INTERVIEW: SMALLVILLE Exec Producers Kelly Souders and Brian Peterson talk ‘Homecoming’ and the final season
by Jim on October 15, 2010
[Spoiler Alert – if you have not watched Friday night’s 200th episode of Smallville do not read the following as it is a conversation between show runners Brian Peterson and Kelly Souders and a group of journalists about putting together the landmark episode as well as some thought into what they have planned for the rest of this final season.]
After having the honor of screening the Smallville 200th episode, “Homecoming,” last week in Burbank at the Warner Brothers offices, a group of journalists (including yours truly) had the chance to chat with show runners about the choices that were made, what is to come, the possible return of Michael Rosenbaum, Kristin Kreuk and (gasp!) Dean Cain and how Kelly Souders and Brian Peterson will feel when the last episode (and the series) is wrapped.
Question: A lot of this episode obviously is Christmas Carol-based. Was that a deliberate thing and how early in writing did you know that?
Brian Peterson: I’d say about mid-way through. What was great is we had all these great ideas and one of them was what if Clark goes back and revisits his past because it’s his high school reunion and then we thought ‘You know, you really want it to have this hopeful push-off’ so what if we scrap that and what if we go to the future?’…It all just ended up being what if we do past-present-future and it just seemed to make sense at that point.
Kelly Souders: Then when we were looking at it we were trying to figure out what kind of structure, what device we could use to bridge all the different time zones and that’s how bringing Brainiac back came about. We looked at the different DC characters and who would make sense to take Clark on that journey and when we thought of Brainiac there was a big sigh of relief because everything suddenly gelled.
Brian: It perfectly embodies where we’ve been and where Clark’s going just in one character right there.
Question: Might we see future Clark again?
Brian: There’s a very good possibility that he may appear at some point.
Question: Future Clark and Future Lois were so much fun and they must’ve been fun for you to do. Has there been any impulse to say ‘I’d love to do another season where we can have that be the show?’
Kelly: I can’t say it’s the first time the words ‘Season 11’ has creeped up this year as we’ve been pushing that it’s the final season of Smallville. I think it’s the final season of Smallville. We don’t know plans but we never bet against ourselves and the show.
Question: There were so many throwbacks to the last nine years of the show. Were there any moments that stand-out to you to get to touch on specifically.
Brian: I think the funeral because Kelly and I wrote that [episode] and we were up there for the 100th and it such an emotional…it was a really big, pivotal moment for the show and the cast and crew, not just on screen but behind the scenes, too, so that for me stands out.
Kelly: I think for me, I was just remembering when I was looking back and remembering Clark seeing Lana for the first time and fumbling through that moment and I really want to revisit how far he’s come from that moment so that memory popped up pretty quickly.
Jim Halterman: Was there ever a moment where you had a big bad for Clark to battle while he went on this journey?
Kelly: We did kind of have that character for awhile, actually.
Brian: That’s funny, we did. It was completely broken with a different villain coming in and bringing him through the journey and when he got out of it then he had that villain to battle but actually once we looked at the outline it looked unnecessary because the battle is really within for him. It almost felt like it cheapened the moments that we wanted to build by capping it when we’d rather spend the time and the money with the characters and being able to go back to school instead of some fight that really needs a lot of resources and energy.
Question: I’m guessing this is really going to change Clark and how he’s going to grow into Superman. How will that be reflected in the next episode?
Kelly: I think that he comes out as the leader we know Superman to be. This is a very pivotal moment in that and I think you see his leadership skills jump up to the next level and that maintains all the way through the rest of the season.
Brian: I would say that it galvanizes his confidence, which is something that has been a little wavering at the top of this season after everything Jor-El has said to him especially when it comes to his relationship with Lois and we see a lot of movement in that area.
Kelly: Coming up quickly.
Question: Do you have a planned arc going through the rest of the season and do you know where the final moment of the final episode will be?
Kelly: Yes.
Brian: As of Tuesday, we know pretty significantly the rest of the series. [Note-for those who MUST know, Brian is referring to Tuesday, Oct 5th. Respect.]
Kelly: And that was pretty daunting as we were all sitting in the writer’s room and we looked up at the board and we had it all mapped out. Wow, that’s it!
Brian: Instead of ‘end of episode’ or ‘end of season’ it says ‘end of series.’
Question: Is it going to end in an upbeat?
Kelly: I think people will be happy, yes.
Question: Was it important to you to get this episode to happen early in the season?
Brian: As we’ve been saying, we really wanted this to be a positive season and a season of growth and forward movement so if it happened that late in the season it felt like you’re just getting to it at the very last second before his big move into Superman. We wanted it to launch the season and not cap it off.
