemble cast rotates around interactions with her.

“That’s the difficulty is that you’re making a movie a week, which it really feels like we are,” Benoist told us. “Just the sheer amount that we have to do, and not just me, it’s the crew behind us and the other actors, we are working non-stop and pretty tirelessly.”

The everyday approach, then, is that “Kara and Supergirl are enjoying themselves, and finding joy in being a hero and using her powers after keeping them hidden for so long,” Benoist said. “I always keep in mind her bravery, her positivity, and her hope,” something she hopes will inspire young girls.

Indeed, Greg Berlanti said that “having worked with her for a couple of months now, if anyone has little girls out there, we all want them to grow up to be like Melissa Benoist. So in some ways, and I mean this seriously, as we’ve moved ahead in writing Kara, we’ve tried to capture what’s so special about Melissa.”


http://comicbook.com/2015/10/23/supergi ... e-a-week-/

- Melissa Benoist sobre el convertirse en heroína de DC, la influencia de Superman y más (IGN):

Melissa Benoist sobre el convertirse en heroína de DC, la influencia de Superman y más
Por Eric Goldman 23 Oct, 2015

As I write this, CBS's new Supergirl series currently has a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Among the reviews – you can read IGN’s here – one thing stands out as being brought up again and again, which is most everyone loves Melissa Benoist in the title role.

Following in the footsteps of her fellow Glee alum turned DC Comics hero, Grant Gustin, Benoist brings a ton of natural charm and endearing enthusiasm to her role as Kara / Supergirl in this version of the story – in which Kara is Kal-El’s older cousin, leaving Krypton when she was 12 years old, only for her trip to Earth to hit a Phantom Zone detour, leading to a still-young Kara arriving after Superman has established himself.

After chatting a bit about her fandom for Star Wars and Batman Returns, I sat down with Benoist to talk about Supergirl, suddenly finding herself in such a big spotlight and what’s to come on the series.

IGN: Right now, has it just been a crazy whirlwind time because this show hasn’t premiered yet but there’s so much attention on it?

Benoist: A little bit. It’s been concentrated bursts. Comic-Con was definitely a whirlwind and Upfronts and TCA, but everything else has been relatively calm because I’m just so wrapped up in actually making the episodes. That’s what I like. I like throwing myself into the work. Other than that, I keep my life very simple so it hasn’t been too much of a whirlwind but we’ll see what happens when it’s starts to air.

IGN: Having filmed the pilot a few months back, what’s it been like to be underway in production and learning the day to day of making Supergirl?

Benoist: I’m definitely learning the responsibilities of being in nearly every scene and having to work that much, that hard. That is a little more taxing than I thought it was going to be. I can be very lazy [Laughs] so I’d always rather be watching movies on my couch but I’m having to grapple with the fact that I have to get up at four in the morning some days. But other than that, I’m having the time of my life. I’m having so much fun. The stunts are so cool. I watch the playback on the monitors every once in awhile and my jaw drops. I can’t wait for people to see this.

IGN: When I talked to your producers, they were saying this show is going big with the action and that the second episode has a fight scene that’s bigger than anything in the pilot. There’s got to be a tedious, technical side to that too but is it exciting to realize, “Oh wow, this is going to be on screen, as Supergirl, doing this?”

Benoist: Yes. Every script I keep getting, they are busting it out and they’re not holding back at all. Every new script is bigger than the last and has so many layers and textures to it, I almost forget that I’m going to be playing Supergirl. I get caught up in reading it. It’s really thrilling what they’re bringing to the table, the writers.

IGN: Have you gotten used to the “I’m filming a flying scene’ aspect yet?

Benoist: You know what, I think I have! That’s a funny thing to think about. I’m in the air. You know what else I’m getting used to? I have different facial expressions and stances with each power. I know what heat vision looks like and I know what X-ray looks like with my eyes and I know what freeze breath looks like. It’s an anatomy of Supergirl that I’m learning.

IGN: A really interesting aspect of this character, versus Superman, is that she did grow up for years on Krypton and has these childhood memories that he wouldn’t have. She’s spent several years on Earth, but how much will it play in that she has that background and is, essentially, an immigrant?

Benoist: She is. I think that’s the most tragic part about her. It’s such a sad part of her story that really informs why it’s so important to her to be a hero and to be looked at, from the world’s perspective, the way her cousin is. It’s also a beautiful part of her story and will be a big part of ways she deals with other aliens or villains.

IGN: Since you got cast in this role, have you been thrown plenty of Supergirl comics and background as research?

Benoist: Yeah and they’re really good about it. I know Jeremy Jordan wanted to read up on Winslow Schott and he was given many, many books. Also what’s really cool is when you’re around Geoff Johns and Andrew Kreisberg, you just ask them a question and they know the answer.

IGN: It can get pretty convoluted in comics. There are many iterations of Supergirl. For you, is it sometimes like “Okay wait, this version is this and that version is this?”

Benoist: Yes and that’s why part of me has tried to stay away. Obviously, I want to know the world she’s in but there are so many iterations. I really want this to be the 2015 version of her and to be my take on that and to bring a lot of myself. That being said, the comics are obviously important.

IGN: How much does the influence of Superman weigh on her and the legacy she’s a part of?

Benoist: That’s an interesting internal battle that she has. There’s -- I don’t want to say resentment, but weight is a really good word to describe it. Her purpose, in coming to Earth, was to take care of him and he was a baby and she’s twelve years old. Then she finally comes to Earth and he is fully-grown and has already taken the Earth by storm and her job is unnecessary. So there’s kind of the inadequacy that she feels but also admiration. I think she wants to be upset with him but you can’t because he is so good. So I think she learns from him too.

IGN: Different people want different things from a show. Some like a lot of romance, some don’t. Some people will love the sci-fi element more than others. How would you describe the balance and what the show is going for and how they’re incorporating different elements?

Benoist: Oh, it’s got everything. It’s not just romance or sci-fi and comic book action. It’s got that, and it’s also got this fun, work atmosphere and this relationship with Cat and her family the Danvers, and Alex, this character they’ve created, her sister. It’s really equally balanced right now.

IGN: At Comic-Con, we spoke about the photo shoot you and Grant [Gustin] did together in costume. Have you had conversations with him about what it’s like jumping into this world?

Benoist: We did see each other briefly at Comic-Con and he asked me “how are you? This is your first one. It’s our second and it’s easier. I’m telling you, it’s easier. It’s less crazy and overwhelming.”

IGN: You’re not reading every Supergirl comic, but is there anything you’ve seen in the comics or any version of the character that you think would be cool to see or you’d be like “I wonder if she can do that on the show?”

Benoist: You know, I don’t know. I’ve been reading the New 52s. I am really excited for Reactron. That is something I had read in the Superman books. I’m really excited about that because he’s so scary and is one that Superman has a hard time trying to beat so the fact that Kara gets to go up against him is pretty cool.

IGN: You’re playing Supergirl and you’re interacting now with characters like James Olsen and some of the Lane family. Is there a surreal nature to that, because those characters are so permeated in everyone’s pop culture history?

Benoist: It is really surreal and there are moments where there are lines here and there, salt and peppered into the script where they’re mentioned where we’ll say Clark Kent or Lois Lane or something along those lines. Everyone always kind of giggles when that happens.

IGN: What can you say about the relationship with James beyond the pilot? He does have a pseudo-mentor vibe, since he’s worked alongside Superman obviously. He has this firsthand knowledge, in a day-to-day way, that she doesn’t. What is his role in her life moving forward?

Benoist: It’s a mentor relationship but also one of respect that he knows what it means and knows what it’s like and understands as much as he can as a human being, how Superman must feel as an alien, an extraterrestrial on this planet with his incredible powers. They had each other. They were best friends. He’s kind of doing that for her too. He’s there for her in a way that other people can’t be, that her sister can’t be, that Winn can’t be, that certainly Hank cannot be.

IGN: What about Hank Henshaw? In the pilot, he’s pretty antagonistic, but they are working together to hunt down these alien threats.

Benoist: [Laughs] There’s so much tension there. It’s a difficult relationship but one that I think is healthy for her. He’s showing -- he’s teaching her that she has limits. She has a lot to learn. She’s not ready for everything she thinks she is. In the pilot especially and still going forward, it’s such a journey. It’s a learning curve like you said. She’s kind of like a rhino, charging at things, and because she has the powers, she thinks she’s going to win. She’ll just punch him and that’ll be it but he’s kind of being like “No, there’s strategy and you have to actually think to be a hero and defeat the people that need to be defeated.”

IGN: Anything you shot since the pilot that you can hint at, as far as action sequences, that you’re really excited for people to see?

Benoist: Well there is, in the second episode, a really, really humongous fight sequence that I have to say I think people are going to freak out over.

IGN: There's a great video of you at a Supergirl screening [see above!], where you surprised all these little girls and their moms. What was that like and seeing what the reaction was?

Benoist: I had not seen the pilot with anyone other than my mom and family members, really. I got to watch their faces as they were watching the end of it. I came in for the tail end. Seeing that impact, I was taking aback. I was really affected by that and really affected by how excited they were. It was pandemonium and they just rushed me and wanted to talk and they were such lovely little girls and that is such a… I find it such a privilege to be a role model. I think Kara is very wholesome and very good, innately. I think we need someone like that for young girls.


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- Tan sólo quiero que la gente se divierta: Melissa Benoist y el equipo de ‘Supergirl’ sobre el encontrar la felicidad en ser un héroe (comicsalliance):

Tan sólo quiero que la gente se divierta: Melissa Benoist y el equipo de ‘Supergirl’ sobre el encontrar la felicidad en ser un héroe
Por Luke Brown 23 Oct, 2015 10:00 AM


While the the first female-led superhero film to arrive in theaters is still a few years off, the vacuum will be filled this coming Monday in TV land. Yes, Supergirl will soon beat the likes of Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Black Widow and even Jessica Jones to the punch as the first female superhero to get her own live-action starring vehicle this century. DC Comics and Warner Bros. have had some success in the serialized drama arena with Arrow and The Flash, but even from the earliest marketing you could tell Supergirl was carving a different path, and not just because she’s on another network.

This week we were given an early look at the upcoming pilot for Supergirl, and it’s clear the series will be taking a much lighter approach to its hero’s journey than the more gritty street-level action of Arrow or even the sci-fi turmoil of The Flash.

While that’s a fresh approach given the recent climate of superhero fare, the first episode isn’t without its flaws. After viewing it, we took part in a conversation with producers Ali Adler, Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg (both also responsible for Arrow and The Flash), as well as the new Supergirl herself, Melissa Benoist, to discuss the show, where it’s headed, and the challenges of making a nigh-invulnerable lead vulnerable.

One of the biggest issues the pilot faces is its incredible pace. What feels like several storylines that should occur across multiple episodes are burned through in just 45 minutes. While that kind of pacing does get Supergirl in her final costume by the halfway point, it makes motivations muddy, doesn’t allow for many secondary characters to have personality traits beyond some quippy/cringey dialogue, and doesn’t give viewers much time to breathe before moving onto the next scene.

“We are intending to keep up that pace,” said producer Greg Berlanti. “We dont know another way to do it. We often talked about the TV landscape and the feature landscape, and how at any given moment there’s an Avengers or Dark Knight, and you can get your kick for this stuff really anywhere. You have to provide something special and singular every week to keep people entertained. We think of this as trying to produce a Supergirl movie every single week.”

That said, the lighthearted vibe of the show remains constant, even during moments of intense conflict. Supergirl does more than a few things right, but one thing it absolutely nails in this debut is keeping the positive nature of its lead character front and center.

“I think Superman has always been more that just a hero, he’s been an inspiration, and a beacon of hope,” said producer Andrew Kreisberg. “We’re certainly guilty of putting a dark hero on television in Arrow, but there is something in Supergirl that just represents the light and the hope and the goodness in people. I think it’s important for our times and our world, and it’s tied to our character.”

Supergirl is also an action show though, and there has to be a balance between these moments of optimism and putting Kara Danvers (née Zor-El) in danger. Unlike her cousin from a few cities over, Kara has been hiding her powers seemingly her whole life to this point on the show. It isn’t until her own adopted sister is put in mortal harm that Supergirl springs into action. Producer Ali Adler explained that Kara not using her powers at every turn is a big part of how they approach the character in the writing room.

“We always talk about this character as if she didn’t have superpowers. How would she approach a given situation if she was just like you or me, but she has this bonus skill set? That’s really how we look at each villain of the week or problems in her emotional or romantic life… We definitely look at it with the perspective of being powerless, and what her powers then bring to it.”

It’s worth noting too that since Supergirl is so new on the scene, her powers and strength limits aren’t really known, even to her. As such, it’s a bit easier for the writers of show to put her in peril. She might be Kryptonian, and have all the benefits of what our planet does for her DNA, but she’s inexperienced in the field and admittedly hasn’t even flown since she was a kid. Though there will be some bigger bads lurking in the wings with potential threats like Kryptonite, Kara will still have her hands full even if the villain of the week only has a nuclear axe.

“It’s a bit of a collective mistake that Kryptonite is the only thing that can hurt a Kryptonian,” Kreisberg said. “In the comics and other adaptations, specifically Superman: The Animated Series, you see that Superman himself can be hurt a lot more than just by Kryptonite. On the show, we’ve shown that fighting certain aliens, or fighting Livewire, who has electrical powers — she has enough electricity to stop Supergirl’s heart. There are other things on the show that are beyond just Kryptonite.

“On the old series, unless you had a rock of Kryptonite, it was pretty much lights out for the bad guy. We certainly don’t want that. We always want to feel like our hero is in jeopardy.”

