Divisive ‘Man of Steel’ Controversy Officially Reignited With ‘Supergirl’s Ending

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for ‘Supergirl.’

Unlike her cousin, Kara’s past trauma has left her cynical and resentful of this role of protector that’s been thrust upon her. For Gillespie, writer Ana Nogueira’s script, based on Tom King’s comic miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, was all about navigating this turbulent emotional journey, manifesting on screen as an action-packed western of sorts that allows Kara to embark on over half of the nearly two-hour runtime without ever donning a supersuit. And while it’s an emotional and unapologetic look at superheroes, Supergirl brings every ounce of DC’s more fantastical moments, from Jason Momoa as the larger-than-life Lobo to Kara’s best friend and superdog, Krypto.

In this exclusive interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Gillespie discusses finding the tonal balance for Supergirl’s DCU debut, from changes made in the edit to determining how much Lobo and Superman screen time was necessary to push Kara’s story. He also talks about the inclusion of the Kryptonian sequence, how he brought his previous directorial style from I, Tonya, Cruella, and “even Lars and the Real Girl” to Supergirl, deleted scenes, finding the visual language for the film, and much more.

Craig Gillespie Explains Kara’s Difficult Decision at the End of ‘Supergirl’

“That was something James [Gunn] felt very strongly about.”

Image via Warner Bros.

COLLIDER: How did the film change along the way from when you first got the script to what people are going to see? Did it go through huge revisions, or was it pretty close to what you made?

CRAIG GILLESPIE: Amazingly, it’s pretty close. Honestly, one of the first things that I asked her to do was to prolong as long as possible her wearing the superhero outfit. In the original script, it was a lot earlier. I sort of designed it in a way, obviously, the ship gets stolen at the beginning, and the suit’s on it, so she gets to not have to wear it for a while, and that was important to me from an emotional standpoint. But the ending was always there, from the get-go, and I loved that that’s where they wanted to go with the film.

I love the ending. I’m watching the movie, and I’m not sure what is going to happen with Krem. Are they going to let him go? When she does that, honestly, I was all on board. I’m sure there was a lot of debate behind the scenes about whether or not she would do this, but I think it shows the difference between what she’s been through and what Kal-El has been through. Can you talk about that?

GILLESPIE: Absolutely. It was amazing because that was something James [Gunn] felt very strongly about, and it was in the script. There were conversations leading up to that day of, like, “Do we shoot a backup version?” And every time, it would come back, like, “Nope. Just go with that.” To have that kind of confidence that we wouldn’t be in a test screening and suddenly they’re like, “Ooh, yeah, we completely misread that,” was amazing. It was never debated. It was something that we stayed true to, and James was 100% behind it all the way through. Knowing that that was our North Star, and that they were willing to go that far with the film, gave you license for so many other things.

Also, if we go back a number of years, one of the things that really bothered a lot of people about Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is Superman killing Zod, and I viewed it as times have changed, and Zod is going to keep killing people, so what do you do? That’s that version of Superman. But in James Gunn’s universe, Superman is that North Star of good who believes in redemption for everyone, and I think that the difference between Supergirl and Superman is a great thing that can be mined for story.

GILLESPIE: Absolutely. They come from such different backgrounds. She’s come from trauma. She’s come from loss. She’s come from seeing a lot of suffering, and never being discussed that this is going to be her role in life. She wants to stay there and die with her family, so to suddenly have this thrust upon her, she resents it. She’s resisting all of it. She doesn’t even know if she’s capable of it. Everything about it stayed true to that logic, and that was the emotional journey that she was on.

Why Kara Speaking Kryptonian in Her Flashback Was So Important

“We had this linguist who created five different languages for the film.”

I love the stuff on Krypton because you see another side of Krypton that you haven’t seen, but in the middle of the movie, you have this big scene that’s not in English. From the studio’s perspective and from your perspective, how long can you get away with this where it’s not going to be in English? Can you talk about what the debate was on how long you could speak in Kryptonian?