Question: With the suit being encased in the fortress of solitude, is he going to earn that sooner rather than later?
Kelly: Thanks for that question! [laughs]
Brian: I don’t know that we’re at liberty to discuss that!
Kelly: He still has quite a bit to go through and we’ll see that the world around him puts up some major stumbling blocks for him so as much as he’s progressing things around his life and around the environment around him is going to shift after this episode to a place where he has some major battles to overcome. He’s earning his stripes all along.
Question: You focused on a little bit of loss with Chloe and Lana. Is there a reason that Lex was not addressed?
Brian: I think because we’ve kind of brought Lex back into this season that he’s going to get a lot of play this season. We had to pick our battles so we really wanted to focus on the threads that are not significantly being addressed this year like the beat with Lana.
Question: What was it like for you both to revisit Smallville High and were there certain story beats that were important to include in this episode?
Brian: I think the first one without question was the Lana-meet. It was probably the moment that we first fell in love with Clark Kent because we saw his struggle that would launch the whole series. And Chloe introducing the Wall of Weird was huge. We can’t tell you how many things got whittled off the list, sadly, but because it’s the 200th one we really wanted to look back at the pilot and the 100th [episode] because those were big benchmarks.
Question: Can you tell us some of those things that were left out that you would’ve included if you had more time?
Brian: You know, he’s had other friends but they didn’t inform his future as much so it felt like, obviously, you’d want to see Pete, the family…but we really just chose to focus on the love and his hero journey and not friendship and enemies, per se.
Kelly: We had a pretty long list to start with.
Question: With Oliver stepping out into the light, essentially, and taking his place in the superhero universe, are we going to see other superheroes stepping out and joining Clark in the bigger picture?
Kelly: The first thing we’re going to so are see some ramifications of Oliver stepping out and for Clark it’s very impactful for his life because the thing he’s struggled with from the beginning about whether or not to be open with who he really is he’s now watching his best friend go with exactly what he would do. It’s a very personal reason why [Oliver] comes out…
Brian: It’s almost worse to watch your friend take the heat because you’re still hidden than to take it yourself for Clark because he’s such a hero so I think that’s going to be a big part of this first journey for Clark.
Kelly: It will also have an impact on the rest of the heroes, which we will see.
Question: Can you talk about the deliberation about the very romantic ending and how you decided that Clark would maybe let Lois in on the secret or not?
Kelly: That was hours of discussion…
Brian: There are two big things – does Clark just tell her he loves her or does he say ‘I love you and I’m the blur.’ He has a lot of things to lay out so we really wanted to focus on the emotion of the moment and leave whether he is Superman or not aside and have it be about the emotion. The important thing after his journey was saying that he loved her and reassuring her of his feelings regardless of all the other trappings that it comes with.
Kelly: We were also looking at the fact that he had just taken this journey where he went to so many people in his past and Lois is really such a big part of his future that we wanted a moment that really was shining a light on the fact that this is a big moment in time. The past is now going to stay in the past and the future and what Lois brings…is a lot of happiness to his life and really change who he is.
Brian: There was a really long discussion – I don’t know if you noticed the two songs that we chose – originally we wanted to use music from the first season but once we got to that final scene and we had a Lana song underneath it, it felt very wrong especially for the Clana fans because we used that song in the dance and that was going backwards and we wanted a song that moved us forward so we purposely chose to not re-use an older song from the show in that final scene.
Question: When will Darkseid make his presence fully known?
Kelly: It really starts in episode 3 (last week’s episode) and that’s really where you start to see the beginning of it and it starts creeping up in new places all throughout the season.
Question: We saw the Superman headline in the future but when might we see that in the present?
[Brian and Kelly laugh at the question knowing they can’t really answer it without giving too much away]
Brian: it might be awhile before we see that in the present…we don’t want to put the cart before the horse.
JH: There must’ve been a lot of different ways that Clark finally forgives himself and says goodbye to his father. How did you arrive at the scene we finally saw in the episode?
Kelly: Him sort of putting Jonathan’s death behind him on some level because I think he obviously has a lot of guilt about it and it’s something that’s been holding him back and that’s actually a discussion we had before the show really got up and running this season. It was something we were talking about in the off-season – whatever the off-season is…there’s a rumor that there is an off-season – but what are the emotional binds for Clark and Jonathan’s death really was the number one thing that kept coming to our mind. It was something that drove him, it changed the show, changed Clark forever and he’s never really gone back and dealt with his own guilt about it. Where it was going to fall was a sliding rule for awhile but then it just landed on the 200th and how important it was for him to move forward.