In keeping with that theme, the first episode introduces the villain of the week formula based on the idea that when Kara’s ship was expunged from the Phantom Zone, a Kryptonian prison escaped with her. It crashed on Earth around the same time she did, releasing all the inmates to run wild. Though some will likely continue to work on their own agendas, there is a bigger force working behind the scenes.

“We always have a traditional big bad for the season, this sort of uber villain who is setting the plan in motion,” Kreisberg said. “But just like with the other shows, there’ll be villains of the week. We’re going to be meeting some of those alien villains, and there’ll also be some human villains. We’ve announced that Toyman is going to be appearing, but additionally we have some major Kryptonian villains who are going to be the big bads of the season.”

Currently, Toyman’s alter-ego works just a desk away from Kara at Cat Grant’s media empire, CatCo, as the resident tech guy. Winslow Schott is just about the worst character on the show, though it’s likely not through any fault of actor Jeremy Jordan. Clearly the creative team is setting Schott up to be a villain by the few lines of cringe-worthy dialogue he spouts whenever his advances are inadvertently spurned by Kara. It doesn’t help that anyone who isn’t Supergirl is barely given time to showcase their personalities, but if that’s the extent of Schott’s development, I can’t wait until Supergirl (hopefully) punches him in the face later this season.

During the 45-minute premiere, one of the few characters to actually get a chance to express herself is Calista Flockhart’s Cat Grant. The comparison to Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada is easy to make, only Grant actually tells people how she’s feeling instead of trying to murder them with pursed lips and an up-turned nose.

After Grant’s media empire dubs Kara “Supergirl” for the first time, Flockhart delivers a speech that attempts to quell any concerns that you can’t be super if you’re “just” a girl. It’s a key moment in the show, as it establishes a clear dynamic that even though these two women disagree about what it means it be a strong woman, both are incredibly powerful in their own right.

“That speech was in the original pitch for the show,” Berlanti explained. “One thing I’ve found in doing this is that sometimes the temptation is there by executives to alter things that are part of the DNA of what was so great about the comic book. We really wanted to be protective of the name of the show. We wanted to have a conversation with our characters that we believed the audience would be having, and that others might be having. That was the origin of it. It was always in existence.”

Cat isn’t the only positive (in her own way) influence on Kara, who lives with her sister Alex, played by Chyler Leigh. Since departing Gray’s Anatomy, Leigh hasn’t had the best of luck on television, with the awful Taxi Brooklyn wasting her talents. There’s hope Supergirl might see her given some prominence again, as she’s not just playing Kara’s sister, but is also set up to be a partner of sorts at the Department of Extra-Normal Operations (DEO), led by Hank Henshaw, by the end of the episode.

“I think something that separates Superman from Supergirl is that he’s sort of autonomous,” producer Ali Adler said. “Something that we’re really proud of is our episode two is called ‘Stronger Together.’ It really is not just about a woman that’s readily able to accept help, but Kara really embracing and getting that help from her sister and Hank and other forces at CatCo as well.”

Those relationships. both at CatCo and the DEO, will be important, even if it appears as if both places seemingly set out to keep Kara at arm’s length during the first episode. Henshaw trusts Supergirl about as much as viewers trust that the DEO is really working out of a cave beneath the city, and Grant can’t even pronounce Kara’s name right.

“With the DEO and her sister and Hank, she really learns to hone her powers and become an even better superhero,” Adler added. “But from her friends at CatCo, she really learns the importance of being Kara Danvers and just being a woman and a human being that’s grounded and tied to the people she’s sworn to protect.”

As such, it’s tough for Supergirl to aspire to be the role model the show wants her to become. There’s a lot of empowering moments scattered throughout for our hero, but they’re surrounded by moments of her being doubted at every turn by others in her life. Perhaps that’s what makes the moments of triumph that much more enjoyable as a viewer. For Melissa Benoist, being a role model isn’t much of a challenge as long as she’s getting to portray Supergirl the right way.

“I approach it every day with the idea that as long as Kara and Supergirl are enjoying themselves and finding the joy in being a hero, and the joy in using her powers, that everything stems from that,” Benoist said. “I always keep in mind her bravery, her hope and her positivity and her strength, and I think it will be hard for girls not to look up to that.”

It’s definitely not hard to see why the showrunners and CBS went with Benoist after watching the whole episode, though you could feel her enthusiasm and presence even in promotional materials. Benoist absolutely exudes every attribute you would want Supergirl to have, and it’s a good thing that so much of this show’s success is riding on her shoulders.

“This type of show is incredibly grueling from performance to stunts to training, when you’re not learning lines, and we can’t create a show like this without someone like her carrying the whole show on her back,” Berlanti related. “She exemplifies grace under pressure, and I think in some ways — and I mean this seriously — when we try to write Kara, we try to capture what we think is so special about Melissa. She just really personifies the qualities of the character and it gives us something to write for every day.”

Adler echoed those sentiments saying, “What we’ve also found is that all the attributes that Melissa has, that Supergirl has, are strength and courage and hope are very genderless, so ultimately we hope to inspire men and women out there.”

Supergirl’s successes during the trials she faces in the pilot are inspiring, even if they happen so quickly it’s hard to take them all in at first. Still, the burdens of being the current potential flag-bearer for female empowerment on network TV don’t seem to bother Benoist one bit. “I wouldn’t say I think of it as a burden. It’s definitely an asset,” Benoist said. “I honestly don’t tend to focus on it too much because I just want people to have fun watching the show and really enjoy watching Kara’s journey as much as I’m enjoying playing it. It truly to me does not matter that she’s a girl because she kicks some serious ass.”


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- El elenco de Supergirl y el Showrunner sobre la adaptación de DC (superherohype):

El elenco de Supergirl y el Showrunner sobre la adaptación de DC
Por Wilson Morales 23 Oct, 2015

With so many comic book TV series currently on television between The CW (“The Flash,” “Arrow”), ABC (“Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” “Marvel’s Agent Carter”), Fox (“Gotham”), and Netflix (“Marvel’s Daredevil,” “Marvel’s Jessica Jones”), it’s time for CBS to get in on the mix.

Hailing from Warner Bros. TV and Berlanti Productions (who also produce the hit DC Comics series “Arrow” and “The Flash” for The CW), Supergirl is based on the characters from DC Comics and centers on Kara Zor-El, who escaped the doomed planet Krypton with her parents’ help at the same time as the infant Kal-El. Protected and raised on Earth by her foster family, the Danvers, Kara grew up in the shadow of her foster sister, Alex, and learned to conceal the phenomenal powers she shares with her famous cousin in order to keep her identity a secret.

Years later at 24, Kara lives in National City assisting media mogul and fierce taskmaster Cat Grant, who just hired the Daily Planet’s former photographer, James Olsen, as her new art director. However, Kara’s days of keeping her talents a secret are over when Hank Henshaw, head of a super-secret agency where her sister also works, enlists her to help them protect the citizens of National City from sinister threats. Though Kara will need to find a way to manage her newfound empowerment with her very human relationships, her heart soars as she takes to the skies as Supergirl to fight crime.

Melissa Benoist leads the Supergirl cast, which also includes Mehcad Brooks, Laura Benanti, Calista Flockhart, Chyler Leigh, Jeremy Jordan, Jenna Dewan Tatum, Iddo Goldberg, David Harewood, Peter Facinelli, Dean Cain and Helen Slater.

SuperHeroHype spoke with the series’ Executive Producer Ali Adler along with Supergirl cast members Mehcad Brooks, who plays Jimmy Olsen, and Peter Facinelli, who plays Maxwell Lord, about how the tone of the series differs from the other DC series (“The Flash,” “Arrow,” “Gotham”) as well as how they would describe their characters.

Can you talk about the tone of the show compared to Arrow and The Flash?

Ali Adler: I hope that if Metropolis is here next to Gotham City and it’s our own sunny universe, Supergirl will impact with her own brand of lightness and optimism. We absolutely consider it a character trait of the city and of the tone, and we are a bit lighter emotionally. Those shows inspire us absolutely.

Mehcad Brooks: I would say that it’s better than them. To me and honestly, it’s the best thing I’ve seen on TV. I’m not even kidding. I know I’m supposed to say that, but I really actually mean it. It has like a Donner-esque quality to it. It’s has that romantic comedy element but also light. There’s also a dark side to it, but we don’t delve into it so much that you can’t watch it with the kids. We don’t also make the show for kids. The adults are going to love it too. “The Simpsons” did it really well where you had jokes that the adults would snicker behind kids’ backs and the kids would think it’s cool and cute. The tone of our show is much more Donner-esque than the later Christopher Nolans. Those are very dark.

Peter Facinelli: I think the tone is meant to be comic but fun. It’s not super-dark like the Batman series. It’s fun and it’s got action. It reminds me of Christopher Reeve’s Superman. They were fun and funny at the right moment and had a really nice mix of being a family movie where everybody can enjoy it. That’s what I feel that “Supergirl” is. There are very few shows that I would sit down with my kids and say, “Hey, let’s all watch this together.” But this is one where I feel it’s safe to watch with them, but I can enjoy it too. I’m actually excited to see not because I’m on it, but because it’s a fun show.

Can you talk about the casting of Melissa Benoist?

Ali Adler: It was so exciting for us. David Rapaport and Lyndsey Baldasare of Rapaport Casting were tremendous. As an example, the first person they brought in for “Arrow” was Stephen (Amell). The first person they brought in for “Flash” was Grant (Gustin) and the first person is like the hat trick. I don’t think it’s accidental. People practice all the time to score in hockey too. They did their research so thoroughly in bringing in Melissa Benoist, who I actually worked with on “Glee” and she just captivated us all immediately. We saw many more people after that. Probably a 1000 people after that. Just due diligence. Tapes were sent in, but she just had our hearts from the beginning and I’m sure you guys will feel the same.

How would you best describe your characters?

Mehcad Brooks: Jimmy Olsen’s all grown up. When you hang out with Superman long enough, you go to a confidence boot camp. You start working out and maybe you change your clothes a little bit and he’s now won a Pulitzer Prize for his photo coverage of Superman. He’s now an Art Director in National City. Superman has asked him to leave Metropolis and go to National City to help Supergirl become who she is supposed to be. He’s this liaison between her hidden identity and who she’s supposed to be. He’s her mentor but there is an attraction. If Superman asks you to go look after his cousin, there’s a bro-code, you have to structure that. It’s a really cool world.

Peter Facinelli: Maxwell Lord is a green tech billionaire. He’s trying to save humanity through green technologies and the problem lies that his perspective is from others. Other people look at Supergirl and other superheroes as ways to help save the planet and in his mind, we shouldn’t get help from outside sources. We should be fixing humanity ourselves. He has a different perspective on how we should fix our problems. He looks at it this way. “Our planet is dying. We’re destroying our planet and everyone’s fascinated with superheroes fighting in the sky, but those are distractions. We need to get to the matters at hand and come together as a human race and fix it.” Some people have compared him as the Lex Luthor of the Supergirl world, but I don’t think he’s a villain in that sense. He’s not an evil genius. He’s just a genius with a very clear perspective on things that don’t match up with everyone’s else’s.

Can you talk about some of the other DC characters scheduled to appear on the show? Will it be a new villain every week?

Ali Adler: We definitely have a force every week that has to match her superhero skills so we need to give her an equal but opposite reaction. There’s Reactron, Livewire and Red Tornado. I don’t know how much I can talk about it, but we are definitely seeing Non. We also have something that is unique for us in as much as Kal-El left the planet when he was an infant and became Superman on Earth but doesn’t have the body of memory that Kara Zor-El does. She was 12 years when she was on her planet and we get to learn more about Krypton, which is really exciting. We get to do that through flashbacks and we have these incredible sets that we are erecting and it’s really exciting to see what’s on the call sheets. We also have additional flashbacks to Midvale. We will see people like Dean Cain as Jeremiah Danvers and Helen Slater as Eliza Danvers. What’s amazing is to walk on the set and see those people acting in our scenes, and it’s very thrilling for us.

What do you expect to bring to your roles? For Mehcad, why is Jimmy so well liked?

Mehcad Brooks: What I’m bringing to the role? Swag! There you go. It’s the same character. Same DNA. The only change is the ethnicity and to speak on that point, Jimmy was created in 1940. There was a certain existence back then. You can’t blame anyone for drawing what they knew, but if Jimmy Olsen had been created last year, perhaps he would look like me or you. We don’t know. So, we’re just writing the social languages of the past. Jimmy represents how we feel about Superman. He represents the truth and justice in our hearts and if we had a friend that was able to perform these actions, that we would help them. Maybe we couldn’t fly ourselves and maybe we couldn’t do this, but we would be right there providing what that person needed. I think that’s a really cool entry way into that world for humans that don’t have these special powers can look to someone and have that person be your eyes and ears and voice. I think that’s why people love Jimmy. It’s an honor to play that.

Peter Facinelli: When I read the comic book, he was very colorful and wearing purple suits and seemed like Donald Trump on the cover of Forbes. He’s a strong businessman who had an agenda. I’m playing him more like a Elon Musk, Steve Jobs. The billionaire today is different from the billionaire of yesterday. He’s more cooler and charismatic. For me, there’s a saying. “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was making people think he didn’t exist.” If you want power, the best way is to win people over and he’s the type of character that wins people over through his charisma and then he can harness that power to do whatever he wants. As far as his relationship with Supergirl, he doesn’t have any superpowers and fighting her in that sense. He’s a very smart man and it’s an adversarial relationship with Supergirl because he looks at her as someone who is fooling the public. He looks at her with fascination and he can somehow harness that power, he can solve humanity’s problem. It’s a fun character to play.


