Feature: Smallville

In Clark’s Shoes

It’s been a rough year for Clark Kent, with his tumultuous love life and yet more loopy people finding out his secret. We console Smallville’s Tom Welling…

A visit to the Smallville set in Vancouver is always a delight, but it’s even more of a pleasure when the gorgeous Tom Welling, aka Clark Kent, takes time out of his incredibly busy schedule to chat about the various goings-on in the meteor capital this year. Apologizing for the fact that he has to run this season back through his head before he can offer any comments, he pauses and smiles, “I get so in the moment that I forget what we’ve done.” It’s perfectly understandable. The man’s just come from rehearsing a very intense scene with resident very bad person Lionel Luthor (John Glover), so it takes a moment or two for Welling to get from that headspace into interview mode. Once he’s been reminded that this year has seen massive changes of fortune and demeanour for the teen of steel, Welling gets stuck in and strides into Lex Luthor’s (Michael Rosenbaum) study. The place is dressed for a very special celebration, and, having agreed the sterling Smallville set decorators have outdone themselves this time, we settle onto Lex’s smooth leather sofa and an adjacent chair and begin.

My huge crush notwithstanding, it has to be said that Mr Welling truly is a delight to interview. He’s honest to a fault so therefore takes a bit of time to actually consider his answers. Clearly wishing to honour a lead-in question asking about his favourite episodes this year, he genuinely struggles to remember even a single one and fidgets a bit in his chair before he finally coughs. “Erm… I don’t really have any favourites. Can I say that?”

Taking pity on the poor bloke, he’s asked to recall anything from a previous episode, perhaps something that happened the previous week. This garners a relieved smile bright enough to steal your breath. “Last week is easy to remember, but I don’t know if that would be the best one to talk about. I think probably one of the most interesting things we did this year was the flashback episode [Relic]. We did the Joe and Louise story. That was fun because we got to be a little different in that relationship and people got to see a side of Clark and Lana [Kristen Kreuk] which I’m sure they were waiting to see. I think our writers came up with an interesting way of giving the audience what they wanted and added to our character development, so that was interesting to play.”

Mindful of the producers’ assertion that there would be no tights and no flights, it had to be said that a little bit of flying just snuck in under the wire in that episode. Welling smiles and admits, “Well… a little bit of hovering.”

by Thomasina Gibson

Get the full interview in
Cult Times #104

Photo © Warner Bros
Feature © Visual Imagination 2004. Not for reproduction

Taken from

Cult Times #104
May 2004
ships from Apr 22 2004
News-stand Price
UK £3.50 / US $6.99

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