GILLESPIE: You just reminded me. That was not in the script. That was something I decided I wanted to do, which was to have them speak in a different language, almost for the authenticity of it, as strange as that sounds, because it’s a language we created. But to really make it feel grounded and like it’s of another world, in watching other films where this is done, that, to me, is where you really start to feel like it’s layered and complex and we are going throughout these different universes. I can’t tell you how many of the actors were like, “Are you sure we need to do this in another language?” [Laughs] It’s formidable, and some people are better at it than others. That was the scene that just blew me away.

We had this linguist who created five different languages for the film, and then that was off of my plate. I knew the actors had to go and work with the linguist, and work on this and learn this phonetically. I never really talked to Milly [Alcock] about it, and then we got to the scene with her and David [Krumholtz], and it’s an incredibly emotional scene. It’s four pages long. “Action,” and out of the gate, she just killed it. Absolutely killed it to the point that there were hairs standing up on my arms. She was so engaged and emotional and nuanced with it, and it’s a completely made-up language. I remember that day being like, “Wow, she’s such a master of her craft.” Between being able to do that, the humor, the drama, and the physicality that she’s doing for five and a half months for this, she was just killing it every day.

The stuff with her and David is great. And like I said, I liked seeing something on Krypton that I hadn’t seen before.

GILLESPIE: That scene and how much we broke them up, that was one scene that moved around a lot in the movie, in the edit.

I’m always fascinated by the editing room because there’s always so much that happens. With all Marvel and DC movies, they’re always plussing the movie to make it better and to learn from early screenings. How did this film change in the editing room once you started getting feedback and seeing what people were thinking?

GILLESPIE: In terms of plussing it, and the thing that surprised me in the edit, throughout the film, we kept trying things. I love to be spontaneous. I stay by the camera, I’m throwing out ideas and throwing out jokes and throwing out things to Milly as we’re shooting, and vice versa — she’s trying things. You like to have that arsenal in the edit room so we can figure out the tone of the movie, like, “How much humor do we want? No humor?”

That was the surprising part of it, because literally we have this ticking clock, and there were a lot of jokes that we ended up having to take out because it just felt like she’s not in a joking mood. She’s pissed off, and she’s on a mission, and every second counts. So every time she would stop to have a joke or be sarcastic about something, we really had to weigh up, “Is it true to her character and where she is emotionally right now,” and make those sacrifices. So there was a lot of leaning it out more and making it tighter in a way, and that was an interesting learning curve to the edit. She is almost like this missile on a mission throughout the film, and it got leaner and leaner in that sense.

Who was the one you showed it to who gave you a note that you had just missed somehow completely? It was oblivious to you, and you’re like, “How did I miss this?”

GILLESPIE: It’s a good question. The first person I always show it to is my wife. We’ve been together for 40 years, 34 years married. She’s very straight and blunt and honest. I know if I’m in good shape after she’s seen it. She saw the first rough. It’s hard to imagine, but as soon as the movie finishes, she was like, “How does she not reunite with the dog?” That scene we have in the tent was a pickup. We had the part at the end where Krypto was there running through the field and everything, but that interstitial scene there… As soon as the credits came, that was her first response. I was like, “Oh my God, you’re right. How did we not shoot that?” So there you go. That was one thing.

[Laughs] I’ve spoken to so many filmmakers, and there’s always something that you miss. By the way, it was everyone on set. Every single person. It’s not just you.

GILLESPIE: Yeah, nobody was like, “Should we show him getting the anecdote?” [Laughs]

The whole movie is about saving a dog, but we’re not going to show the reuniting because that’s not important.

GILLESPIE: We had them reuniting in the field, but it just wasn’t the same.

Craig Gillsepie Explains Superman’s Small but Important Role in ‘Supergirl’

Superman and Supergirl will return in James Gunn’s ‘Man of Tomorrow.’

Image via DC Studios

Superman is in the movie, but he’s a minor part. I would imagine there’s a lot of debate from the studio, like, “How much do we want Superman in the movie? Where is he going to be in the movie?” Because I’m a huge Superman fan, I want to see him in the movie, but it’s not a Superman movie.