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- Melissa Benoist y Andrew Kreisberg sobre ‘Supergirl’, el traje, los villanos y más (collider):

Melissa Benoist y Andrew Kreisberg sobre ‘Supergirl’, el traje, los villanos y más
Por Christina Radish 24 Oct, 2015

The CBS action-adventure drama series Supergirl follows Kara Zor-El, now known as Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist), as she decides to finally embrace her superhuman abilities and be the hero she was always meant to be. After 12 years of keeping her powers a secret on Earth, Kara will need to find a way to manage her newfound empowerment with her very human relationships, as she takes to the skies as Supergirl to fight crime.

During this recent conference call with press, actress Melissa Benoist and executive producer Andrew Kreisberg (Arrow, The Flash) talked about this once in a lifetime opportunity, seeing the costume for the first time, the villains Supergirl will face, keeping a sense of danger, how the character relationships are affecting the story, the very distinct aspects of Kara’s world, keeping up the fast pace of the pilot, making a Supergirl movie every week, and why this character is more than just a hero.

Question: Melissa, when you were first cast in this role, you were not as well known as you are now. Have people already started recognizing you more?

MELISSA BENOIST: No. First of all, I’m not really in public that much because I’m working quite often. But when I am in public, I haven’t noticed and external change in my life. It’s more internal, as far as what I’m dealing with on a day-to-day basis.

What was it that initially drew you to this project?

BENOIST: The reason that I was so drawn to it, from the beginning, was that I knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I just think it’s such a beautiful story to tell, in a sometimes scary world, and that it would be something I’d be really proud to be a part of.

Did you read any comics to prepare for this role?

BENOIST: I read some of the New 52. But also, what I love about what Ali [Adler], Greg [Berlanti], Andrew [Kreisberg] and Sarah [Schechter] have created is that I truly feel like we are making this modern, 2015 version of her. So, I wanted to know the world, but I wanted to separate myself from it a little bit, to really make her my own.

Andrew, was there a moment for you, in watching Melissa, where you felt you really got the casting right?

ANDREW KREISBERG: We knew that she was our Kara and our Supergirl, from the very start. I don’t think any of us ever questioned that. But it was that first time that she put on the outfit for us, we were at Warner Bros. in the costume department, with Colleen Atwood, who designed the costume. For all the good intentions and all the good planning and all of the talented people in the world, you can sometimes misfire on these things, especially when it’s based on a comic book. But when Melissa stepped out wearing that outfit, it was like, “Oh, this is going to work.” None of us had any doubts, from that point forward. We knew we had the right girl, but after that, we knew that we had something really, really special.

What villains will Supergirl face this season?

KREISBERG: We always have a traditional big bad for the season, who’s an uber-villain that’s setting the plans in motion. But just like with the other shows, there will also be villains of the week. The pilot sets up the idea that there was an alien prison from Krypton that crash landed on Earth, and all of the prisoners escaped. So, we’ll be meeting some of those alien villains. There will also be human villains. We’ve announced that the Toyman is going to be appearing on the show. Additionally, we have some major Kryptonian villains that are going to be the big bads of the season.

Since not everyone can have Kryptonite, how are you going to make Supergirl vulnerable, so that there’s a real sense of danger?

KREISBERG: There’s a collective mistake that Kryptonite is the only thing that can hurt a Kryptonian. In the comic books and in other adaptations, specifically the Superman animated series, Superman can be hurt by a lot more than Kryptonite. On the show, we’ve shown that fighting certain aliens [can hurt her]. She fights Livewire, who has electrical powers and enough electricity to stop Supergirl’s heart. There are other things on this show that are beyond Kryptonite. We always want to feel like our hero is in jeopardy.

What surprises have there been, along the way, as you’ve been crafting this first season’s story, and how has that affected things?

KREISBERG: In a lot of ways, this reminds us of The Flash because this show feels fully formed, a lot sooner than we were expecting, especially when it comes to the relationships amongst the characters. When you do the pilot, you come up with all these characters, and then you cast them and you hope the cast is going to gel and you can find scenes that can come out of the character work. Watching Melissa’s scenes with Calista [Flockhart], with Chyler [Leigh], with Mehcad [Brooks], with Laura Benanti, with David [Harewood], and with Jeremy [Jordan], it’s a lot easier to come up with things because we’ve seen the evidence of how much the character work on this show is really engaging. Probably the biggest surprise, which also happened on The Flash, is how hard it is to pull these shows off, week in and week out, with the visual effects, stunts, and amount of planning that goes into making them. You think, “Oh, we pulled off Arrow, so we’ll be able to do The Flash.” And then, The Flash turned out to be a lot bigger. And Supergirl has turned out to be a lot bigger than The Flash. Every one of these shows has had a very steep and unforgiving learning curve, but we’ve been incredibly proud and excited by the results. Hopefully, everyone out there will be, too.

Kara has help from people in various parts of her life. Will those various parts of her life eventually intersect?

KREISBERG: One of the fun things about the show, in the beginning, is that she has very differentiated parts of her world. She has the DEO, led by Hank Henshaw, that her sister works at and where she works as an unofficial agent. But she also has Jimmy Olsen and Winn Schott and, whether she realizes it or not, Cat Grant, back at CatCo. Part of the fun of the show is that she’s keeping these things very separate. As the show moves forward, they start to bleed into one another, and then you get the fun complications of the people who consider themselves the professional alien hunters having to deal with what they consider to be the civilian amateur alien hunters. What’s great about the show is that everybody has something to contribute, everybody has value, and everybody is constantly learning from each other. Kara learns very different things from these worlds. With the DEO, her sister and Hanks, she really learns to hone her powers and become an even better superhero. But from her friends at CatCo, she really learns the importance of being Kara Danvers, being a woman, being a human being, and staying grounded and tied to the people she’s sworn to protect.

Melissa, how do you feel about balancing being a good role model for young women and just making a good action show?

BENOIST: How I approach it, every day, is that as long as Kara and Supergirl are enjoying themselves, and are finding the joy in being a hero and the joy in finally using her powers after so long, everything stems from that. I just always keep in mind her bravery, her hope, her positivity and her strength. I think that it will be hard for girls not to look up to that.

Andrew, will Kara develop any female friendships, outside of her sister, in the show?

KREISBERG: She’s going to become friends with Lucy Lane, played by Jenna Dewan Tatum, who comes to the show as a former love interest of Jimmy’s. The fun part of it is that Kara, being the nicest person in the world, is someone who Lucy really likes, and the two of them will have some adventures together.

Are you looking to keep up the fast pace of the pilot, every single week?

KREISBERG: Yeah, we are intending to keep up that pace. We don’t know any other way to do it. We’ve often talked about how with the TV landscape, and honestly with the feature landscape too, at any given moment, there’s a feature film on, like The Avengers, The Dark Knight, Man of Steel, Iron Man or Thor, and you can get this stuff anywhere, so you have to really provide something special and singular, every single week, to keep people entertained. So, we think of this as trying to produce a Supergirl movie, every single week. We just have to figure out a way to do it and not kill Melissa.

BENOIST: It really feels like we are making a movie, every week, just with the sheer amount of what we have to do, and not just me. There’s a crew behind us, and the other actors, and we are working non-stop and pretty tirelessly.

Melissa, do you have to do any training for the physical side of this role?

BENOIST: I trained before we started shooting the season. Now that we’re in the thick of it, the work is the work-out. I’ve found that I have sustained my endurance over the past few months, just by doing the stunts and the physical work that I’m doing, every day.

Andrew, this is a very hopeful superhero story. What does that allow you to do, with this show and the storytelling?

KREISBERG: I think that Superman has always been more than just a hero. He’s been an inspiration and a beacon of hope and something to aspire to. We’re certainly guilty of putting a very dark hero on television with Arrow, but there is something about Supergirl that represents the light, the hope and the goodness in people. It’s important for our time, it’s important for our world, and it’s so tied into the character. There’s a tendency to not embrace what things are, but you do that at your peril. So, we’ve really embraced that. Hopefully, not only Melissa, but the show itself can be an inspiration.

Melissa, which superhero power would you be partial to having?

BENOIST: It’s the cliche, boring route, but I would want to fly. I think the power of flight is, hands down, the one I would want.

http://collider.com/supergirl-melissa-b ... interview/

- Entrevista con Mehcad Brooks (seat42f):

Entrevista con Mehcad Brooks
Por Tiffany Vogt Oct 26, 2015

Mehcad Brooks steps into some mighty big shoes to fill in his most recent television series, where he picks up the mantle of Jimmy Olsen, the best friend and confidante of the man in blue aka Superman in Metropolis. In CBS’ new drama series SUPERGIRL, Jimmy moves on over to Central City to keep an eye on and help out Clark Kent’s cousin Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) just as she starts to yearn to do something more with her life and the extraordinary abilities she has been blessed with after coming to live on Earth. That’s right, for those not as familiar with Kara’s backstory, she like her cousin Clark was not born on Earth and comes from Krypton. That means Kara is also faster than a speeding bullet, can leap tall buildings and pretty much go toe-to-toe with Superman in all that he can do. So just where does Jimmy Olsen fit into this picture? From the first moment they meet, it is clear that Jimmy and Kara are more than just future friends in crime-fighting and keeping Kara’s secret identity, there is an undeniable spark of attraction and their chemistry lights up the screen. They also make a hilarious pair in comedic repartee and it is a pure delight watching them.

So in order to try to find out a bit more about just what role Jimmy Olsen will have to play in SUPERGIRL, at last summer’s CBS summer party at TCA, we had an exclusive chat with star Mehcad Brooks about the new series and the fun he is having on the show.

What drew you to the role of Jimmy Olsen after playing the outrageous role of T.K. on NECESSARY ROUGHNESS?
MEHCAD: My mom is a journalist. So I kind of grew up in a newsroom anyway and for me it is not that much of a stretch.

Your mom must be pretty excited you got this role then.
MEHCAD: [Laughs] She loves it. She screamed louder than I did when I got it. I think Jimmy Olsen is an amalgamation of my mom and my step-father, who is my dad. Where T.K. was more an amalgamation of me in my early twenties and my biological father, who played pro-football. So I’ve kind of taken from my own life and I try to make it as real as possible.

What do you like about Jimmy? What do you think is fun about him?
MEHCAD: Everything! The show is so fun. The script is a lot of fun. The actors are great. I love working with them. And we get to go into Jimmy’s backstory and history. So there’s something really nice about that as well. I just have a good time playing him.

Jimmy seems to be a man with a few secrets and that is a version of Jimmy Olsen that we have not seen before. He kind of comes across as the “all-knowing Oz” a bit.
MEHCAD: [Laughs] He’s not — well, maybe his the “all-knowing Oz” as soon as Oz reveals himself — but Jimmy is human and he makes mistakes. He has learned a lot of lessons being by Superman’s side, which he can then impart to Kara, but he’s not perfect. He’s still learning and on his own path to find himself, as well, which is part of the reason he comes to National City in the first place.

Is Jimmy aware how much he has an affect on Kara?
MEHCAD: [Laughs] He hopes he does! For sure. There’s definitely a mutual attraction. But it’s kind of the bro-code: “Superman is my home-boy. I can’t really go after his cousin like that.” Also, there’s that inter-species love hurdle — she is an alien after all.

I don’t think that bothers him.
MEHCAD: [Laughs] I don’t know. We just don’t know yet.

So he’s hesitant, thinking there might be a green-person underneath that beautiful human looking exterior?
MEHCAD: [Laughs] Color doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that she’s strong enough to rip his head off! Like, what if they ever got into an argument?! I was nervous a couple of times when we were doing scenes, and I was confronting her and she was confronting me, and Melissa had the suit on and she looked really strong in the suit and I was nervous. I was kind of thinking: “She could kick my ass! It’s Supergirl. She could throw me through a window or a wall. I don’t want to argue with her.”

Will we see Jimmy in the field with Kara or is he more of just her go-to office guy?
MEHCAD: He gets pulled into the action world. I’m really looking forward to that.

What has been the most exciting thing that you’ve gotten to do, so far?
MEHCAD: Go to work. It’s amazing. Every scene is a blessing. I’ve never felt that way before, and I know people say that every now and then, but I mean it.

Who would you like to work with more as the show progresses?
MEHCAD: I’ve think worked with everybody so far. I worked with Melissa the most, and I’ve worked with Jeremy [Jordan] and Calista [Flockhart], and recently Chyler [Leigh]. I haven’t worked with David Harewood yet, but I’m looking forward to when that happens and I’m looking forward to seeing how they make that happen. I would like to see how Jimmy gets to interact with the the Department of Extra-Normal Operations (DEO). I’d be curious about that. I love working with Calista; I’ve learned a lot watching her. Melissa is amazing — past amazing. We love playing off each other. Same with Jeremy. I love the cast. My favorite cast ever.

Those scenes with Jeremy, is there that bro-code line there too between Winn and Jimmy?
MEHCAD: For Jeremy, Winn is in love with Kara, but she doesn’t know.

Is Jimmy in favor of a possible Winn-Kara romance then?
MEHCAD: [Laughs] No, he is not. Not even close.

What can you share about Jimmy and Cat (Calista Flockhart)? They have an interesting dynamic in the office. What is that like?
MEHCAD: She is his boss and she makes no mistake about it. You know she’s in charge. But she does it in a very subtle, sort of nonchalant, cavalier way. But she still listens.

