One of the first Lex Luthors that Nicholas Hoult remembers seeing as a kid is the one played by Michael Rosenbaum on Smallville, the CW series featuring Tom Welling as Clark Kent/Kal-El in a high-school coming-of-age setting.
“Smallville was on the TV a lot when I was growing up,” the 35-year-old Wokingham-born actor tells Entertainment Weekly. “I think it was on Channel 4 or Channel 5 in the U.K. growing up.”
As fate would have it, Hoult would grow up to land the role of Luthor in writer/director James Gunn‘s new take on Superman, hitting theaters on July 11. Part of the process involved meeting Rosenbaum himself; Hoult appeared on the actor’s podcast, Inside of You, in March 2024.
Rosenbaum also happens to have a small role in the movie. During a panel at Fan Expo Dallas last month that was moderated by ScreenRant, he divulged, “James asked me to do something fun, so I have a couple of lines that I voice.”
David Gray/The CW
Hoult reflects on the experience of meeting the Luthor of his youth and what advice Rosenbaum shared with him.
“Honestly, he was so kind and encouraging, and he really gave me a freedom and a confidence and a support that felt really lovely going into it,” Hoult recalls. “He was probably the first person I saw play Luthor when I was growing up. So to get to interact with him and to chat with him beforehand was really special. I appreciate that from him, his time, but also just his encouragement meant a lot.”
Hoult plans to go back on Rosenbaum’s podcast after both of them get the chance to see the finished Superman movie.
“The beautiful thing he said was, ‘You’ve got this. Go have fun,'” Hoult continues. “It’s a, weirdly, kind of uplifting and wonderful thing to play a character that you’ve watched someone play and do a brilliant job at, to then have them say, ‘Yeah, go get it. Go take it on.’ That’s a really bolstering sort of thing to happen. It was very kind of him to do that because I suppose it’s a weird thing taking on a character that other people have played in some ways. Normally in acting, there’s no comparisons, really, when it’s a unique character, but when there’s been different interpretations, then obviously people do compare.”
DC Studios/ Warner Bros.
Oddly enough, David Corenswet, who plays Superman opposite Hoult, shared with EW that he also gets comparisons to Welling. So Smallville is not just on Hoult’s mind. “When I was growing up, he was the Superman who was on TV every week,” Corenswet said. “I think, to one extent or another, all of the Superman actors…There’s some Venn diagram of our physical characteristics, which makes sense for a superhero who is classically the one who doesn’t wear a mask.”
Superman offers a different vision of these iconic characters of DC Comics. The film presents a world in which humanity has known about metahumans (super-powered individuals) for 300 years, while the Man of Steel has been active as a hero for a few years. Luthor, the tech billionaire behind LuthorCorp, is hellbent on destroying the last son of Krypton.
For EW’s in-depth cover story on Superman, Hoult shared a particular comic book panel from All-Star Superman that greatly influenced his take on the character. It’s a scene in which Luthor shows off his muscles to Clark Kent after bulking up in prison.
DC/YouTube
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“Feel that, Kent? Real muscles. Not like his….” the character says. “It’s easy to be strong when you just happen to have come from the planet Krypton! This takes hard work.”
“That kind of captures, in my mind, the element of Lex,” Hoult explained. “He’s worked hard and diligently for so many years for all these things, to be admired and to be adored. Then suddenly Superman’s turned up and he’s all the things that he aims to be himself in some ways, but he doesn’t have to work hard for it. So I’m like, What if this Lex is someone who is physically strong and is an alpha, or seemingly in that sense? Instantly, even in the prep phase, it was like, I’m going to get in the gym and I’m going to be as strong as I possibly ever can be by the time we start shooting.”
He now further elaborates on the comics as inspiration. “The beautiful thing is you have so much history and property to go back and look at,” Hoult says. “You start with the comics and find your script, which is the template of what this character is in this story and how he’s operating. Then, obviously, speaking with James and getting a sense of what he’s hoping for in this interpretation. Although you’re playing a character people have played before, it’s going to naturally be different because, obviously, you’re a different human, but also there’s going to be different things you draw from in terms of this story and your interpretation, even though the archetype of the character is the same.”
