Feature: Smallville

Small Change

Things are getting serious as the fourth season of Smallville heads to its conclusion. Our intrepid reporter found out who’s in jeopardy this year with the cast

We’ve arrived at the Smallville location site just a short distance from the beautiful Capilano Suspension Bridge area of Vancouver and, my goodness, the journey was worthwhile.

Squeezing through the tiny doorway to the aforementioned cabin we find ourselves scrunched up against yet more production crew in a very crowded, very hot and dusty place watching the very delectable Jason Teague (Jensen Ackles) doing unspeakable things to the equally charismatic Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). No, not torrid fanfic sorts of things, other watchable on primetime TV sorts of things.

Their scene involves a particularly tense moment during the penultimate episode of Smallville’s fourth season, and sees Lex tied to a chair unable to do anything but hiss defiantly at Jason’s attempts to do his evil mother’s bidding. It’s dark, unpleasant and meant to hurt like hell – and Michael Rosenbaum loves it. He comes up to us moments after the director calls ‘cut’ and asks our opinion on the very nasty (but fictitious) injuries he sustains during the scene. “Pretty horrific, huh?” he asks whilst baring his very smooth, now horribly punctured, chest. “Um…” is the barely coherent reply from this journo and her female colleague. “Who knew that Jason could be so vicious? It’s a pretty intense scene, huh?” smirks the actor. Having recovered enough to make some sort of sensible comment, we both agree that Lex’s predicament is not one any of us would like to share. “Yeah, but I love this sort of stuff, y’know? I love when Lex gets to suffer and there’s something I can really get my teeth into. This and the season finale are pretty cool episodes for Lex.”

There’s no time for more chatter because the cast is called back to do more takes. Again, it’s all-bunch-up-together time behind director James Marshall’s monitor, as the focus switches to Lex’s dad, the wonderful Lionel Luthor, played by John Glover. Forever at odds in the series, Glover insists there is much more to the Lionel/Lex dynamic than meets the eye on Smallville, and that if people catch some of the nuances of the looks between them during Forever they will see exactly what he means. “What I do with Michael [Rosenbaum] is we work on the yin and the yang of our relationship and in this episode there was just a beautiful, easy kind of quality that I think we found once Jensen and Jane had gone away. That is the thing that comes to mind that I hope when it comes together will be very strong. That’s what’s so beautiful about working with Michael. We totally give and complement each other. What the writers have written about the relationship is that there is a very deep love and a longing to love and trust each other but it just keeps getting demolished all the time.” Agreeing that that is a serious tragedy, Glover declares, “But that’s what makes good drama.”

by Thomasina Gibson

Read more from the cast in
Cult Times #117

Photo © Warner Bros
Feature © Visual Imagination 2005. Not for reproduction

Taken from

Cult Times #117
June 2005
ships from May 19 2005
News-stand Price
UK £3.99 / US $7.99

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