Is Jimmy intimidated by Cat at all?
MEHCAD: [Laughs] Not as intimidated as everyone else. He knows his worth.



http://www.seat42f.com/supergirl-scoop- ... rview.html

- Ali Adler sobre el por qué necesitamos a Kara Danvers y más (televixen):

Ali Adler sobre el por qué necesitamos a Kara Danvers y más
Por Kayti Oct 26, 2015

Supergirl premieres tonight at 8:30 p.m., marking one small step for womankind and one giant leap for superhero TV. We got a chance to chat with executive producer Ali Adler at New York Comic Con earlier this month. Here’s what she had to tell us about the differences between Supergirl and Smallville, flashbacks to Krypton, the introduction of Toyman, and why the world needs Kara Danvers …

Smallville/Superman vs. Supergirl

For many, the ruler against which to measure all other TV superhero stories (especially the ones that fall on the campier side) is long-running Superman drama Smallville. This is, apparently, even more true for shows starring Superman’s Kryptonian cousin, Kara Danvers. (Because women must always be defined by the men in their lives …)

But, while Adler was gracious enough to answer the question about how Supergirl compares to Superman, she was (awesomely) less interested in comparing the two, saying: “We don’t spend a lot of time talking about Superman. We’ll answer the sort of question of Superman — where he is in our world in series — but, for us, it’s really her show. She has a deep, rich well of emotions that we get to explore in addition to [her] just being a general … badass.”

On a specifically visual comparison to Smallville, Adler noted that — because visual effects have come so far in the last ten years — Supergirl has the potential to do “different things with visual effects, adding: “It’s like making a movie every week, so it’s very spectacular visually.”

On flashbacks to Krypton and Earth

Fear not, Dean Cain and Helen Slater fans! According to Adler, we’ll be getting to spend some time with the actors who play Kara’s Earth parents (and who have previously played Superman and Supergirl, respectively) in the first few episodes. This will come in the form of flashbacks, which we’ll be getting as glimpses into Kara’s life both on Earth and on Krypton.

Adler teased: “The privilege of having a young lady crash on Earth at age 12 versus having an infant crash is she retains the memories of who she was on Krypton and we definitely explore that through flashbacks — on Krypton and on Earth.”

The introduction of the Toyman

There has been much speculation over the potential turn to villainy of Kara’s co-worker/bestie Winslow “Winn” Schott. In the comic books, his character’s alter ego, Toyman, is responsible for much murder and mayhem. But will Winn, played by series regular Jeremy Jordan, be Toyman?

Hard to say, but Adler did tease that “the Toyman will be coming,” adding that “there will definitely be some exploration of the relationship between the Toyman coming and Winslow Schott.” Though this could conceivably refer to Winn’s alter ego, it could also hint at a separate character as Toyman — especially given that Jordan appears in the Supergirl pilot, which makes the declaration of his coming ill-fitting.

The relationship between James Olsen and Kara Danvers

As you’ll see in the pilot, there is definitely some chemistry between Kara and James Olsen, who is presented here not only as Kara’s co-worker at Cat Co., but also as a potential ally in her journey as Supergirl — especially given the fact that James has a history of helping Superman.

When asked about the evolution of the Kara/James dynamic moving forward, Adler teased: “James Olsen is very inspirational for her in the pilot and continues to be. And then I think what happens with Supergirl is it’s almost like the student becomes the teacher, and I think very quickly she — Kara, Zor-El, Supergirl — inspires everyone in her path, so I think he learns a lot from her and vice versa. He has the experience of working with Superman, but she definitely has a core kindness that she bestows on everyone.” #Jara

On why the world needs Kara Danvers

When looking at the pop culture landscape (and beyond), there’s a dearth of representation of women when it comes to positions of power (or, sometimes, representation at all). Adler hopes that is beginning to change with shows like Supergirl, saying: “Since Wonder Woman or Sydney Bristow or Buffy, we really haven’t found that big, strong, emotionally-inspiring woman, and we’re hoping that that comes with Melissa Benoist and our tremendous cast.”

Adler also spoke about how Supergirl has another “supergirl” in the form of Kara’s sister Alex, who has her own secret identity of sorts (revealed in the pilot) that puts her in a position of power. The relationship between these two women, at least in the pilot, is the heart of the show.

If you’d like to hear more about Supergirl from Adler, check out the video below which includes discussions of costume designer Colleen Atwood’s creation of Supergirl’s costume and the representation of National City as a place of “optimism and hope.”

http://thetelevixen.com/supergirl-ep-al ... vers-more/

- Productores de Supergirl sobre las polñiticas de hacer una superheroína femenina (EW):

Productores de Supergirl sobre las polñiticas de hacer una superheroína femenina
Por James Hibberd 26 Oct, 2015

With Supergirl taking flight on CBS tonight, we spoke with executive producers Greg Berlanti (Arrow, The Flash) and Ali Adler (Glee, Chuck) in separate interviews to ask some of our burning questions, particularly about the politics of making broadcast’s first female-driven costumed superhero show on a Big 4 network in decades.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was specifically the hardest thing about making this show?
GREG BERLANTI: I think I would say twofold: One was the stress of making sure that we had the right Supergirl. These things are incredibly cast-dependent, and if we don’t have that right person, you’re done even before you start. So just the pressure of that, I think, was felt by everyone, on every level. And the other thing I would say was incredibly hard, was just trying to do something of this scope and size, and, quite truthfully, in Los Angeles. It’s an expensive city to shoot in. These things don’t come cheap, and we didn’t want to do it if we couldn’t give it the scope that it really deserves.

There’s a leaked email from a Marvel executive a few years ago essentially saying, “This is why female superheroes don’t work,” and it listed three examples of ones that didn’t work over a long history of time. What was your take on that?
BERLANTI: It’s on us to make a great show. If we make a good show, I think people are really excited and interested in having a female lead at the center of one of these shows. I’m not even sure I was as aware of the desire for this until actually after we started making it. The kind of response I’ve had for that — from male and female parents wanting their kids, boy and girl, to have a hero like this in TV or movies. So I’ve definitely noticed a real desire for that when we’ve been doing.

Has everyone in the industry really been supportive, or has anyone privately said, “This could be tougher to sell”?
BERLANTI: Honestly, not a single studio or network person has worried about the show’s success or failure based on her gender. If people worry about the success or failure of the show, it’s based on are we doing a good job making it. And that’s where the pressure should be. There were moments where Supergirl gets a thrashing in the pilot, where if a man in the Flash or Arrow pilot got beat up, people didn’t visibly wince. And I watched in testing, people in the audience really became uncomfortable by the fisticuffs and the action. But then, they were elated and cheering at the end. And you can’t have one without the other. We always check ourselves to really make sure we’re not changing an element of the story or production based on the gender of this character. We try to be extra vigilant about it. Also, the majority of the executives on the project are women. In my gut, we’ve crossed that threshold, and the audience is going to be equally engaged by this thing if we do a good job making it.

At the same time, is there a certain amount of pressure? Like, if Supergirl doesn’t work, then will that say something — unfairly so — about the potential success of female-driven superhero shows?
BERLANTI: I feel a tremendous amount of pressure whenever we have a character that we’re doing that the audience has a lot of familiarity with anyway. Nobody wants to screw up a Supergirl or a Superman show. I’m sure they felt the same pressure back doing Smallville, or Lois and Clark. You’re a part of a larger thing, and so we already kind of feel that kind of pressure of making sure that it’s really good and that it can live within the really esteemed kind of canon of these stories.

ALI ADLER: If we had a female president, I don’t think we’d be going, “There’s our female president,” we’d just go, “There’s our president.” Maybe the first day in office we’ll talk about that, and after that, she just needs to prove her worth. You start watching it like it’s a female superhero, and then she’s just a powerful person.

It’s become a bit of a social media minefield — as Joss Whedon discovered with Black Widow in Age of Ultron — that if you make a perceived misstep with a female superhero character, you could be in for the biggest backlash of your career. And it’s partly because — as Mark Ruffalo pointed out — there are so few of them, so fans feel more protective of how they’re portrayed.
BERLANTI: I’m anxious for the day when there isn’t any unfair scrutiny. But we welcome any kind of conversation anybody wants to have about the characters. I think if you work in this space, and you’re lucky enough to do characters that are really well known, there’s always going to be a lot of conversation about something, and you always hope that people give you enough time to discover what the best version of the show is. That’s true, on our end, it’s true of any TV show we do. It takes a little bit of time to figure out what works best, and all our shows have a learning curve to them, and all the shows we do hopefully get better as we go along.

ADLER: I think there’s going to be our learning curve and then a teaching curve. We can’t just paint with two colors. I think Kara is very dimensional, which is exciting for us. Superman — at least in the comic books — is, to me, less interesting, because his range of emotion can only be … he’s an autonomous guy. So because Kara has friends, and this wider range of emotion, she has a different origin story, and grew up on Krypton, she knows two worlds, she’s just got a wider range of emotions we get to use.

Somebody told me Supergirl was Warner Bros.’ most expensive TV pilot ever?
BERLANTI: I don’t know. It’s the equivalent of after you have a baby, not remembering how hard the birth was. If I really sat around and remembered the cost of these things, I’m not sure I’d ever have the gumption to do one again. We definitely felt supported throughout.

It’s always tricky when you have a really expensive pilot, and then you have to do a regular episode every week. Is there any concern in terms of keeping the high production values beyond the pilot?
ADLER: I will say that the second episode is as big, if not bigger, than the pilot. So I don’t necessarily think money always translates to the largeness.

One aspect everyone seems to praise is series star Melissa Benoist. It keeps being hinted to me that somebody was reluctant about her initially, and that’s why her audition process dragged out. What was the hesitation that she had to overcome?
BERLANTI: It wasn’t so much a hesitation as much as it was everyone wanting to… When we do this audition process on our end—just so you know, because I think nobody realizes this — we see a thousand people. But then we only submit to the studio and the network the people that we like out of those people, because you don’t want to submit someone you don’t want, because you could get stuck with them. They didn’t, nobody at the studio or the network level had the benefit of seeing a thousand people like we did. And so I think — I wouldn’t even call it a hesitancy as much as it was everyone, the way I would describe it is, everyone just wanted to be sure. They knew that this was the most important decision that we would make, it was more important that the money we would spend on it. They have these pictures in the comics of a massive wave of a blonde mane, and she’s been drawn different throughout the years, with an emphasis on her chest, or legs. If Whereas if you’re casting Superman, everyone’s going to go like, “How much does he remind you of Christopher Reeve?” But we had an idea, just from the storytelling in the script, of who inspired us and who we wanted to write for. So I think the vetting process was totally to be expected. The studio, the network, asked for Melissa to do multiple scenes because they wanted to be sure. But the second everybody was sure, everybody was ecstatic. I always think the audition process is such a great indicator of the person in the part because her energy and spirit throughout the auditioning process told us that she’s going to have the joy and the exuberance and the stamina to do the show itself. We ended finishing the script even with her voice in our heads because we had a good sense that she was the girl.

I thought one of the smartest things you guys did was having the speech about the “girl” vs. “woman” in the pilot and then putting that in the trailer and getting out ahead of that just as criticism of that element began to brew online. You reclaimed the issue and reframed it. Whose idea was that, and can you talk about the strategy to get out there months before the show aired?

BERLANTI: That was my idea even before the pitch. That speech was in our pitch for the show. One of my golden rules about these things, is I don’t want to do a Supergirl show and then call it something else and make it something else. I want it to be what it. It’s hard enough trying to make these things what they deserve to be, let alone try to make them something different, and I knew sometimes the corporate people and executives can get nervous or scared about certain things. It’s called Supergirl and so people are going to wonder how that’s not too young for a broader network [like CBS]. One of the most valuable things about it is the name, so we wanted to have the conversation that we felt the audience would have.

Another step was the costume, which is sort of a trap. If it’s sexy, that’s bad. But if it’s unattractive, that’s bad too. What were some of the thoughts being thrown around the room when you were trying to figure it out?
ADLER: We got [designer] Colleen Atwood, who’s so inspired and brilliant and came in with so much thoughtfulness behind the suit. She talked about being inspired by Kryptonian wear. The belt that Kara wears is the same as her mother’s. Then there’s this modern thumb-strap to tamp down the sleeves. There was this functional quality that the boots are flats. With other female superheroes — you can’t run down the street and punch someone if you’re holding up your top. So there absolutely was this functional quality.

The version that leaked on BitTorrent was, from what I’m told, a higher resolution than anyone peripherally involved in the show actually had access to, leading some to think that it must have been deliberately leaked as a way of generating interest in the show since The Flash did so well after that pilot leaked. Was this a strategy?
BERLANTI: Oh my God, no, no, no it wasn’t. I’m pretty open-book about that stuff. I’m always excited when people are enthusiastic about the shows and for more people to be talking about the shows. But I feel like when people watch stuff that way, it’s like going to a restaurant and leaving before you pay the bill. I see how hard the crew and everybody are working on the show, to make these shows, and they have families, and people have to pay bills.

What was your reaction when you saw that it leaked?
BERLANTI: I get upset, and I write the studio and the network, and we talk to legal, and we talk to press and publicity about where it may have come from. Everybody is investigated. It’s no small deed. And then at some point over the next couple of days, I kind of relax about it and just kind of let the chips fall where they may, because there’s nothing I can do about it. We so closely guarded with the script. People in the auditioning process had to come to our office to read it. By the end of the day, there’s so many other things for me to worry about, I try to focus on what I can control. This happened last year on Flash, it got leaked, we put some extra time in the show, so the audience that saw it on air saw a couple different things they hadn’t seen in the show. We try and do stuff like that.

