‘Smallville’ at 25: Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum on Clark Kent and Lex Luthor’s Origin Story, the Journey to Superman and That Final Moment

A little more than 25 years ago, on Oct. 16, 2021, “Smallville” premiered on The WB. Created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and based on the DC Comics character, the show set out to do something that’s now common practice but was then novel: tell the origin story of an iconic character, enriching the character’s mythology along the way. On the show, an immediate hit for the network, Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum played, respectively, a high-school-aged Clark Kent and his eventual nemesis Lex Luthor in the fictional town of Smallville, Kansas. One of the inventions of “Smallville” is that Clark (who yearns to be ordinary) and Lex (who lives under the thumb of his controlling zillionaire father) are, for a time, best friends, before the inevitable happens, as Lex succumbs to his darker instincts.

“I felt like I had the liberty to just do what I wanted to do, and be real, and grounded,” Rosenbaum said in a recent interview. “I mean, seeing Lex and Clark as friends — and then obviously we know what happens with the relationship, but I thought it was really fascinating. It had never been done.”

As opposed to their characters, Welling and Rosenbaum remain close: They host a “Smallville” rewatch podcast called “TalkVille,” and the night before they came to the Variety office, Welling, who doesn’t live in Los Angeles, had stayed at Rosenbaum’s house. They’ve been celebrating the show’s 25th anniversary, and in their most extensive conversation together about the show’s legacy, they filmed a “How Well Do They Know Each Other?” video, answering questions about one another and about “Smallville.”

During the game, they flopped on things like the show’s premiere date (somehow, Welling’s first answer was Oct. 14, 1992, before he switched it to that same date in 2002) and its ratings, which broke records for The WB. The correct answer was that 8.4 million total viewers tuned in live, but Rosenbaum wrote “12 million, Beeyotch,” and Welling wrote “1 trillion,” then trying to explain by saying, “Well, I mean, worldwide.” Rosenbaum harangued him. “You know how much a trillion is? A trillion is like, a lot of billions,” he said. “Dude, if we had those ratings, we’d still be on the air. Good lord.”

As they reminisced, they talked about the guest stars who’d appeared on “Smallville” over its 10 seasons, some already well known, others new to the business. One of them, in a loving tribute to Superman’s long history, was Christopher Reeve, who appeared twice on the show as billionaire scientist Dr. Virgil Swann, Clark’s mentor. Well before superhero movies became ubiquitous, Reeve had his breakthrough role as Clark Kent in the 1978 “Superman” film, a blockbuster, and played him three more times in its sequels. In 1995, however, Reeve, a competitive equestrian, had a devastating accident, breaking his spine while riding, and becoming paralyzed for the rest of his life. (He died in 2004.)

Welling said he’d filmed the scenes with Reeve in New York, and they bonded. “We talked a lot about what it meant to play the character,” he said. “He said he was really happy that they chose me to play the role, which I thought was cool.”

The “Smallville” production wanted to make things easy for Reeve, Welling said, with him filming his part of the scene and then leaving. “But he wanted to stay for my coverage, where they filmed me speaking — I mean, he totally didn’t need to do that,” Welling said. “We laughed a lot; he was very funny, and it got to the point where he was being told to leave. And he wouldn’t leave! His nurse was like, ‘If you don’t leave, I’m going to call the police, and I’m going to take you out of here.’ And he turned to me, and he goes, ‘They’re always telling me what to do,’ which is really funny, just considering the whole situation.”

In “Smallville” lore, Clark landed on Earth as a toddler from the planet Krypton during a meteor shower that took a toll on the town, and he had super-strength, super-speed, X-ray vision, and was growing into all the abilities we associate with the character of Superman. The meteor rocks also infected Smallville and its population, which gave the show its engine for the case-of-the week format of its early seasons — and brought in a lot of guest stars, one of whom was Amy Adams in Season 1.

Welling picked Brian Austin Green as his favorite (“because I watched ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’”), and Rosenbaum selected Adams “because it’s memorable and she became a big movie star, and she was really cool,” writing her name in cursive on the game’s whiteboard. “That’s respect,” Welling told Rosenbaum. “You’re an elegant man, Michael.”

“TalkVille” has re-familiarized them with the show, so they had no problem remembering Adams’ episode. “‘Crave’ — she was a girl who craved to get thinner, right?” Rosenbaum asked. Welling replied, “She took kryptonite to get skinnier. And she took it too far.” Rosenbaum: “Yeah. She devoured people.”

