Dan Doperalski for Variety A little more than 25 years ago, on Oct. 16, 2021, “Smallville” premiered on The WB. Created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and based on the DC Comics character, the show set out to do something that’s now common practice but was then novel: tell the origin story of an iconic character, enriching the character’s mythology along the way. On the show, an immediate hit for the network, Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum played, respectively, a high-school-aged Clark Kent and his eventual nemesis Lex Luthor in the fictional town of Smallville, Kansas. One of the inventions of “Smallville” is that Clark (who yearns to be ordinary) and Lex (who lives under the thumb of his controlling zillionaire father) are, for a time, best friends, before the inevitable happens, as Lex succumbs to his darker instincts.
“I felt like I had the liberty to just do what I wanted to do, and be real, and grounded,” Rosenbaum said in a recent interview. “I mean, seeing Lex and Clark as friends — and then obviously we know what happens with the relationship, but I thought it was really fascinating. It had never been done.”
As opposed to their characters, Welling and Rosenbaum remain close: They host a “Smallville” rewatch podcast called “TalkVille,” and the night before they came to the Variety office, Welling, who doesn’t live in Los Angeles, had stayed at Rosenbaum’s house. They’ve been celebrating the show’s 25th anniversary, and in their most extensive conversation together about the show’s legacy, they filmed a “How Well Do They Know Each Other?” video, answering questions about one another and about “Smallville.”
During the game, they flopped on things like the show’s premiere date (somehow, Welling’s first answer was Oct. 14, 1992, before he switched it to that same date in 2002) and its ratings, which broke records for The WB. The correct answer was that 8.4 million total viewers tuned in live, but Rosenbaum wrote “12 million, Beeyotch,” and Welling wrote “1 trillion,” then trying to explain by saying, “Well, I mean, worldwide.” Rosenbaum harangued him. “You know how much a trillion is? A trillion is like, a lot of billions,” he said. “Dude, if we had those ratings, we’d still be on the air. Good lord.”
As they reminisced, they talked about the guest stars who’d appeared on “Smallville” over its 10 seasons, some already well known, others new to the business. One of them, in a loving tribute to Superman’s long history, was Christopher Reeve, who appeared twice on the show as billionaire scientist Dr. Virgil Swann, Clark’s mentor. Well before superhero movies became ubiquitous, Reeve had his breakthrough role as Clark Kent in the 1978 “Superman” film, a blockbuster, and played him three more times in its sequels. In 1995, however, Reeve, a competitive equestrian, had a devastating accident, breaking his spine while riding, and becoming paralyzed for the rest of his life. (He died in 2004.)
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