Another thing beyond your control was SNL’s Black Widow parody that came out the same time as the trailer. What was your reaction to seeing that, and the romcom comparisons being made?
BERLANTI: I think it had come out a week or two before. I thought, “Oh gosh, maybe there really is a need for something like this if they’re already making a skit about it.” Clearly people are wanting to talk about why there’s not more female heroes represented. And then in terms comparing our trailer to the parody, I had no concerns about that, because I knew how much action we had in this. We had a meeting where CBS showed us all the different commercials that they have coming out for the show, and there’s commercials that promote the sister relationship, there are commercials that promote the alien element, there are commercials that promote the workplace comedy. And what was great with each one of those things were valid, because the show is all those different things.

We see Kara was raised by Dean Cain and Helen Slater in the pilot, will we see more of them in future episodes?
ADLER: They’re in an upcoming episode and we hope to do more with them.

I was wondering: Why does Kara feel the need to have a day job?
ADLER: I don’t know if the other job pays the rent, for one. Like Clark Kent, it’s important for her to stay close to this nexus of information and at CatCo she’s at this media hub. Also, Kara thrives on being around people.

Superman was before a time when everybody carried a camera in their phone and before facial recognition software. Will it be tougher to explain why nobody recognizes Kara as Supergirl?
ADLER: We actually address that in an upcoming episodes. Do we always see the heroes amongst us? You can be looking right at a person and not really see them. It’s about seeing someone for who they are.

Every reporter asks if Supergirl will crossover with your CW shows. To me it’s a silly question, because of course you’re going to do it — it’s just a matter of how long you wait before you do it. So my question is: Will there be any kind of crossover acknowledgement possible with the Batman vs. Superman film, like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. does with the Marvel movies? I’m wondering if that’s possible or whether, due to the corporate mechanics of it, it’s just not going to happen.
BERLANTI: What I’ll say about the network element crossover is what I always say, which is, “Never say never.” And then in terms of the connection to the feature side, we are writing a Superman who is not the same as the one that’s represented in the film. So we have nothing to do with them, because we reference him quite a bit on our show in different ways, and my sense of it doesn’t line up with that film. Ours is a different Superman.



http://www.ew.com/article/2015/10/26/su ... rs-explain

- Productores y elenco de "Supergirl" sobre la acción, adelantan exploración y prometen una revelación de Superman (CBR):

Productores y elenco de "Supergirl" sobre la acción, adelantan exploración y prometen una revelación de Superman
Por Brett White 26 Oct, 2015

Television audiences are about to meet a whole new type of hero, one that hopes to inspire future generations while fighting super villains and saving the day -- actions she accomplishes with a smile on her face and optimism in her heart. "Supergirl" flies into homes on tonight on CBS, the final major network to try its hand at the comic book adaptation game. Starring Melissa Benoist in the title role, "Supergirl" has placed its superhero in numerous advertisements and promo spots -- and she's even inspired a few Girl Scouts before her small screen debut.

At New York Comic Con, executive producer Ali Adler and "Supergirl" cast members Mehcad Brooks (James Olsen) and Peter Facinelli (Maxwell Lord) spoke with reporters about the new series, and how it differentiates itself from its superheroic competition.

The most notable difference is that the lead character is a woman, a fact that's still rare considering that a woman hasn't lead a superhero movie in over a decade. "She probably has the same responsibility as any superhero, but because she's got a skirt, maybe there's an additional responsibility to say, 'Yes, of course we're equal,'" Adler said. "And then we can put that discussion behind us, because who cares, at the end of the day? This is a superhero fighting a super-world and facing super-problems, but I guess there is -- we just have to address it to move on from it."

"It's about time," Brooks said when asked about starring on a show led by Benoist. "I love how our country talks about women as a minority group, but they're half of the world. That's half the human population. My mom, to me, is a superhero. She did things that I could not possibly do. I look back at how I was raised, and I think about how she was a single mom for a portion of my childhood, and I go, 'I could not have done that.' It's incredible. I feel like there have been real life women superheroes for a long time. and there's been comic book ones for a long time, but I think our society is just now getting ready for that in primetime. Change takes a long time, sadly, but I'm glad that we're kicking down the door and I'm proud to be a part of that. It's long overdue."

A world with Supergirl also has Superman, the character that serves as Kara Zor-El's inspiration. Aside from a sun-drenched, face-washed-out cameo, the iconic superhero has so far been missing from all of "Supergirl's" promotional material, a development Adler assures potential viewers will be addressed sooner rather than later.

"We absolutely have to address that there is another Super soul living on this planet," the executive producer stated. "I think it is addressed pretty quickly in the series, and hopefully in a satisfying way... Very quickly, I won't say which episode, we dispense with the notion of why Superman isn't coming in to save the day."

Of course, Superman's influence will be felt on the show in more ways than just Supergirl's costume. Brooks talked about the effect that being Superman's best friend has had on James -- not "Jimmy" -- Olsen. "When you hang out with Superman long enough, you go through almost like a confidence boot camp," Brooks said. "Maybe you start working out, maybe you change your clothes a little bit, and he's now won a Pulitzer Prize for shooting Superman. He's now art director in National City; Superman's asked him to leave Metropolis and go to National City to help Supergirl become who she's supposed to be. So he's kind of this liaison in between her hidden identity and who she's supposed to be."

Supergirl will need Olsen's expertise if she's going to get through the wringer Adler and fellow EPs Greg Berlanti ("Arrow") and Andrew Kreisberg ("The Flash") have in store for her. "Maxwell Lord is a green tech billionaire who is trying to save humanity through green technologies," Facinelli said, explaining his character, who has been portrayed as both a hero and a villain in the comics. "I think the problem lies in that his perspective is a little different from other people's perspective. Other people look at Supergirl and superheroes as ways to help save the planet, and in his mind, we shouldn't get help from outside sources, we should be helping humanity ourselves. He has a very distinct perspective of how we should fix our problems. He looks at it like, our planet is dying and we're destroying our planet, and everybody's fascinated by the superheroes fighting in the sky. But those are distractions. We need to get to the matters at hand and come together as the human race and fix it."

While the threat posed by Lord may simmer in the background across the season (Facinelli has a recurring role on the show, after all), Adler said Supergirl will have new, fresh threats to face most episodes.

"We definitely have a force every week that has to be matching her huge superhero skills, so we need to give her an equal but opposite reaction," explained Adler. "We have, definitely -- I won't say necessarily a supervillain of the week, but we do have a threat or force every episode. And then, we have a challenge that she faces that we hopefully are arcing out and serializing." Among those villains will be Non (Chris Vance), Red Tornado (Iddo Goldberg), Livewire (Brit Morgan), Reactron (Chris Browning).

Adler added that Kara Zor-El will act as an entryway to explore other facets of Kryptonian life. "We also have something that's unique for us in that Superman left [Krypton] when he was an infant," Adler said. "[He] became Superman on Earth, but he doesn't have the body of memory that Kara Zor-El does. She has 12 years where she was on her planet, so we get to learn more about Krypton, which is real exciting. We get to do that through flashbacks and these incredible sets that we're erecting. It's really fun to see a call sheet that says, 'EXT. Krypton.'"

The show will also have the required amount of sexual tension -- although maybe not where you'd expect it. Facinelli revealed that Maxwell Lord will have a history with Calista Flockhart's Cat Grant. "Cat Grant and him have kind of a 'Dangerous Liaisons' kind of adversarial relationship, where there's a sexual tension there and there's a history, but it's very playful in a sense where they're not mean to each other -- in front of each other, anyway. But there are little digs in the way they interact. That's a fun relationship to watch."

"This is 'Supergirl,'" Adler emphasized of the show's true focus. "It's not, like, 'Tiny Girl,' or 'Lame Girl' -- this is a giant, huge production. We're making a feature film every week, and I've never seen a crew work harder, I've never seen actors or writers or directors [work harder]; it's just a spectacular production."

"To me, honestly, it's the best thing I've ever seen on TV," Brooks said frankly. "I know I'm supposed to say that, but I really, actually believe it. I really do. It has a ['Superman' director Richard] Donner-esque quality to it, that romantic sorta comedy aspirational tone, but there's also a dark side to it, too. We don't delve into the darkness so much you can't watch it with your kids, but we don't also make a show for kids. The adults are gonna love it, too."


http://www.comicbookresources.com/artic ... revelation

- 5 cosas que esperar de ‘Supergirl,’ desde el recibir puñetazos al crossover con 'Arrow'/‘Flash’ (thewrap):

5 cosas que esperar de ‘Supergirl,’ desde el recibir puñetazos al crossover con 'Arrow'/‘Flash’
Por Linda Ge 26 Oct, 2015 @ 9:54 am

Superman’s cousin is coming to TV, and the arrival of CBS’ “Supergirl” could not be more timely.

“There hasn’t been a female superhero on TV since Lynda Carter (who played Wonder Woman on ABC and CBS in the 1970s). It’s more than about time,” showrunner Andrew Kreisberg told TheWrap.

“People have been champing at the bit for this character,” she added. “The success of ‘Frozen’ and ‘Cinderella,’ and this year with ‘Blindspot’ and anything Shonda Rhimes does and Hillary Clinton, it feels like women are becoming front and center and we can finally stop having the conversation of, ‘Can women do everything that men can do?’ We know they can, and now they’re just doing it.”

Beyond being a symbol for female empowerment, Supergirl is also an iconic comic book character with a lot of baggage and expectations.

This time around, Melissa Benoist plays Kara Zor-El, a superpowered Kryptonian who’s trying to navigate Earth in the shadow of her slightly more famous cousin Clark Kent. At age 24, she finally decides to embrace her own powers and become a hero.

Below, Kreisberg discusses the gender politics behind portraying a female superhero, how Benoist helped shape the character before she was even cast, and whether or not “Supergirl” will cross over with “Arrow” and “The Flash.”


1. Supergirl can take a punch
Kara has super strength and can certainly hold her own in any kind of fight, but producers and network execs were still careful in depicting the young woman in combat, particularly getting beat up by men.

“There were some concerns about that from the network,” Kreisberg said. “What we tried not to do was create a show where people got on soapboxes and talked about what it means to be a woman — what it means being a woman in the workplace, what it means being a woman dating, what it means being a woman in combat situations — we just have her doing it. You can’t say she’s just as strong as Superman and then not have her get punched.

“What’s amazing about her is regardless of her gender, she takes a punch and then she gets right back up again and gives it all she’s got. Obviously, we’re very conscious of not wanting to show violence against women, but it would be a mistake to have somebody this strong and with these incredible powers, and not have her go up against people who wish to do her harm. The joy and triumph derives from watching her overcome these difficult obstacles.”


2. Melissa Benoist helped shape the character before she was even cast
The former “Glee” star, like “Arrow” star Stephen Amell and “The Flash” star Grant Gustin before her, was the first actress brought in to read for the role of Kara. But her casting is more than just a fun story. Though producers auditioned hundreds of girls after her, the actress was already shaping who the character would ultimately become.

“There’s just something about her,” Kreisberg gushed about his lead actress. “At first blush, I think she wasn’t what some people were expecting. But for us, Melissa, as a human being, is such a special person. She has this amazing, engaging quality that you just kind of fall in love with the minute you meet her. She’s just so full of energy and life and enthusiasm and hopefulness. That is who Kara is. What was so interesting for us, having seen her first, and then having to then see literally every other young woman in Hollywood, everyone we compared to Melissa. At that point, we were still writing the script, and we realized we were writing the Melissa version of Kara and Supergirl, so we were so blessed that she wanted to do it.”

3. Big action set pieces every week
While “Arrow” stays mostly grounded and “The Flash” added in meta-humans for more CGI-heavy action sequences, “Supergirl” opens up whole new worlds by introducing aliens. That’s going to be a challenge to sustain on a weekly basis, but they’re doing it regardless.


“Pilots are promises, and if you show her catching that plane and fighting alien villains, you have to keep doing that,” said Kreisberg. “Episodes 2 and 3 are legitimately bigger than the pilot, even though we had less time to do them. You just learn how to do them better, faster and more economical. There’s no appetite for us to start hitting the brakes. People are really going to be blown away by the scope and level of special effects and level of stunt work that they’re going to see coming up.”

4. It’s more “Flash” than “Arrow”
With “Supergirl” being on CBS and not the youth-skewing CW like “Arrow” and “The Flash,” there are some differences between Kara’s story and those of Oliver and Barry — and the network is not the only factor.

“Anytime you have a character who can fly, that changes the scope of the show,” said Kreisberg. “We also shoot in Los Angeles, standing in for National City, and that has a very different feeling than Vancouver [where ‘Arrow’ and ‘Flash’ shoot]. I think the show feels a little bit more grown up, especially when you have actors like David Harewood and Calista Flockart. It’s about an adult woman. It is like ‘Flash’ in the sense that it has a hopefulness and kindness and heartwarming quality. ‘Supergirl’ traffics a lot in family and friendship and a cast of characters that really support each other.”


5. No “Arrow” or “The Flash” crossovers anytime soon
As “Arrow” and “The Flash” become more of a cohesive universe prone to frequent crossover episodes on The CW, clamor for “Supergirl” to join in the fun won’t likely die down any time soon. However, there are no immediate plans for a cross-network crossover.

“It’s certainly not up to us,” said Kreisberg. “That’s a decision CBS, The CW and Warner Bros. have to make. If we were to ever do it, we would have to explain why no one on ‘Arrow’ or ‘Flash’ or ‘Legends’ have ever mentioned that Superman exists. Right now it’s enough for us to just have that [CW] universe be linked and it’s enough to just be creating this amazing world in ‘Supergirl.’ Down the line, if that’s what the fans want and what the brass want as well, then we’ll fly over that bridge when we get there.”


http://www.thewrap.com/supergirl-cbs-me ... row-flash/

- Productores de Supergirl sobre el pasado de Kara en Krypton, Superman, las escenas de acción y el pre-análisis de los fans (IGN):

Productores de Supergirl sobre el pasado de Kara en Krypton, Superman, las escenas de acción y el pre-análisis de los fans
Por Eric Goldman 26 Oct, 2015

After many months of anticipation, Supergirl finally debuts tonight on CBS. Kara Zor-El getting her own TV show comes with a lot of excitement from many, mixed with trepidation from comic book fans about whether this series will deliver what they hope to see.

