Interview: Bitsie Tulloch Previews “Always My Hero” and Superman & Lois Season 4

If you think killing off Superman in Superman & Lois Season 4 was already emotional, you need to prepare for more challenges for the Lane-Kent family with the October 14 episode of the series which is titled “Always My Hero.” There are some surely unexpected turns and choices made that will reverberate for the rest of the series leading to its conclusion at the end of the fourth season. To preview this episode and beyond, KryptonSite’s Craig Byrne had the opportunity to interview Elizabeth “Bitsie” Tulloch, a.k.a. Lois Lane, who was directed in the third episode this season by a very familiar face — her husband and Grimm co-star David Giuntoli. Note: This interview has been slightly edited to remove big spoilers!

KRYPTONSITE’S CRAIG BYRNE: Right off the bat: Can you talk about what it was like having your husband David Giuntoli directing the third episode of the season?

BITSIE TULLOCH: One thing that I think he had going for him is that the cast obviously already knew him really well, because we would have Superman & Lois cast parties at our house. So they had met him a bunch of times already and felt really comfortable with him. One thing he had that was extraordinarily tough was that we dropped from shooting 10 to 11 shooting days, which was quite a lot, to basically eight shooting days, which is a big cut. The crew can really feel it, and there’s just such added pressure. And David only had seven days to shoot! Not only did he only have seven days to shoot, he had such an emotionally impactful episode, and the stakes were so high.

I find a lot of actors really love the actors-turned-directors. There’s sort of an unspoken understanding of what you go through, and his episode was just so extremely emotional. There’s so much going on. She’s a mom, and her priority is the mental health of her boys, taking care of her boys, finding her dad, Lex Luthor’s still out there, and wants to kill her, and Doomsday still out there and is a massive threat.

You’ve had several seasons now where you had to carry a lot of dramatic weight. Is there ever a time that you wish you had the kinds of storylines that, say, Chrissy has?

Yeah. Tyler and I talk a lot about how our favorite stuff to shoot, honestly, is the flashback stuff, because it’s so much more lighthearted. It’s kind of fun, and goofy, and playful. It’s them at the Daily Planet, and it’s pre-kids, so the stakes aren’t quite as high.

Season 1 Episode 8 was the first time I really had quite heavy stuff to do. It was when Lois is talking about the late term miscarriage that she had had. I felt like, after that, Todd and Brent were like, “oh, great, she can bring it! All right! Here we go, every episode!” And then I’m like, “oh, man, should I not have gone there quite as much, because now I’m doing this a lot!” It’s exhausting, but I’m a professional, and that is my job. My job is to show up and do the very best job I can do as an actor.

The writers do a fantastic job, and even with the cancer storyline, Tyler and I both had some reservations about it, like “wait a minute, are we going too dark?” This is a superhero show, after all. And the fans loved it, for the most part. They really did. Cancer is, unfortunately, such a pervasive disease in people’s lives. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone who’s had it, whether it’s a friend, or a colleague or [anything else]. When Tyler and I are doing Comic Cons, meeting fans and having so many people come up to me and often literally weeping, “thank you for that. My mom died of breast cancer.” Or “thank you for that, my my wife is fighting breast cancer right now.” Or “my aunt had ovarian cancer, and it was so great to see a really accurate portrayal on screen.” The reality is Todd Helbing and Brent Fletcher were were right to do that.

This is the final seasons, and we had fewer episodes to wrap it up, so I understand why they had to give me such emotional scenes where the stakes were just so incredibly high. Episode three in particular is going to be something that people are talking about, and you can’t raise the stakes that high without having to ask someone to really go there… and again, that’s my job.

I asked Erica Durance this same question last week: Does your daughter realize that her Mommy is Lois Lane, and what does she think of that?

She does, and it’s cute… there’s a bookstore near our house, and she’s understood from a very young age that that’s a character that I play, and David had taken her down to this bookstore, and there were Lois Lane comics. I think she was, like, two and a half… she was really young, and to the person who worked at the bookstore, she pointed at the comic and said, “that’s my mommy! That’s my mommy!” They probably were thinking “this two year old is nuts.”

It was a bummer that we started shooting at the height of COVID and and we were all in Canada… we weren’t able to leave because of the strict quarantine and whatnot, so I didn’t see a lot of my kid the first few seasons. And in fact, the first time she actually came onto set was Season 4, Episode 3, when David was directing, because it wasn’t until Season 4 where some of the COVID protocols were relaxed. Even in Season 3, she was able to finally come visit me at base camp and be in my trailer. David was shooting on A Million Little Things, so it was usually our nanny who would bring her to set to visit me, but it was a lot of being away from her.

When I was shooting on Arrow with Stephen Amell, his daughter Mavi was apparently there quite often, and I would be a little envious of that while I was shooting, like “oh, it would have been so fun for Vivian to yell out ‘action’ and ‘cut’ like Mavi did on Arrow the day I was shooting on Arrow!”

She definitely gets that her mama’s Lois Lane. I get gifted comics a lot, and one day, one of the writers on a show gave me a Lois Lane street sign that is now in my daughter’s playroom. Also, when I first booked the role, one of my managers had one of the older comics framed. That was really cool, and that’s also on the wall in her playroom. So she kind of gets that I play a fun character that’s also in comic books and also live action.

There was a scene the day she was on set with me and Tyler where we’re explaining the situation to General Lane of [Clark being Superan], and Vivian’s just kind of used to it. It didn’t really seem to throw her that David was directing, and then I was holding hands with Tyler in a scene. She’s just kind of rolled with it.

If someone, someday comes to you and asks you to play Lois Lane again, would you do it?

Of course I would. It’s been such an honor. It really has been, and I hope I’ve made the fans proud. I think the level of respect I have for the character… I pointedly sought out [information] for myself, because I understood getting into this that this isn’t just a character on a TV show that’s going to go a few seasons; this is a very beloved, iconic character for a reason, and I have to do some research into understanding why. What are the qualities about Lois Lane? The grit, the determination, the fierceness, the pursuit of truth at all costs, the the work ethic… and then to bring that to my performance and on some level, it felt like a bit of a love letter to the character and also a love letter to genres.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: After this interview was conducted, Bitsie expressed gratitude to S&L writer Adam Mallinger who was frequently available to share Superman and Lois Lane lore!]

You can see some photos including some previously-unreleased stills from “Always My Hero” below. Look for the episode to air October 14 on The CW.