GILLESPIE: It ended up being a great, organic thing. There was that discussion as we were putting him in the film because that was something that wasn’t in the initial script, was the conversation when she’s brushing her teeth at the beginning of the film. It was like, “Do we do a flashback here? Do we do this or that?” And I really liked the idea that he was calling here on a video phone, and keeping it in her space and in her environment, and not going to him on his planet, and saving those moments where they were actually physically together for later in the film.

So that was something that we sort of mapped out throughout the movie. And again, you don’t need a lot. A little goes a long way. So there are sort of these emotional touchstones along the way where she is that worked beautifully as these signposts, in terms of their relationship. So that was the main goal of Superman in this film.

I love the stuff with her in him when she has returned. She goes through so much. Where she starts at the beginning and where she is at the end, we see her journey, and we understand at the beginning why she is the way she is, and we understand at the end why she is the way she is. For fans, there’s something so great about seeing the two of them together, both on the same page. Can you talk about filming that stuff?

GILLESPIE: I sometimes like to give myself options, so I actually shot that scene with David [Corenswet] in the superhero outfit and then David as Clark Kent, trying to do a surprise birthday for her. Very quickly, when we cut that together, to your point, you wanted to see the two superheroes together in their outfits. It was abundantly clear. And it is a magically understated moment between them, which I love.

She’s not “cured.” She’s not at peace, necessarily, but she’s definitely come to terms with her responsibilities. I think it’s still going to be a journey to her, but that’s what’s exciting about it. You do see she’s gotten a darker place, and part of that whole journey was that she was very much running away from it, and she was forced to deal with it, obviously, through Krypto, but also Eve [Ridley], as a character, who was almost a mirror to the trauma that she’d been through in a different kind of way, a very drastic trauma. So when she starts trying to preach to her how to deal with that, she realizes she’s not doing that, and that was a very interesting dynamic to have for the two of them.

‘Supergirl’s Lobo Was Always Going To Be Jason Momoa

“Fifteen years he’s been championing it.”

Image via DC

I definitely have to bring up Lobo. Was it always going to be Lobo, or did you guys discuss another character?

GILLESPIE: [Laughs] Jason [Momoa] has wanted to do this role forever, and he’s perfect for it. Fifteen years he’s been championing it, I think, so pretty much out of the gate, it was like, “Yeah, we’re going to have Jason for Lobo,” and he was thrilled with it.

Then, it was about, “Alright, so there have been decades of comics with Lobo. Where are we zeroing in? Which version of Lobo will we do?” We very quickly gravitated towards the ‘90s and all the outfits and how close we stayed. Because you’ve seen in the comic book world, they’ve gone a long way away from, sometimes, where comic books are with their outfits, but we really wanted to stay true to a version of Lobo, and Jason did too. He had a very strong point of view on that, as well.

When he came on the set, it was, in the best way, this sort of injection of adrenaline, because there’s a certain energy to Milly’s performance, which is exactly what it should be. She’s an outsider, and she’s quieter, and she’s subversive and sort of sarcastic, but then Lobo comes in, and he’s like a tornado. He literally comes out of a fireball in that scene. He’s so gregarious and unfiltered in the best way, and to see those two clash, it was always some of the funnest scenes to shoot.

Was it always going to be Lobo hungover in a bar, the way you introduce him? I do like how he’s in the bar, and Milly’s like, “Don’t look at him. Don’t talk to him. Don’t engage this man.”

GILLESPIE: Yes. It was always written that way. And Jason, of course, in the best way, once he gets up to the bartenders, that was primarily the script, but he’s improvising in places, and I do love when actors get to improvise. It’s always something that I get excited about. So, to see the way that they can react to each other, because that’s acting to me, is the reaction, to see when they can play and to have that banter, that’s when it really comes alive, and Jason was very game with that.

When you think back on the Lobo stuff when you were filming, is there a scene or a moment with Milly and Jason that, when you think back, you always zero in on?

GILLESPIE: It’s in the bar. It’s literally him coming up and asking about her, and then her slinging under and doing the Valley Girl impersonation. And then when he’s like, “Stop, you’re giving me a headache.” I think that was an improvisation from Jason.