Guiding the show are Arrow and The Flash co-creators Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg (who also have Legends of Tomorrow in the pipeline), Ali Adler (Chuck, No Ordinary Family) and Sarah Schechter (another Flash and Arrow alum). I sat down with all four of the Supergirl executive producers to talk about their approach to the character, how she differs from Superman, the threats she’ll face and more – including their thoughts on those who were highly critical of the first, six-minute trailer for Supergirl.

IGN: With all these comic book adaptations, the question of tone always comes up and there’s the dark and gritty approach vs. a more optimistic approaches, among others. With Supergirl, did it just pretty easily lend itself to wanting to do something brighter and more inspirational than maybe some others have been?

Ali Adler: I think we wanted it to feel real. Anyone goes through the highs and lows of life but I think this one rests more on the joy and light that this character brings not just her immediate friends, but to the world. She’s here to help people.

Greg Berlanti: The different environments you put them in kind of determine some of that too so if you have her fighting aliens there’s kind of a heightened quality there but also you want stakes. Obviously, the workplace element is going to add a bit of workplace comedy and lightness to it too but the origin of that character -- and Superman too -- has always had a brightness and an optimism and we wanted the show to have that.

IGN: You mentioned the aliens, and it occurs to me Arrow started with the list and The Flash started with the particle accelerator, which gives you great engines for where these villains are coming from, but eventually you begin to spread out. With Supergirl, is it the same idea that while you’re going to have plenty of escaped aliens, it won’t necessarily always be aliens?

Andrew Kreisberg: Yeah, because there are some cases that come to them through their investigative work at Catco. An actually, we’re going to witness the birth of a villain with Livewire, who is going to come about because of an accident involving Supergirl. So just like you mentioned with the list and the accelerator, that’s the overall drive.

Adler: There’s no shortage of obstacles here!

Kreisberg: But it gives you a place to hang your hat. She’ll be coming into contact with stories. One of the other things that’s great about Supergirl, or Superman, is that there are some episodes where there isn’t a villain. Where she’s faced with nature. It’s an earthquake or a flood. That’s something we don’t really do on the other shows. But the idea that she really is this beacon of hope for her city, in some ways, that does make it more real. Not every week it’s her locking horns with vengeful aliens. Some days, it’s just saving people’s lives and being there for them.

IGN: Having talked to Melissa [Benoist] a couple of times, it's clear she’s a very radiant person. Was that the quality or one of the qualities that stuck out to you because of the direction you were going?

Adler: We hope that America and the world falls in love with her the way we have. She’s just so warm and wonderful and positive and pretty. [Laughs] She’s lovely.

Berlanti: It’s our job to create a forum where she can express those things. We hope we can just sort of capture a little bit of it. As you know, around her, she just has that innate goodness that is, I think, synonymous with this mythology but also is just a great thing to have with any TV star on any show.

IGN: And she shares my love of Batman Returns.

Berlanti: I didn’t know that! Did she say that?

IGN: [Laughs] She did.

Adler: She was a member of the Star Wars fan club as a child.

IGN: She told me that too! She told me she was really bummed she had to miss that panel at Comic-Con.

Adler: Yeah, she was!

IGN: You have several members of what we classically consider the Superman supporting cast, both on a regular basis and some you’re bringing in down the line. Was that by design or did it just sort of flow as you were coming up with the stories and who you were going to surround her with?

Berlanti: I think it was by design to always mix and match some familiar names and we’ll continue to do that. I think with Flash we were able to do that. It goes all the way back to Arrow we were able to do it, because there weren’t any other [DC] shows, so we were able to delve more into the world of Batman and things like that. It’s always our job, when we do it though, to reintroduce them or do our version that is equally evocative. It’s always a little bit of a double-edged sword because you get the familiarity of that character but it also has to work for the show that we’ve created.

IGN: Superman does exist in this world and we’re going to be meeting people that are pretty closely connected to him so do you have to do a balancing act of how much you can reference him without showing him?

Berlanti: We do an episode specifically about why he isn’t here every week because we wanted to take that kind of conversation off the table to a certain extent. But also, I think what we try to do is -- we compared it to Veep when we brought the pitch [for the show] out. At the beginning, you’re sort of like “Where’s the president?” but by episode four or five you don’t even want to see him. That’s the hope, that these character take on a life of their own and have their own show.

Kreisberg: And those characters on the show are representative of the audience, who are all familiar with Superman. I’m surprised by how many people, when I say, “I work on Supergirl”, they don’t even know who she is or don’t even realize they’re cousins. So in a lot of ways, the characters on the show who do know Superman are speaking for the audience and watching them fall in love with her and them side with her, hopefully the audience will follow suit.

Adler: That’s what’s exciting about this character, versus Superman, is that a lot of people know so much about him that we have the privilege of drawing all the best parts of all of her stories and sewing together the one we love best.

IGN: One thing that sets Supergirl apart from Superman, especially in this incarnation, is she did grow up, for a time, on Krypton. She has memories of that. How much will that be evoked? As much as she is a modern girl in our world, she also has that childhood.

Sarah Schechter: I think we’re definitely going to explore that. It’s part of what makes her such a rich character. Also, she spent 13 years not having any powers, just being a totally normal girl on the completely normal planet of Krypton. That makes her strangely more human. Because she has that understanding of what it’s like to walk around without being a chosen one, without having any power. So she has that as an access point. That’s kind of where she first defined who she was. So when she came here at 13 and suddenly had all these powers but was surrounded by people who told her not to be different and that all those things that she has that are unique should be suppressed and she should try and fit in, which is an unfortunately common experience for 13 year olds. There’s a lot of fun in her, at 24, kind of putting it all together, that childhood plus the unique abilities she has on this planet.

Kreisberg: There’s always been flashbacks to Smallville in a lot of Superman iterations. We can have flashbacks to Krypton and we do. We get to see what life was like for her there. For Clark, it’s sad that he lost his world but he didn’t really feel any of that. He grew up in Kansas, an American, and had two parents that loved him. Kara had a world and a life and family and friends and literally all of that exploded in an instant. She’s dealing with that devastation and that loss of her world and the loss of her mother, especially when you see who the villain is of the year and just how present and emotional that is for her. For us, that aspect of her, having come here at age 13 was sort of tantamount to why we wanted to do this show. Because it was so different and it was so rich and was completely unexplored. One of the other things is, because she has knowledge of Krypton, she lived in a an alien world that knew about other aliens and was part of a galactic federation, there’s times where her knowledge of aliens will come in handy helping to fight the escapees. There’s times where she has knowledge she didn’t realize she has.

IGN: When you're doing a show like this, are you always trying to block out the noise? When you’re coming up with a comic book-derived show, you’re going to get the uber fans who are going to be hypercritical and pre-analyzing everything and saying, “is this what I want to see?” At this point, have you guys gotten pretty good at filtering that out?

Adler: I think we want to reach our hands out to people who love comic books and people who don’t yet know them. It’s like an embracing hug to all. “Please come in and sit. There is something for all of you out there.” It’s an action show. It’s a romantic comedy. It’s a genre show. And hopefully we’ll get families in there to enjoy it.

Berlanti: But we respect their opinions and the passion of early fans of any show is so helpful. There’s a responsibility that comes with that and we definitely feel that responsibility when we’re making any decisions. The way we do it though, whether it’s about casting or making a character choice that may be different from the books, or tone or anything, is we have our own group of people we make the show with. In TV, in general, the more you try and please everybody, the less people you please. So if we all just please ourselves and create a Supergirl show that we would all be excited by and we would all want to watch, hopefully that translates to a broader audience. But we expect it. We don’t sequester our minds to it. We’re very aware of what people feel early on and think early. We just hope they give us the benefit of the doubt and really explore the show and give us feedback.

Kreisberg: We’re those uber fans too. We are about these characters. David Nutter, who directed The Flash and Arrow pilots, said the opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy. So, especially with some of the other shows when we see what fans respond to, especially what they don’t respond to, it’s like if they don’t respond to it week in and week out, it means that they’re watching. Sometimes they get their expectations met and sometimes they get their expectations dashed, but it feels like everybody wants to be part of the conversation. So for some of the shade that’s been thrown our way, on this pilot, it still seems like even the people who have misgivings about it are excited about it. That’s always exciting. The worst thing you can do when you put so much time and energy and this much love into something and no one cares.

IGN: You see people say, "It’s only going to be about romance and love triangles” and I’m thinking, “Star Wars had a love triangle, before the whole sister thing, and the Dark Knight had a love triangle.”

Kreisberg: I always say I could cut a similar trailer from the [Richard] Donner Superman and make it look like a romantic comedy. That was one element of the show that they chose to emphasize in the first ads but you could cut together... You’ve seen the pilot.

Adler: And they have [cut together different trailers]. There’s the super action one, there’s the super genre one, there’s the one about love and feelings. We’re obviously trying to bring all those people in. But we won’t run from comedy, laughter, emotions, as much as we don’t run from huge action set pieces. We just love it all.

Kreisberg: We went to a marketing meeting at CBS where they showed us all these different ads and it was like, “This one’s for the action fans and this one is for the romantic comedy fans and this one is for people coming because they have families." What was amazing about all of them was that none of them were a lie. They were all true, because the show has all of those aspects in it and can be all of those different things. Action fans can sit and watch it because the action in it is as good, if not better than anything we’ve ever done, but it also has this amazing sister relationship and it’s a show about mothers and daughters and it’s a workplace comedy.

Adler: With equal passion, we’re going to explore all of those things.

Berlanti: There’s just as much action on this show as there are on any other shows we do. If not more so on some of the episodes.

IGN: Right now, you're not doing any character crossovers with Arrow and The Flash. Having worked on those other shows and used a lot of DC characters, are there still so many DC characters, that it’s never a problem to keep finding more to include because there are so many?

Berlanti: There really are. Especially now that we’ve gone off planet. There’s lots of new things to introduce. Between Supergirl and Superman and all sorts of other characters, we have no shortage at this moment.

IGN: I think a lot of people were impressed with how big The Flash looks and how you didn’t have to hold back on what his power set is. Are you finding the same thing here? You don’t have an unlimited budget, of course, but you’re able to show off what Supergirl can do?

Adler: It’s pretty amazing what she does. I’m blown away when I watch these cuts and as we make these visual effects, they are so incredible. It’s just unbelievable what a crew can do, what our visual effects team does -- it’s truly unbelievable.

Schechter: It helps that Melissa really flies.

IGN:Is there anything you guys can hint to me as far as a big sequence you’re excited for people to see?

Berlanti:The second episode has a bigger fight sequence in it than anything in the pilot. It’s a full on, out and out, super-powered fight. The thing that this show has, that the other shows don’t have is, yes, we have a lot of visual effects, but this is aerial work with the visual effects. So it's this combined, almost Couching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-esque kind of element, and we’re learning a lot about that and how to pull that off on a weekly basis. But it’s really cool.



http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/10/26/ ... -analyzing

- David Harewood sobre Supergirl, Cyborg Superman y el mantenerse fieles a la fuente del material (comicbook):

David Harewood sobre Supergirl, Cyborg Superman y el mantenerse fieles a la fuente del material
Por Russ Burlingame - 26/10/2015

After early screenings at both Comic Con International: San Diego and New York Comic Con -- plus a leaked copy of the pilot showing up online -- Supergirl finally flies into living rooms around the country tonight on a wave of excitement and high expectations.

The series, from executive producers Andrew Kreisberg and Greg Berlanti of Arrow and The Flash fame, brings together Glee veteran Melissa Benoist with Grey's Anatomy veteran Chyler Leigh, Ally McBeal star Calista Flockhart and a talented ensemble cast who have the responsibility of adapting one of the most recognizable female characters in comics -- and doing so in a way that differentiates itself from Superman, the character's even-more-famous cousin.

During Comic Con International, ComicBook.com sat down for a roundtable conversation with David Harewood, who plays DEO Director Hank Henshaw in the series. He's still a far cry from his comic book counterpart, who currently is appearing in Superman: Lois and Clark, but that doesn't mean Harewood hasn't thought about it...!

Hank Henshaw is a character who has a lot of backstory in the comics. How much research did you do for the script?

Well, being an actor in the 21st Century is so awesome because you can just tap things into Google and just see what comes up. So I've been doing a lot of reading on his backstory, his mythology and he's an interesting character. The thing I like most is, he's indestructible. And in the last two shows, I've been blown up, so I'm kind of looking forward to recovering from that, you know?

Since there is such a wealth of source material, is it more pressure to bring that to life, or is it just a gift as an actor to have all of that to go on?

I think it's more of a gift, becuase there's so much to draw on. I think the more reading you do, it just adds to the layers and colors you can put into the character. I think it's important that you don't fix anything, or you don't necessarily read one thing and say "Oh, I must bring that into this show," because what's wonderful about our show is that it's very new, very modern, and it's a new interpretation of the Supergirl mythology.

I think we're going to be trying to work in all these new angles and hopefully fans of the comic book won't be too disappointed. I think they're going to be really excited about things that we're set to bring out.

So when you land a part in a show like this, are you a little disappointed to find out you're going to be one of the people who doubts the hero right off the bat?