Brian: It wasn’t in the show at the very beginning when we first wrote the script because we thought it was implied and then once we looked at the script we thought ‘This is obviously the perfect place for it’ because you need that resolution and to be able to use the watch, which was so important in the show so far as a symbol. Hopefully it worked well.
Question: Will we see the Legion play a role in future episodes?
Brian: At this point we don’t have any plans for the Legion because Booster is the one character that we really want to focus on and is coming from the future.
Question: What can you tell us about his interaction with Clark when that happens?
Brian: That is pending lunch with Geoff Johns because Jeff has his own ideas and we need to all come together with our ideas. That will probably be in the next week or two when we’ll flesh that out.
Question: At this late date in the series, is there trepidation to introducing more DC characters?
Kelly: I think over the last couple of years, obviously, we’ve been introducing more and more characters from the DC world and acknowledging that world on a greater level. For us, it’s a lot of fun and our crew just does an incredible job at looking at the characters from the comic books and then trying to figure out the Smallville version and what we can actually do. I think it’s actually been a fun challenge and we all enjoy it.
Brian: And we promised that this wouldn’t be a whole season on reflection and it we would be pushing forward so that’s why in addition to Aquaman and SuperGirl that we bring from the past we brought in Deadshot last week…there’s still a push-off and it feels fresh.
Question: Are we going to see more Justice Leaguers coming back?
Kelly: We’re in a few contract conversations right now but you’ll definitely see a big League presence. You won’t have to wait until the end.
Question: How did the casting of Teri Hatcher come together?
Brian: We have our dream list and that’s right at the top. What’s funny is we talked in the room about this video, which came from a personal story…somebody in the room this actually happened. Her best friend just found out she has a very significant illness and is dying momentarily so she sat down and made all these videos for her child. What we did with Ella was just we pulled that into the show because it was just so heart wrenching. Then we thought ‘Who do we get to play Lois’s Mom?’ and we went beat beat Teri Hatcher! She’s been fantastic.
Kelly: She was wonderful. It was coordinating Lisa Lewis who does a lot of work for us at the studio really helped orchestrate it. Between Teri’s incredibly busy schedule and us needing to get footage in in order to get the show put together and cut together. It was challenging trying to get everybody together on the same place at the same time but it came together beautifully. What we can say is we got to watch the footage yesterday and all I will say is I watched three takes and then I had to stop for awhile because it was so heart wrenching and she just had an incredible performance. It was beautiful.
Brian: You really get to see why she was Lois Lane. It’s right there on screen and it’s great to see them together.
Question: Any chance Dean Cain could return?
Kelly: Are you in our writer’s room? [laughs]
Brian: We would love to have him back but I think that that maybe is on his wish list as well as ours but if that happens that would be fantastic.
Question: What about Michael Rosenbaum or Kristin Kreuk?
Brian: We would love for them to be back. The door is wide open so if any of you have any pull you let us know.
Kelly: We loved writing for both of them. They were such great characters so we would love to have that chance again.
Question: If the door was opened enough for Michael or Kristin to walk through it do you have stories in your head already?
Kelly: Oh yeah. We could write that script in about two days. Obviously, all these characters sit in our heads year-round so we have story ideas and places we’d like to take them. They’re always sitting right there waiting for something to happen.
Question: Is there a contingency plan if you can’t get the actors back?
Brian: Yes. Absolutely.
Question: In thinking of how audiences dealt with the endings of Lost or The Sopranos are you feeling some pressure?
Brian: Can you see our faces?
Kelly: We’ve aged five years in the last six months. I think we’re very aware that it’s a decade of people watching and that’s a long time. Not only is there the pressure of wanting to make everybody happy – which is completely impossible but we keep trying – but also ourselves, the writing staff, the crew, our post…everyone wants it to end with the best episode of Smallville ever. We want to make sure it’s the best thing that any of us could put together so I think we have enough pressure inside to last us a lifetime.
Brian: And with any show you want it to end the way you want it to end as a viewer but you also want a little surprise and so that is a very tight wire. I think we have a plan.
Question: When they shoot that final scene and when Smallville is all said and done, what will be your reaction?
Brian: Therapy.
Kelly: Hopefully two for the price of one. It’s going to be very, very difficult. It’s an incredible group of people and I think we would be very lucky to have half of what we’ve gotten personally from this show on any other experience that we have. The people are great, everyone is very grounded, there is not a day that doesn’t go by that we are not fully aware of how much people put into this show and the only reason it’s on the air is for people’s passion. It’s hard after 10 years and you never feel like you’re in a tenth season. It’s going to be hard to say goodbye.
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