Once Jason agreed to do Lobo and he’s in the movie, I’m sure there’s debate between how much it’s going to be a cameo and how much we want Lobo to be in the movie. Where is the line? Because for a lot of men, that’s what they want to see. I love that it’s two women leading this movie, but being honest, a lot of men go to see superhero movies, and they want to see Jason as Lobo or Superman, and you have to balance, “How much do we want to have?”

GILLESPIE: It is a dance, and it’s absolutely that balance. Obviously, the priority is that this is Supergirl’s film, so it’s like, how much can we get away with? There was even to the point of, in that final action sequence, the balance of, like, a few less explosions and carnage on the Lobo side, in which case he comes in and just causes mayhem. So, it was that dance of that balance, of when do we get back to then Milly taking over? And you want to leave the audience wanting a little more. That’s always the best part, too. You don’t want to overdo it. You don’t want to overcook it.

No matter how much money you have and no matter what your schedule is, there are always sequences that the line producer or someone will say, “Are you sure we need this?” What was something that you were fighting for, even against the budget and schedule?

GILLESPIE: Candidly, it was shooting in Iceland. As much as there’s stuff that’s done on stage, we got to go to Iceland and shoot some sequences there, and it sets the look for the whole third act. What I love about that, where she lands and walks out and collapses, and Eve coming out of the cave and going down to the water, is that it holds the visual effects companies beholden to make it as authentic as what we’ve already shot. It’s great for them that they’ve now got the canvas that they have to replicate, in terms of lighting and the clouds. So it just makes it all feel so much more authentic, and that was something that I really threw down my sword on at one point.

I’ve thankfully been to Iceland before, and it is really like visiting another planet. The actual location, there’s no set deck, it’s just another planet.

GILLESPIE: Literally, when she comes out of that cave and walks down to that lake, that’s all in camera.

I say the same thing about Malta. It’s like stepping back in time. It’s incredible. Anyway, what is a tiny background detail, costume choice, or prop that you hope fans obsess over?

GILLESPIE: [Laughs] The pooping alien.

That’s a great gag.

GILLESPIE: Also, Alan Tudyk on the space bus.

Of course.

GILLESPIE: That was a really fun surprise.

It was. Once you hear his voice, you know exactly who it is. He’s okay. He’s talented.

GILLESPIE: He might have a future.

Exactly. So you’ve mentioned the intense debate over where to place Kara’s single allowed PG-13 F-bomb. Without spoiling the exact moment, what was the funniest or most absurd scene where you considered using it but ultimately had to say, “Let’s save it?”

GILLESPIE: It was probably the arm wrestling scene. She had a good F-bomb in there.

Was there a lot of debate on where you wanted to place it?

GILLESPIE: It’s also, again, to that point that we were talking about with her being locked into getting to save Krypto; that was some of the jokes that we’d have to sacrifice. It’s a fun moment, but again, maybe she’s having too much fun in the moment. Ultimately, that scene was longer, the whole arm wrestling part of that, and then we ended where she just snaps it. She’s just moving forward, like she’s propelling the plot. That was a sort of discovery in the edit.

It’s also Harrison Ford just shooting the dude in Raiders.

GILLESPIE: Exactly.

‘Supergirl’s Deleted Scenes Expand on Eve’s Backstory

“There’s like 10 minutes of stuff that is not in the movie.”

Via. DC Studios, Warner Bros.

It’s great when someone super powerful doesn’t play around. It’s “Let’s just move on.” You’ve obviously finished the movie, and eventually this will be out on home video. Let’s not pretend it won’t be. Have you actually prepared a bunch of deleted scenes, or are there things you’re going to give to the fans down the road?

GILLESPIE: Yes, we’re working on that. The amount of scenes is what we’re trying to figure out. But yeah, there’s a few.

Is it something where you would think about an extended cut, or is it always the theatrical cut with deleted scenes?