Well, that's what's exciting because you have to find out why! Everybody else is going to go "it's Supergirl!" and get really excited about it, but there's this one guy who has a real problem with her. And it really struck me from the script, and then when I watched the pilot, I'm like, "I hardly smile at this girl. She's the hero, she's got super-powers. Why am I not rushing to welcome her to the DEO?"

And that's going to be interesting to play that and to find out why he's got a huge problem with aliens and people from another planet. I have heard some things in the last couple of days which could be really exciting to play. That's not a problem for me, that's a real encouragement.

People will watch the show and see Hank Henshaw and put it into Google.

I'm sure that people will Google or read the comic books and say "Oh, I didn't think it was going to be like this." It's impossible, I think, to completely 100% stick to what you read. Then it's not original.

Hopefully we can keep an essence of that Hank Henshaw but make him very fresh, very new, and I'm certainly going to embody a lot of that essence. In the comic books, he's very revengeful and has a deep, deep loathing for Superman. I'm hoping to bring elements of that in, but if I can keep it original and still bring the Hank Henshaw fans with me, I think I will have succeeded in doing my job.

I think there's often a temptation to make aliens a metaphor for LGBT, or people of color, or other "outsider" and oppressed groups. Do you think it's an interesting creative choice to have the biggest person who's on her case be a person of color?

You'd have to ask that to the producers. I'm just, as an actor, happy to play a character who's so layered and has such a trajectory. I don't really worry about those kind of things.

I certainly think that the word "aliens," particularly in Europe, has got massive connotations, and I think that's really interesting, but again, I think the people who protest the most, what have they got to fear about this sense of otherness? And when you unpack that, sometimes you get some really interesting answers, so it's going to be very interesting to unpack Hank's history and I think you're going to be in for a very big surprise.


http://comicbook.com/2015/10/26/david-h ... g-to-the-/

- Chyler Leigh sobre Supergirl: "Literalmente me pellizqué a mí misma no puedo decirte cuántas veces" (comicbook):

Chyler Leigh sobre Supergirl: "Literalmente me pellizqué a mí misma no puedo decirte cuántas veces"
Por Russ Burlingame 26/10/2015

After early screenings at both Comic Con International: San Diego and New York Comic Con -- plus a leaked copy of the pilot showing up online -- Supergirl finally flies into living rooms around the country tonight on a wave of excitement and high expectations.

The series, from executive producers Andrew Kreisberg and Greg Berlanti of Arrow and The Flash fame, brings together Glee veteran Melissa Benoist with Grey's Anatomy veteran Chyler Leigh, Ally McBeal star Calista Flockhart and a talented ensemble cast who have the responsibility of adapting one of the most recognizable female characters in comics -- and doing so in a way that differentiates itself from Superman, the character's even-more-famous cousin.

During Comic Con International, ComicBook.com sat down for a roundtable conversation with Leigh, who plays Supergirl's sister Alexis. Many comic book fans smelled something rotten in Denmark with that name, given a certain bald-headed villain's prevalence in the Superman mythology...but Leigh -- whose character is rescued from a crashing airplane during Supergirl's first public appearance -- played Dr. Lexie Gray on Gray's Anatomy for several years...a character who died in a plane crash. So there are plenty of parallels to be drawn...!

So how has it been so far with everybody assuming that the name "Lex" means very bad things?

Ha-ha. Well, it's kind of funny becuase there is a plane crash -- well, an almost plane crash -- in the pilot and just from a personal standpoint, a lot of people were very upset when they found out I was in a plane again. But I lived, so that's great! But yeah, it's very funny for me, it's very ironic that my character's name is Alexandra again, and she's kind of a doctor-scientist and a sister. But you know what? I'm really excited that this is Supergirl.

Well, if it helps you at all, I didn't have that thought. I was thinking Lex Luthor.

Yeah. I thought of that once I started talking. I was like "That's not what he meant!" But I decided to just go ahead with it. But I'm Alex, so maybe that helps.

It's very female-centric in the pilot, and I imagine that continues through the series. Can you talk a little bit about that experience?

Absolutely. It was a very big part of why I was so excited to be a part of this. I have daughters; I have an eight-year-old and a six-year-old daughter, and there's not a lot to look up to from the industry standpoint; there's not a whole lot.

And so for them to see a character like this, a girl that is as herself and not necessarily in the Supergirl part but as Kara -- she's flawed, you know? And she's working and she's trying to figure out who she is and she's still growing up and she's got all these things that are seemingly against her but she's figuring it out. And that it's okay to put yourself out like that and to be comfortable as who you are, it gives my girls a lot to look up to and I appreciate that tremendously. And we're having a blast with it.

How has the response to Supergirl been?

The fans are incredible; they know what they know and they love what they love and it's so cool to be a part of something like this. I literally pinched myself I can't even tell you how many times just being on set, going, "Okay, it's a superhero show."

And the first time seeing Melissa come out in her costume, the hair on my arms stood on end. It was just this really cool moment. She just walked out with her shoulders back and she just owned it and it was so cool. It was so great; she's doing amazing.

http://comicbook.com/2015/10/26/chyler- ... supergirl/

- Melissa Benoist y los productores sobre el fortalecimiento de las mujeres, dentro y fuera de la pantalla (Variety):

Melissa Benoist y los productores sobre el fortalecimiento de las mujeres, dentro y fuera de la pantalla
Por Laura Prudom 26 Oct, 2015

“Supergirl” takes flight on CBS Monday night, and for executive producers Greg Berlanti, Ali Adler, Andrew Kreisberg and Sarah Schechter, one of the most thrilling aspects of the premiere is the opportunity to introduce the world to a super-powered side of “Glee” star Melissa Benoist, who carries the show with effortless charisma even when her alter-ego, Kara, is hiding her abilities as a mild-mannered assistant to media mogul Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart).

“When we first saw her, she was exactly who we saw in our heads and our hearts … and then we had to go through this extensive process of seeing other people and being in love with someone already,” Adler recalls. “You start knowing her in your head and you start writing to her, and she’s just a tremendous soul and we’re so excited to bring her to everyone.”

“She’s incredibly likable and we talk a lot about Annie Hall as a reference, but when she puts on Colleen Atwood’s costume… it’s the way she holds herself,” Schechter says of their star. “It’s really something to behold to see her become that hero, and the way people respond to her, and to see her with kids whenever she meets them. She has that heroic quality and I think it comes from a really positive place. I think she takes the responsibility very seriously, just like Kara does.”

Kreisberg, who has plenty of experience with seeing actors realize their heroic potential given his work on The CW’s “Arrow” and “The Flash,” compares Benoist’s effortless ascent to that of one of his other stars, “Flash” leading man Grant Gustin. “It reminds me of Grant — we’ll talk a lot about what Grant was going through as an actor: becoming the lead of his own show and dealing with the workload and the press was in some ways analogous to what [his character] Barry was going through, and Melissa feels the same way. It’s the middle of the night and it’s dark and it’s wet and everybody’s upset and then you’ll hear these gales of laughter from somewhere and you’ll turn and it’s her and she’s laughing with somebody in the crew. She really is that hope and that brightness – she makes you want to be better.”

Benoist — who worked with Gustin on “Glee” — admits that she hasn’t had much of a chance to ask “The Flash” star for any heroic wisdom, since their paths rarely cross outside conventions. “I think every time we see each other we’re just like ‘this is crazy!’ It’s hard not to be in awe of it, especially when our generation grew up with these incredible movies that were action movies with a lot of heart and this wonderful acting in it, ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Star Wars'” she notes. “It still feels surreal. There are days I walk around on set and I’m just like ‘this is magic moviemaking; this is what I dreamed about doing.'”

Benoist has had the opportunity to meet many fans since securing the role, and her experience surprising a group of moms and daughters at a preview screening still stands out for her. “That was kind of astounding — it was a really strange, wonderful feeling,” she recalls. “It made me step back and assess the weight of this project and how young girls are going to [respond]… they did exactly what I wanted them to do. I was so nervous, like, ‘what if they’re all bored, what if this is just a dud?’ And they were so into it, it was overwhelming, the response. If someone like Carrie Fisher had shown up at my house when I was a kid, or any of the ‘Indiana Jones’ girls… I would’ve freaked out.”

One of the most satisfying aspects of the series for Benoist and the producers is the level of female empowerment both in front of the cameras and behind the scenes.

“We have the most gender-balanced room I’ve had the privilege of being in,” Adler says. “It’s ethnically diverse; it’s a really lovely, talented room.”

Schechter agrees, “When you have people of different backgrounds, they have a different perspective on life and characters and drama, and all of that makes for much richer scripts and makes them much more real.”

“Supergirl” has also hired a number of female directors, including Karen Gaviola and Jamie Babbit, and Benoist says she can feel the difference when a woman is at the helm. “There’s definitely a different energy and I feel it even when I’m learning stunts. I think women talk to each other differently; we understand each other in a way that men don’t, and there’s a patience and a communication that’s different.”

Berlanti admits equality and diversity are a company-wide goal for every show that emerges from his production shingle. “Across all the shows, we just try to do better with that every year — and the more female directors we hire for this kind of stuff, the more experience they have, the more hirable they are for this kind of show elsewhere, too, so it’s ultimately beneficial to us.”

On-screen, Kara is defined not by her romantic relationships, but by her own journey of self-discovery and her connections with other women, from demanding boss Cat Grant — who teaches Kara “how to wear power well, how to handle it in a graceful way and in a way that people will actually take seriously,” per Benoist — to her adopted sister Alex (Chyler Leigh).

“There’s always an emotional truth to these things that feels like the best stuff; on ‘Flash’ it’s those scenes between Barry and Joe [Jesse L. Martin] that are so great, and on this show, there are these great sisterly scenes where they’re being two normal sisters, two girls sitting in their apartment eating Chinese food and talking about their day and their frustrations and their hopes, and it doesn’t matter that it’s about superheroes,” Kreisberg says. “Finding that stuff is always great, because all of us can write people flying around and fighting giant robots all day long. That stuff is always hard to come up with, that creativity, but the real truth of the show and many of the shows we work on is about the emotional truth, and what these characters are going through and how the people in their lives impact them.”

Benoist agrees, “I think [the relationship between Kara and Alex] is what the show is about. These girls have a lot of history, they have a lot of love, they have a lot of… I don’t know what the right word is, because it’s not as negative as ‘animosity.’ There’s just competition and tension, but it’s a sisterhood, and it’s women helping each other, and making each other better.”

The series will also introduce Jenna Dewan Tatum as Lucy Lane, who has a history with James “Jimmy” Olsen (Mehcad Brooks) — CatCo’s new art director who also has undeniable and simmering chemistry with Kara. “One of the things Jenna really responded to – she has a daughter, so the idea of the diversity and positivity and complexity of the female characters on the show is really attractive to her,” says Schechter. “And the other thing she was happy to hear was something we all feel strongly about, which is that we’re not creating a love triangle where she’s mean to Kara. It’s too easy, that’s sort of a cheat — she wants to be friends with Kara too, and I think that’s part of what’s so interesting about this world, is how multidimensional all the characters are.”

“There is feminine support – there’s not a lot of girls pitted against each other,” Benoist concurs. “They challenge each other, especially with Cat Grant … Kara’s very subservient to her and Cat’s not always the nicest to her, but it’s for a reason — she knows she’s capable of more.”

While many fans are fixated on whether the super-powered series could ever cross over with the other DC Comics shows that are also executive produced by Berlanti and Kreisberg (The CW’s “Arrow,” “The Flash” and upcoming “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow”), for the producers, it doesn’t make much sense.

“[Fox’s] ‘Gotham’ exists in its own universe separate from what we call the ‘Arrow’-verse, and ‘Supergirl’ is separate from those too,” Kreisberg confirms. “It would be weird to suddenly make ‘Supergirl’ part of the ‘Arrow’-verse because in ‘Supergirl’ we state that there’s been a Superman for a long time. It’s also important that ‘Supergirl’ be its own show, because it deserves it and it’s not a spinoff. ‘Supergirl’ should be a show that other shows get spun off from.”

There are other aspects of the series that don’t necessarily fit with the more grounded heroics of “Arrow” or the metahuman threats of “The Flash,” Kreisberg points out. “We’ve never really gotten to do aliens before, and this show has opened us up to aliens, not just who are associated with Superman, but across the DC Comics board.”

Ultimately, the show is about the search for identity, and allowing Kara to grow into herself as a person, as well as a superhero. According to Benoist, “I’ve realized recently that she’s constantly questioning herself, constantly questioning the kind of hero she wants to be and what she wants to do, the kind of mark she wants to make on the world. I think she really overestimates her abilities at this point because they’re not sharp; she’s a very dull blade right now. But I love that about her – I love that she’s running into walls now and then and charging at things like a rhino and being like ‘wait a second, I’ve got to take a step back and maybe do things a little differently.’ That’s what I’m figuring out right now.”

That voyage of self discovery is part of the reason why Kara’s famous cousin will remain largely offscreen, says Kreisberg. “One of the central tenets is that we all compare ourselves to somebody — there’s always somebody out there, whether it’s a boss or a friend or sibling, who is doing better than you — and this desire, ‘if I only had their life, things would be better.’ And the show is really sprung from that notion. Greg has cited Ginger Rogers having to dance backwards and in heels. I remember Greg saying early on, before I was even involved, the show is about him being out there and how is she finding her own way.”

