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Small Town GirlWhen Clark Kent, later Superman, was growing up in Smallville, he had plenty of good friends around him, Lana Lang among them. Kristin Kreuk explains to Ian Spelling how she's the new Maid of Might. |
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Excerpts selected from Xposé #60 |
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It's a bird… it's a plane… it's a young woman who's about to be a star. Kristin Kreuk plays Lana Lang on the new series Smallville, which has garnered some of the most glowing reviews of any freshman show launched in the 2001-2002 TV season, and that's ahead of its October 16 premiere date. And the consensus is that the 20-year-old will emerge as one of the brightest talents on the entertainment landscape.
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"I try not to think about that," Kreuk says.
"I really love my anonymity. It's something I prize and cherish, and I
have my entire life. It will be interesting to have people know me without
knowing me, but living in Vancouver, shooting in Vancouver, I feel like I'm not
going to have to go through half as much as I would if I were living in LA. I
get to stay at home. I've got my friends and my family to ground me, not that I
need them to ground me, because I'm a very grounded person. But they're there
and they have nothing to do with acting, nothing to do with that world. So I
have no opportunity to get caught up in it. I'd hate myself if I ever got
caught up in it."
Kreuk, however, has allowed
herself to get caught up in the world of Smallville, which gives
audiences the latest take on the Superman mythos. Smallville follows the
adventures of a young Clark Kent (Tom Welling, of Judging Amy and
Special Unit 2) during his small town high school days, before he
learned to fly, before he mastered all of his other powers, before he upped and
relocated to Metropolis. He lives with his loving and protective adoptive
parents, Jonathan (John Schneider of The Dukes of Hazzard) and Martha
Kent (Annette O'Toole, who portrayed Lana Lang opposite Christopher Reeve's
Clark Kent/Superman in Superman III).
He hangs out with best pals Pete Ross (Sam Jones III of CSI
and The Nightmare Room) and Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack of Honey, We
Shrunk Ourselves), befriends future nemesis Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum
of Urban Legend) and pines for the beautiful Lana Lang. Lana's parents
died during a meteor storm years earlier, but she doesn't realize that Clark
crash-landed on Earth during that storm. Likewise, Lex doesn't know that the
radiation exposure that rendered him bald resulted from Clark's calamitous
arrival. Clark, of course, knows all this and though it wasn't his fault in any
way, shape or form, he lives each day feeling guilty.
"I knew about Superman," Kreuk says, during
a conversation on a day off from Smallville. "I knew about Clark
Kent. I knew about the basics. I'd seen a couple of episodes of Lois &
Clark and one of the Superman movies when I was younger. I don't
think my character has been explored too much. I'm not sure, but from what I've
heard I don't think she has. So I think it's good that I haven't explored it
too in-depth. Warner Bros did give me this big textbook, basically, on
Superman, from the beginning. I skimmed through that, so I know more than I
used to know.
"I think Smallville is about a bunch of
people growing up and learning who they are and coming to be - in Clark's case,
Superman, or in Lex Luthor's case, this great villain. They're these people
coming to love or loathe themselves and learning their morals and their
beliefs, all the things that will make them who they are as adults. I think
it's also a human story with superhero elements to it. There's so much humanity
in it that it's a really great show for everyone. There's lots of action, but
it comes second to the growth of the characters and development of who they
are..."
More from Kristin
Kreuk as she spills more on what will come up in Smallville, as well as her own
life and career history, and her roles in other programmes...