As Berlanti Productions and the Supergirl team continue work on Season 3, your intrepid writers here at TVoM have found some interesting casting notes to bring you, our readers. There’s a recasting notice, as Laura Benanti vacates the role Allura and Erica Durance takes her on. Series regular Dave Harewood commented on the one-dimensional nature of his villain role, ‘Cyborg Superman.’ And lastly, congratulations go out to recurring cast member Sharon Leal (Miss Martian) who signed with CBS Series Instinct as a series regular.
Allura
Laura Benanti portrayed both Supergirl’s biological mother Allura Zor-El, a Kryptonian Judge, and her twin sister, season 1 prime villain Kryptonian General Astra, on Supergirl. Ms Bentani vacated the role of Allura last week and producers recast with Erica Durance. Ms Bentani brought a layered performance to both characters over the course of Supergirl Season 1 showing Allura to be flawed and Astra to genuinely believe she was right. Astra died at the hands of Supergirl’s adopted sister Alex, who ran her through with a Kryptonite sword. Allura continued to appear as an artificial intelligence hologram and in flashbacks.
Ms Bentain gave birth to her first child this past Valentines Day, tweeted, on July 7, 2017, “I loved working on [Supergirl] this show and will miss it so much! Right now it’s time for me to be supermom to my own little one in NYC.” Ms Benanti has set her priorities and wants to be present with her first child. Perhaps she will continue to find work in NYC, as that great city still hosts a number of television productions — not to mention Broadway and other stage work available to Ms Bentaini. We wish her well and will continue to follow her career.
Supergirl Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg gave the following statement: “Unfortunately Laura, who Greg and I have worked with for years going back to ‘Eli Stone,’ was unable to continue in the role due to work commitments in New York. But we are so blessed that Erica [Durance] has come aboard to offer her own interpretation of Kara’s mother. We had tremendous success with a former Lois Lane last season with Teri Hatcher. We know Erica will continue the proud tradition of legacy actors joining our shows and creating new and exciting takes on classic DC characters.”
Fans may recognize Ms Durance from her previous portrayal of Lois Lane for six years on Smallville. Ms Durance recently wrapped up a five season role as Dr Alex Reid, a series regular on Canadian drama Saving Hope.
Cyborg Superman
David Harewood gave a surprizingly candid answer to a young fan at an Australian fan convention called Supernova last week. Tanisha McAteer asked the actor whether he prefered playing Martian Manhunter or Cyborg Superman and here’s Mr Harewood’s frank response.
“I don’t like playing Cyborg Superman. It’s boring. They didn’t really flesh it out, they didn’t really write for the character, they just gave me this rather cheap-looking mask and no costume and said ‘okay you’re Cyborg Superman.’ But it didn’t really pan out, they didn’t really go into why he was a Cyborg, how he became a Cyborg, what its powers were, it was just kind of randomly calling him Cyborg Superman.
When this character debuted on Supergirl, Cyborg Superman excited fans and Mr Harewood. “I was very excited about it at first, but then I very quickly realised that there wasn’t really much to it.” But he quickly became just another henchman for season 2A main villain Lillian Luthor and Project CADMUS. “Whenever I walk into my trailer and I see that costume, I just switch off because I know it’s gonna be a really boring day.”
Miss Martian
Sharon Leal showed great skill in portraying the layers of strength and vulnerability in Miss Martian/ M’Gann M’Orzz. Ms Leal brough M’Gann to life as far more than just a love interest for Martian Manhunter/ J’Onn J’Onzz. She showed M’Gann’s powers, courage and love for her Martian people as well. I hate to say that her talent was wasted in that role, but it was. There’s only so much screen time on a 43 minute prime time drama as we’ll discuss in another piece and it tends to go to heroes, key supporting cast, and primary villains. The writers gave Ms Leal a worthy character to portray and her acting abilities shined through. CBS drama Instinct signed Ms Leal as a series regular. Perhaps Miss Martian can return from time to time as a continued recurring character. In the mean time, in the real world Ms Leal is getting the opportunity of a life time to work as a series regular on a primetime drama. Congratulations to Ms Leal.
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