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/supergi ... 201626411/

- Greg Berlanti sobre 'Supergirl': 'La gente quiere una superheroína' (Rollingstone):

Greg Berlanti sobre 'Supergirl': 'La gente quiere una superheroína'
Por Brian Hiatt 26 Oct, 2015

Debuting October 26th on CBS, Supergirl is the first bona fide female superhero show to hit primetime TV since Wonder Woman went off the air in 1979. (No, Buffy doesn't quite count) So showrunner Greg Berlanti felt a considerable responsibility to make it fly. It helps, of course, that Melissa Benoist, formerly of Glee, is an effervescent, unexpectedly amusing presence as Superman's cousin, Kara Zor-El – think Annie Hall in a cape.

Berlanti mastered teen-friendly humanistic drama as a writer for Dawson's Creek (where both Chris Pratt and Emily VanCamp got their starts) and the creator of Everwood, and later became DC Comics' go-to TV guy with the CW hits Arrow and The Flash – the latter show's bright, anti-Man of Steel tone in particular seems to be a model for Supergirl. Berlanti took a break from his various writers' rooms long enough to explain how this new show came together.

How did your connection with DC Comics begin?
Green Lantern: I pitched them a bunch of stories, [for] a series of films for Green Lantern, and they liked that very much. I wrote a draft with one of the writers that I do Arrow with, Mark Guggenheim, and another writer that has since gone off to do a bunch of other super hero stuff, named Michael Green — all three worked on it together. It was subsequently re-written and what they used for the movie was different than our version, but from there I developed a relationship with DC. So when I came back to my deal here at Warner Brothers four or five years ago, they said, "Which of the characters do you think would make a good TV show?" And I said, "I'd like to do an origin story of Green Arrow." It unfurled from there.

To what extent did you grow up as a DC fan?
I was a DC fan; The Flash was always my favorite character. He was sort of the most average guy amongst all of these icons, even though he had super speed, you know? And he sort of felt the way I did about those other people, like, "Wow! Isn't it really cool to hang out with Superman and Batman?"

When you were working on Everwood, and before that, Dawson's Creek, were you itching to get at some genre stuff?
We did a show at the time called Jack and Bobby, and a lot of writers on that liked comic books. In a way, that show was an origin story of the president; I was realizing, "Oh, I like to use heart and emotion, but put it into these kind of stories, and I'd love to return to my roots." So I went and met on a bunch of those films that everybody was trying to get off the ground at the time — before there was, you know, the super hero-palooza that's happening now.

How did Supergirl appear on your radar?
We had a general state of the union meeting with the studio, and mentioned a couple of other DC properties. Susan Rovner, who's the executive vice president and president of Warner Horizon Scripted Television, just kept saying, "Supergirl, Supergirl, Supergirl — how would you do it?" I said, "Well, I wouldn't do it small, and I wouldn't do it just for young people. I would try to do it for everyone." That "S" was the most famous letter in the superhero alphabet, you know?

In my mind, it had a lot of possibility to be a big, broad show. So we added the workplace element and the adult sibling relationships. We made her not 17 but 24, and really just took a lot of the Superman/Supergirl mythology and lore, and put it into a show – what we thought would work for today's audience.

How did you feel when you saw the Black Widow parody on Saturday Night Live, which might have superficially resembled where you were going?
I always laugh because we specifically constructed a story where we paid no attention to gender. You could cut a version of The Flash trailer that was the same thing [as the SNL sketch]. One thing I kind of got from watching the spoof was: People want a female superhero. I hear it even more than I thought I would have. So there's going to be a lot of talk about, are we focusing too much on romance or not enough on action? Or whatever, because it's a woman. But the truth is we have just as much action in this show, if not more, than we have on any of our male superhero shows. It's an action show that happens to have a female lead.

As with The Flash, you seem to be pushing the possibilities of movie-style visual effects on TV.
With a lot of preplanning — and blood, sweat, and tears — you can do it. Armen Kevorkian is our visual effects supervisor across all the shows, and we have a system in place where we start talking about the sequences months in advance – even before we write the episodes sometimes. We built Grodd [The Flash's talking CGI gorilla] for an entire year, and we have a character like that we're building for Supergirl that we're starting well in advance? I mean, that plane sequence in the pilot? We worked on that months before we had our Kara locked down.

Before you even cast Melissa, how did you get a sense who this person was?
We just sat in a room and talked a lot about what would be Kara's journey, what would we like to see her struggling with over the course of the season and the series. I think one of the real essential things that we boiled down is that she knew and remembered what Krypton was like. She was there. She lost the whole planet. The other thing that really came up a lot that was the idea that young women feel as though they have to hide some part of themselves in the world. Why can't they be as encouraged as young boys are to be everything that they can be? To be strong?

And we knew we wanted to have someone that really represented Supergirl very much in the same way that Christopher Reeve represented Superman to us back in the day. The original Richard Donner Superman films were a touchstone for us – this sense of optimism and hope, that you could have a hero with a smile and charm without necessarily that meaning the show had to feel soft or that there weren't stakes.

Seeing Melissa interact with Girl Scouts, you must have realized…
What it means to people, yeah. That's probably also why we feel even more pressure, and that there's going to be a certain amount of scrutiny. But when we decide what Kara's going to do, or when she gets punched or punches back, it's the same as Arrow or Flash. We don't change it, we don't switch it based on gender ever. And it's going to be just as rewarding when dads come up and tell me that they watch Supergirl with their sons and that they're just as excited by it as when they watch The Flash.

Melissa did say she went through 10 auditions.
That's quite possible [laughs]. I think there was a real vetting process on everybody's part, because the most important thing on a show like this is the actress playing it. But since we called her and said, "You got the part," everyone's been like, "Oh my god, thank God we all made that decision." During her first audition, I just found myself giggling uncontrollably. And that's how I still feel about Melissa when I watch her perform; it just makes me smile, you know.

How did you get the idea of having Superman as a sort off-stage presence?
Thank god for a show like Veep because in the pitches, we told everybody, yeah, it's just like Veep right? You know, where's the president? You realize you're more interested in her story. But Supergirl existed in the universe where Superman existed, so we wanted to honor that.

And why Jimmy Olsen as a potential love interest?
We like that he invokes Superman in his own way. If Jimmy Olsen ever grew up, well, of course he'd grow up to be like Clark Kent — the same kindness, same heart, and same affability, but the same strength too.

In your mind, is this its own universe, unconnected to anything else?
Right now it has to be. In our heads, we're not going to connect the movies, because our Superman has done different things than what's been established in the films, so we're not thinking about it that way. In terms of Arrow and Flash...you know, we've never mentioned that there was a Superman in that world. And obviously he exists on this show so, I don't know. We'd kind of figure ways to get around that. It's very much it's own universe.

How do you make sure you don't fall into the monster-of-the-week trap?
We do have close-ended stories based around villains. There are ongoing mythologies weaved through. And then sometimes, yeah, there's going to be the monster-of-the-week case and I do think that that helps in terms of people being able to jump in as viewers. But the bigger overarching stories for the characters – their own personal mythologies and the mythologies of the universe that we're building – are ultimately the things that interest people the most.


http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/features ... 026?page=3

- Melissa Benoist de ‘Supergirl’ es terrible en los deportes (zap2it):

Melissa Benoist de ‘Supergirl’ es terrible en los deportes
Por Jay Bobbin 26 Oct, 2015

Back in the day, CBS was the home of “The Incredible Hulk” and the original version of “The Flash.”

It’s been a while, but the network now driven largely by crime procedurals is welcoming another superhero … or, more accurately, a super heroine.

“Supergirl” lands Monday (Oct. 26), with “Glee” alum Melissa Benoist in the plum part of the Man of Steel’s cousin from Krypton, also known as Kara Zor-El or (in her earthly life) Kara Danvers. The character also fueled a 1984 movie starring Helen Slater; in a nice move, that actress will recur as Supergirl’s adoptive mother, with former television “Superman” Dean Cain as Dad.

“I auditioned the day after Halloween last year,” Benoist tells Zap2it of her initial brush with the much-pursued title role, “and it was a Saturday morning. And I think the second that I saw in my email inbox the title ‘Supergirl,’ I just knew automatically that it was something important and it was something exciting and rare that I wanted to be a part of.”

Still, Benoist notes she’s been undergoing a considerable physical education for the part. “I’m terrible at sports,” she allows. “I’m not coordinated in that way. I would have moments where I felt confident and where I felt strong and brave and like I could do anything. But then, like everyone else, I have really, really awkward horribly awkward — moments.”

Also in the impressive “Supergirl” cast: Calista Flockhart (“Ally McBeal”) as Kara’s high-powered media-mogul boss, Cat Grant, who also employs former Daily Planet photographer James Olsen (Mehcad Brooks); Jeremy Jordan (“Smash”) as a tech-expert co-worker and confidant; Chyler Leigh (“Grey’s Anatomy”) as Kara’s foster sibling, Alex Danvers; Jenna Dewan Tatum (“Witches of East End”) as Lois Lane’s sister Lucy; Laura Benanti (“Nashville”) as Kara’s birth mother; Peter Facinelli (“Twilight”) as the enigmatic Maxwell Lord; and David Harewood (“Homeland”) as an ex-CIA man with a keen interest in Kara.

If “Supergirl” seems more suited to sister network The CW, where its executive producers Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg have the current version of “The Flash” and “Arrow” (plus the forthcoming “Legends of Tomorrow”), soon-to-exit CBS Entertainment chief Nina Tassler says she was sold from the start on acquiring it: “The journey that they were taking the character on, we felt, just spoke to sort of where today’s generation is.

“We also really responded to the fact that it had a very broad appeal,” Tassler adds, “so we felt that we could have genre fans, but we also felt the relationship of this young woman to the people at work … it was a great workplace comedy. And, more importantly, we thought that this was a genre and this was a franchise that would certainly open up and bring in new viewers.”

Benoist instantly becomes one of the new television season’s most prominent stars, a position Flockhart knows more than a bit about from her “McBeal” days. However, not a lot of advice is being shared there, apparently.

“She knows what she’s doing,” Flockhart says of Benoist. “She’s very confident. I have a little bit of insight, I guess, that I could probably provide for her — but she’s got it all together. She’s got it going on.”


http://zap2it.com/2015/10/melissa-benoi ... ordinated/

[Shelby]

- Stills oficiales del 1.03 "Fight or Flight":

[Shelby]

- Who is Supergirl: Video History "Her rich Story and Origins" (DC All Access):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzFO_a9KUmU
http://www.supergirl.tv/who-is-supergirl-video-history



- Supergirl "Tonight" Promo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zRKLVIEqXI

[Shelby]

- Melissa Benoist interview w/ Glamour Magazine:

http://video.glamour.com/watch/all-thin ... sa-benoist

[Shelby]

- Behind the scenes, quick tour of the DEO set with @MehcadBrooks! (23-10-15):

https://amp.twimg.com/v/b1fc7a6e-7647-4 ... 56dd265155

[Shelby]

- Supergirl "Find Out What fuels Supergirl into Flight":

https://vimeo.com/143378293


- Supergirl "Get to know Supergirl´s boss, Cat Grant":

https://vimeo.com/143382444



- SUPERGIRL 1.01 "Pilot" Clips:

http://www.spoilertv.com/2015/10/superg ... peeks.html?

[Shelby]

- Melissa Benoist On Stepping Into The Role Of 'Supergirl' (accesshollywood):

http://bcove.me/3uvv4dr4


- Jenna Dewan Tatum On Lucy Lane's Role In 'Supergirl' (accesshollywood):

http://bcove.me/dbvgnzjx


- David Harewood Hints At What's Ahead On CBS' 'Supergirl' (accesshollywood):

http://bcove.me/84vs24a3


- 'Supergirl': Why Mehcad Brooks Felt Pressure Playing James Olsen (accesshollywood):

http://bcove.me/r8glz2vb


- Peter Facinelli Describes Character Maxwell Lord In 'Supergirl' (accesshollywood):

http://bcove.me/n2pzqw55

[Shelby]

- US Military Families Treated to Special "Supergirl" Screening:

https://www.facebook.com/myAFN/videos/1084504854923200/

[Shelby]

- Melissa Benoist Interview on "CBS This Morning" (26-10-15):

[Shelby]

- Supergirl’s Cast talk with DC All Access (bts vid):

[Shelby]

- Behind the scenes at the DEO set with @David Harewood (26-10-15):

https://instagram.com/p/9T33vKCc7_/
https://instagram.com/p/9UMJZJic25/
https://instagram.com/p/9UN3-WCc62/


- Supergirl "Premieres Tonight" Promo:

https://amp.twimg.com/v/676cdfdb-780c-4 ... 1e396a7f58



- Melissa Benoist is excited for you to see the premiere tonight:

https://twitter.com/warnerbrostv/status ... 0806732800

[Shelby]

- El actor Henry Czerny escogido como 'Toyman' en "Supergirl":

El actor de "Mission: Impossible" y "Revenge" Henry Czerny se unirá al alenco de "Supergirl" como el papel invitado del conocido villano de DC Comics 'Winslow Schott aka Toyman'.

Por el momento, Czerny tan sólo ha firmado por un episodio, así es que no se sabe si volverá a aparecer en la serie o no.

En lo cómics, el personaje ha pasado por una serie de versiones a través de los añoa, con la última versión escrita por Geoff Johns la cual intentó hacer una amalgama de todas las versiones anteriores.

En la serie, "Winslow Schott, Sr. es un clásico supervillano de DC, un genio y loco criminal conocido como Toyman – y el padre separado de Winn. Toyman convierte juguetes en armas para sembrar la destrucción y venganza pero está movido al final por una sola cosas . el deseo obsesivo de reunirse con su amado hijo."


http://comicbook.com/2015/10/26/exclusi ... supergirl/

[Shelby]

- SUPERGIRL | "What can you expect this season" Extended Promo [HD] | CBS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xabJrkVBrAU



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