GILLESPIE: We’ve tightened it, so there’s like 10 minutes of stuff that is not in the movie, but it’s all part of the same scene, so to speak. So, I’d say some of the other things. There’s a scene we’re thinking about where we get to see Eve’s family. We do a whole section of that that used to be the front of the film.

So it’s basically more with the family before Krem, and everyone shows up.

GILLESPIE: Yeah, and ultimately, we felt we didn’t necessarily need that. It’s those small sacrifices that you make to propel the movie on.

Totally. That’s why I love physical media. But some directors I’ve spoken to do not like showing deleted scenes, and others are selective with what they’re willing to show. It’s the balance.

GILLESPIE: It is a balance. Then there are the alternate scenes, as well. Is that good or bad? So, we haven’t quite figured out the list yet. Right now we’re just in the middle of getting the film out.

Judd Apatow has done a lot of alt scenes where they’ll show multiple versions with different jokes and stuff.

GILLESPIE: I enjoy those scenes because you sort of put your own director’s hat on, like, “Would I put that in, not put that in?”

100%. It’s interesting because in a lot of movies, filmmakers will do that, but with superhero movies from Marvel and DC, they tend not to do that. It’s very meticulous what the studio will allow out. It’s a little different.

GILLESPIE: Good to know. [Laughs]

Good luck, because I would love for you to do this. I love that home video stuff. There are five original alien languages created for this film. Did you ever catch Milly or the cast cursing at you in Kryptonian when a scene took too many takes?

GILLESPIE: [Laughs] I’m betting they were. Here’s my flaw as a director: “Let’s do one more.” Milly would be like, “It’s never just one more.” But I knew she was saying, “Let’s go again!”

You’ve directed ice skaters, fashion villains, hedge fund chaos, and now Kryptonians. Which one has the most dangerous set of fans?

GILLESPIE: I would probably say the hedge fund guys. There are some pretty aggressive lawyers.

They also have way too much money.

GILLESPIE: Yeah. That’s a scarier proposition.

You’ve directed complicated, messy, funny characters in movies like I, Tonya and Cruella. What made Kara Zor-El feel like a Craig Gillespie character?

GILLESPIE: She’s so similar in so many ways to characters I’ve done in the past, whether it’s I, Tonya, Cruella, or even Lars and the Real Girl with Ryan [Gosling]. They’re these outsiders, or these misfits, who have often been through some kind of trauma and are trying to find their way and find their own identity. Ultimately, their imperfections are what make them so relatable. I love to go on that journey and find out what makes them beautiful.

How Craig Gillespie Found a Unique Directorial Voice for ‘Supergirl’

Gillespie has previously worked on ‘I, Tonya’ and ‘Cruella.’

Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

What’s the most Craig Gillespie scene in the film?

GILLESPIE: It’s probably her drinking in the bar at the start. [Laughs] It’s funny, I love being able to meet her character that way. It’s just not what you expect of a superhero. She’s running away from all of her responsibilities; she wants to hide, she’s got nobody other than Krypto, and we see all of that happening in a singular scene. Then, against her better judgment, she can’t help but help someone. Having all that wrapped up in one scene as an opening was really amazing.

James Gunn has spoken extensively about creating a DC universe with distinct directorial voices. What is the specific thematic boundary you pushed in this film that you think would never have been allowed in a traditional, formulaic studio superhero movie?

GILLESPIE: I think it is that unapologetic nature of this character. To see, particularly, a female superhero that’s so flawed and almost self-destructive in a way, with her going to the red planets and trying to escape with alcohol, to be able to start there, but have a female character as a superhero that’s not sexualized, that can just look like she’s rolled out of bed in rumpled clothes, and give basically zero fucks. All of that stuff was incredibly exciting for me to be able to present, like a really grounded, fully formed character that is not perfect and is more beautiful because of that, and more relatable, I think, for the audience.

Also completely different from Superman. We don’t want two of the same character. There has to be a difference.

GILLESPIE: I know. That was wonderful to have that sort of friction and juxtaposition. I do love that line where she’s explaining it upstairs in the bedroom to Eve, and she’s like, “Oh, he’s a nerd.” She’s like, “He sees the good in people, and I see the truth.” They have such a different perspective on life.

