'Smallville' at 25: Welling and Rosenbaum on Lex, Clark and the Final Shirt-Rip

By Elena Vasquez

"Smallville" drew 8.4 million live viewers to The WB when it premiered Oct. 16, 25 years ago — a record-breaking launch for the network. Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum, who played Clark Kent and Lex Luthor across the show's 10 seasons, marked the anniversary in their most extensive joint conversation about its legacy, recorded at the Variety office alongside their rewatch podcast, "TalkVille."

Created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar from the DC Comics character, "Smallville" did something novel for its time: it told the origin story of an icon. The show's central invention made Clark and Lex best friends before the inevitable fall.

"I felt like I had the liberty to just do what I wanted to do, and be real, and grounded," Rosenbaum said. "Seeing Lex and Clark as friends — it had never been done."

How well do the stars remember it?

Not perfectly. Playing a "How Well Do They Know Each Other?" game, both flopped on the premiere date and the ratings. Rosenbaum wrote "12 million, Beeyotch"; Welling wrote "1 trillion."

"You know how much a trillion is? A trillion is like, a lot of billions," Rosenbaum said. "Dude, if we had those ratings, we'd still be on the air. Good lord."

They fared better on guest stars. The show's early case-of-the-week format, driven by kryptonite meteor rocks infecting the town, brought in a steady stream of them over 10 seasons:

• Amy Adams, Season 1, in the episode "Crave," playing a girl who took kryptonite to get thinner — "And she took it too far," Welling said. "She devoured people," Rosenbaum added.
• Brian Austin Green, Welling's pick, "because I watched 'Beverly Hills, 90210.'"
• Christopher Reeve, who appeared twice as billionaire scientist Dr. Virgil Swann, Clark's mentor.

The Reeve episodes, filmed in New York, left the deepest mark on Welling. "We talked a lot about what it meant to play the character," he said. "He said he was really happy that they chose me to play the role, which I thought was cool."

Reeve, paralyzed after a 1995 equestrian accident and died in 2004, refused to leave after finishing his coverage. "His nurse was like, 'If you don't leave, I'm going to call the police,'" Welling recalled. "And he turned to me, and he goes, 'They're always telling me what to do.'"

Why did Rosenbaum leave after Season 7?

A contract dispute with Warner Bros. Television. Welling explained: "There's a point in the show where the actor's contract comes up for renewal, and the idea is that, based on the success of the show, the contract will be increased. And that wasn't happening."

Rosenbaum said the studio offered a three-year deal with no pay increase. "I'm part of the success, and don't I need to get rewarded?" he said. "So I said, 'Yeah, no thanks.' And that was it."

He returned once, for the May 11, 2011 series finale, wearing a bald cap over his regrown hair. Lex was a last-minute addition, shot in a single day at the Luthor Mansion. "You should come back and wrap it up for the fans," Rosenbaum remembered thinking. In the makeup trailer, he and makeup artist Natalie both cried. "It was bittersweet," he said.

What happened in the final moment?

Gough and Millar's "no flights, no tights" rule was so important to Welling it sat in his contract. The finale's last shot bent it: Clark rips open his shirt on the Daily Planet rooftop, revealing the Superman suit.

There was no full suit. "They had given me just a T-shirt, with no sleeves," Welling said. "They didn't have the money to put the suit on." The head of wardrobe had told him the suit was "too expensive." No rehearsal was held, "because we didn't want anyone to see it if it wasn't right."

Welling pitched the ending — inspired by Kiefer Sutherland's "24" finale — to the writers. "We can't go with him," he said. "But he's out there."

Both actors said they wished they had savored the run more. "We're getting paid to do this!" Rosenbaum said. Gough and Millar, who went on to create "Wednesday" for Netflix, built a "family atmosphere," he added: "It came down to them, and they chose us."

With "TalkVille" and Rosenbaum's mental-health podcast "Inside of You" both running, the fandom that delivered 8.4 million viewers a quarter-century ago is still listening — and still asking, "What's next?" Rosenbaum's answer: "I'm content. I'm happy. And we kicked some ass for a while."