The latest episode of the Tom Welling-Michael Rosenbaum Smallville podcast TalkVille went out this week, and in it, Michael asks the show’s creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar two questions that fans have speculated about for decades… with, perhaps, a surprise answer in one of those cases.
Let’s start with the headline-grabber: In the Smallville Season 3 episode “Delete,” Chloe uses the name “Lois Lane” as a byline, which fueled the fan fires that “Chlois” – the theory that Allison Mack’s character Chloe Sullivan would somehow or someday change her name to Lois Lane – was a direction the show would ultimately be taking. On the podcast, Michael Rosenbaum asked the producers if this was something that was actually considered.
“We did talk about that, that maybe she is the proto-Lois and that later on, she had to change her identity or something like that, and she becomes Lois Lane,” Miles Millar answered.
“The issue, again, was we wanted to get Lois Lane, and they wouldn’t give her to us,” Al Gough added, before speaking a bit about other conflicts the show had with the movie division of Warner Bros. “Then when she came in in Season 4, there was this huge thing about ‘you can have her for two episodes,’ and then ‘you can have her for three,’ and then ‘you can have her for half the season’ and [WBTV head] Peter Roth, to his credit, was like ‘f— it. She’s in the show now and she’s just not leaving’,” he continued.
“She became part of the show. It was never questioned again,” Miles said, with Al Gough adding that Lois Lane actress Erica Durance was “fantastic.”
It isn’t known when the possibility of actually doing “Chlois” had been discussed on the show. The notion that Chloe Sullivan was Lois Lane’s cousin was officially confirmed, almost accidentally by Miles Millar at the San Diego Comic-Con panel for Smallville in 2002. Prior to that, the writer of this very article had been told before the pilot even filmed that “Chloe is Lois Lane’s cousin.” In doing an interview for Smallville: The Official Companion Season 7 (also by me), Al Gough reiterated that the show would not end with “Chlois.”
“Chloe, from the inception of the show, was always Lois’s cousin,” he said. “It might have even been in the pilot script. The idea that she was going to turn into Lois was never going to happen.”
UPDATE: We went to Smallville co-creator Alfred Gough for clarification on when “Chloe Sullivan might be Lois Lane” was considered, and we have an answer: “We discussed it when we were developing the show in mid 2000, but even in the series pitch document Lois was her cousin,” he responded to KryptonSite exclusively.
On a similar note, Michael also asked if Ian Somerhalder’s Adam Knight character was supposed to be Bruce Wayne — something that was actually a KryptonSite April Fool only a few months before Somerhalder’s actual casting. It sounds like that one was a for-sure “no.”
What do you all think? Did the tens of thousands of KryptonSite Forum Chlois posts actually move the needle, or was this just a passing notion, like “wouldn’t it be cool if….?” We may never know, but you can see the Gough/Millar TalkVille episode below, where you can get some great insights into the “Memoria” episode that Miles directed. Enjoy!
Yeah. Years of internet fighting, being sucked into a cult, scarred for life, only to find out our spidey senses were on point? You win, cruel world. Lol
On a recent episode of Michael Rosenbaum and Tom Welling’s TalkVille podcast, they had the show’s creator Al Gough as a call-in guest, and among the topics discussed was the Smallville animated project that they’ve been trying to get off the ground. Unfortunately, Gough brought up the reality that especially with regime changes at the studio, it may be a while.
“Regime change” refers to changes in leadership at the studio or network. As an example, the regime changed massively when Smallville moved from The WB (who had executives that loved them) to The CW (where Dawn Ostroff was more interested in “pretty rich white girls with problems” shows and kept trying to kill Smallville).
“The problem with most projects in development in any studio and any network is regime change, and Warners has obviously gone through a lot, and I think the fact that they’re in the process of rebooting Superman again, unfortunately, I think, keeps our thing off the table for a bit,” Gough said in discussion with the actors. He pointed out that everything comes around in one form or another, pointing to Hulu’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer revival as such a thing.
So, don’t give up hope… but for now, it seems it’s not happening anytime soon, if at all.
John Schneider is the latest actor to be added to the guest list for Creation Entertainment’s second “Salute To Smallville” convention, happening September 13-14 in Chicago. Schneider portrayed Clark’s human father Jonathan Kent from Seasons 1-5 and returned for several episodes in the show’s final season.
Schneider will be joining Tom Welling, Michael Rosenbaum, Kristin Kreuk, Erica Durance, John Glover, Aaron Ashmore, Adrianne Palicki, and Alaina Huffman at this year’s event! Last year’s convention was a fantastic experience and it’s well worth checking out! You can read more about Salute to Smallville and purchase tickets here.
DISCLAIMER: KryptonSite’s Craig Byrne has created web graphics and websites for Creation Entertainment in addition to hosting their 2024 Salute to Smallville event.
Basically, it was the notion that she never was able to share scenes with Christopher Reeve. While the plan originally was for a scene between them in the Season 4 premiere “Crusade,” in the two appearances that Reeve did make on Smallville failed to reunite O’Toole with Reeve, which is a shame, as Annette played Lana Lang to Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent in the film Superman III.
“I never understood it,” she said. “I should have picked up the phone and called the producers and said what are you thinking? You’ve got the prior Lana Lang and Superman. Why aren’t you putting them in a scene together? It kind of broke my heart. It was kind of like ‘if they don’t see, I’m not gonna tell ’em! They don’t understand!’ So who’s regretting it? Not them. I knew it would be the last time I’d ever get to see Chris, so, yeah, I’m very sad about that.”
Tabby
November 25, 2023 at 5:27 am
Yeah. Years of internet fighting, being sucked into a cult, scarred for life, only to find out our spidey senses were on point? You win, cruel world. Lol