Tom Welling on Playing Superman: “How Cool Would It Be!”

For most of the 20 years of discussion about Smallville, one thing that frequently came up is Tom Welling‘s strong stance toward the “no tights” part of “no tights, no flights.” This week, Michael Rosenbaum had Welling on his Inside of You podcast and Tom, who played Clark Kent for 218 episodes of Smallville, had a surprising answer when asked if, down the road, he was asked to play Superman.

“Especially during Smallville, it wasn’t about being Superman or not,” Tom replied, echoing his previous stance over the years. “It was only being Clark Kent on Smallville. They did some Superman movies; they were never gonna shut down Smallville for me to even do one, right? It’s just a different thing. DC movies and DC television are very different things,” he said, particularly referring to that period of time.

“Then when Smallville ended, I was very anti-playing Superman, but now as I get older, I’m like, ‘oh, maybe? I mean, yes, I think it would be fun’,” Tom now admitted. “And I think I would like to think that I could add an element that maybe hasn’t been there for a while, as far as like, maybe Superman’s not so detached. Maybe he’s not such an alien.”

Tom talked about a particular scene from the Superman movies that got his attention, that readers might see as something that could happen with the version we saw in Crisis on Infinite Earths, even though Tom didn’t cite that himself.

“My favorite scene is when Superman goes into the cafe and doesn’t have his powers, he gets beat up, and then he comes back with his powers, and how does he and how he deals with that? I think that element may need to come back in a little bit. It would be fun,” he said. “I think that having my boys [his young sons Thompson and Rocklin] now, I kind of have to get over myself a little bit. Like, how cool would it be!”

Finally, Tom spoke about how the TV shows and now movies are now embracing the multiverse

You can listen to the entire episode of Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum below. There’s more Smallville discussion within, including some talk of which cast mates they’d love to see again someday.