As the show’s central character, Welling appeared in every episode of “Smallville.” But Rosenbaum left after Season 7, following a contract dispute with Warner Bros. Television, the show’s producer. “I mean, do I get into it?” Rosenbaum wondered, looking to Welling, who then backed him up. “There’s a point in the show where the actor’s contract comes up for renewal, and the idea is that, based on the success of the show, the contract will be increased,” Welling said. “And that wasn’t happening.”

Rosenbaum said he was already itching to do other things when the impasse occurred. “It was like, ‘Hey, we want you to come back for three years — we want you to sign a three-year deal, and give you no increase in pay,’” he recalled. “And anybody who works in any business, it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m an integral part of this show, or this business,’ or whether you work at Kmart or whatever. And you’re like, ‘I’m part of the success, and don’t I need to get rewarded?’ So I said, ‘Yeah, no thanks.’ And that was it.”

Rosenbaum did return for the “Smallville” series finale, though, which aired on May 11, 2011 — with a full head of hair they had to cover with a bald cap. (He shaved his head to play Lex for the seven seasons he was on the show.) He’d called the then-showrunners Brian Peterson and Kelly Souders (Gough and Millar had also left after the seventh season) to say he wanted to come back one last time. Rosenbaum remembered thinking to himself, “You should come back and wrap it up for the fans — I think the fans will love it. And I didn’t realize how much I would love it, and I’m glad I did it.”

Lex was a last-minute addition, and they had Rosenbaum for only one day, so Peterson and Souders had to scramble to explain where Lex had been for all those years, filming one last scene in the Luthor Mansion. (Additionally, in a flash-forward, Lex becomes president, portending ominous showdowns between Lex and Clark far in the future.) For Rosenbaum, it was an emotional return. “I was in the makeup trailer with Natalie, our makeup artist, who was like a mother to me,” he said. “I go, ‘All right, well, that’s it!” And I gave her a hug, and I just go, ‘Oh man. Oh, shoot. Here I go!’ I just started crying, and she cried, and we hugged it out, and that was it. It was bittersweet.”

Throughout “Smallville,” Gough and Millar had a “no flights, no tights” ethos about the character, which Welling felt so strongly about that he had it in his contract. “We toed the line a few times, don’t get me wrong, but they couldn’t do it without me saying, ‘All right, this one will be all right.’”

But in the finale’s last shot, after he’s been alerted to yet another crisis, Clark bounds up to the Daily Planet rooftop. As he prepares to take off, he rips open his shirt — revealing the classic imagery of the Superman suit.

Welling remembers it well. “We didn’t even do a rehearsal on it, because we didn’t want anyone to see it if it wasn’t right,” he said. He’d wanted assurance that there wouldn’t be a full suit, and the head of wardrobe told him, “No, no, no — it’s too expensive.”

“We got to set that day, and they had given me just a T-shirt, with no sleeves to wear underneath the shirt. Because they didn’t have the money to put the suit on, and they weren’t going to see it anyway.” Welling had been inspired by the conclusion of Kiefer Sutherland’s “24,” when Jack Bauer goes on the run and says his final goodbyes to his closest colleagues. Welling pitched that idea to the writers, he said, because he liked the idea of it as an ending to Clark’s story. “We can’t go with him,” Welling said. “But he’s out there.”

As they reflected on “Smallville,” both Welling and Rosenbaum said they wished they’d appreciated it more at the time. “You’re on a hit show, and you’re doing all these things,” Rosenbaum said. “And sometimes you should really enjoy it, and embrace it. And I did; I think we both did. But if I could go back and do it again, I would’ve just been like, ‘Remember, this is fun. We’re getting paid to do this!'”

Welling feels the same way. “I didn’t really have anybody who I knew to be like, ‘Hey buddy, you know this is cool, right?’”

On Rosenbaum’s popular podcast “Inside of You,” “we talk about mental health, facing adversity, loss, all those things,” he said. He thinks a number of its listeners are “Smallville” fans. “The fans have stood by me, I think, for almost everything we do,” he said, crediting Gough and Millar — who’ve gone on to, among other projects, create “Wednesday” for Netflix – for how good the show was, and for creating the “family atmosphere” among the cast and crew. “Al and Miles,” Rosenbaum said, “it came down to them, and they chose us.”

“I mean, we’re lucky,” he added. “People are like, ‘Well, do you think you’ll ever do anything as big as “Smallville?”’ I’m like, ‘Probably not!’”

“But we were on one of the biggest shows ever, and isn’t that enough? It’s always, ‘What’s next? What are you doing?’ It’s like, ‘Hey dude, I’m content. I’m happy. And we kicked some ass for a while.”