You find out you’re going to do this project. What is it like as a director, because you must have known a little bit about DC, but I don’t think you knew everything. What is it like once you get to the gig in terms of the preparation? How much are you reading? How much are you diving deep on every character to understand the lore, and how much is it like, “I have so much to do. I can only read so much, so what do I really need to know?”

GILLESPIE: The amazing thing is Tom King’s version of Supergirl, Woman of Tomorrow, is so different than what’s come before it. So having that and then Ana [Nogueira]’s script, that was my North Star, and I started there. I deliberately stayed away from everything else. I think the trick is, too, you can’t second-guess people. You’ve got to sort of stay true to yourself, and so I put together a deck of what I wanted to do. If they didn’t want to do that, no harm, no foul. So I had 120 images; I came in, it was gritty, it was quite dark. She was very rough around the edges as a character. I pushed to not have her be in her superhero outfit until late in the movie. All of these things that excited me about it.

I had the one meeting with James, and in that meeting, I said to him as we were talking, “How much do you want this to be in your universe?” Right out of the gate, he’s like, “We’re taking each one as its own graphic novel, as distinctive as a graphic novel is with its illustrator and writer. This is your version.” And because most of this movie happens off-planet, I had to invent it all, which was incredibly exciting and ultimately daunting as hell. I mean, there are like 50 aliens on that bus. All the wardrobe, the languages, every planet, the different spaceships. I’d turn around and be like, “Give her a coffee cup,” and they’d be like, “Which planet is it from?” It’s not a coffee cup from Earth. You can’t just grab things. So that part was daunting, but the freedom we had to do all of that was kind of amazing.

Everyone loves George Lucas and Star Wars, but a lot of people forget that he was doing all that in ‘75, ‘76, designing all these aliens, all the tech. People just forget how genius it was, what he accomplished back then.

GILLESPIE: Honestly, to do a movie now that’s just set on Earth… Like 70% of our production was taken up with that development — all these aliens, all the looks, all the languages. I think they’re on seven different planets. The transportation and the backstory of that. Krypton, we’re reinventing that in its own way. So, that was an enormous undertaking, just every aspect of that, between wardrobe, production design, the cinematography. We were trying to make it look different in each place.

It’s funny you mentioned cinematography because that was my next question. How did you end up with Rob Hardy, and what were those initial conversations like in terms of telling him what you wanted to accomplish and working together on the visual aesthetic of what you wanted to put on screen?

GILLESPIE: I love his work. He has such a range, from Ex Machina to Mission: Impossible. I had my regular DP, who sadly was not available, who I did Cruella and I, Tonya with, Nicolas Karakatsanis, so I went to Rob, and I showed him the visual deck that I had. We started with that. One of the first questions was, “How gritty can we go?” And I was like, “I think we can go as gritty as necessary. We don’t have to shy away from that. We’ve been given that opportunity, and I want to lean into running with it.”

He quickly latched onto some of the late ‘80s, like Thelma & Louise was sort of a big inspiration for the bar scenes with the neon. There was a lot of color going on in that period, and so we looked at that as a reference and faced a lot of practicals that had those colors and influence, like in those bar settings. Same with the space bus. There was a lot of color going into those sections, and we really tried to differentiate each emotional space. By the time we get to Bilquis, it’s pretty grim in terms of color. There’s a lack of color there on that planet, and we talked our way through all of that.

The other thing, which I love with Rob Hardy, in terms of the grittiness of it, is that he really insisted on a lot of that action sequence shooting outside, even though there would be big blue screen sections to it, up on the decks — we built that whole deck — but he loves the imperfection of that, and that you have to chase the light. There are things that aren’t perfect, whereas if you’re on stage, everything looks perfect all the time. So, it’s constantly trying to give it that grit.

You’ve said that the camera language shifts with Kara’s emotional state. What emotion was the most fun to translate visually?

GILLESPIE: I actually did really enjoy the fight on Bilquis. The first one was in the bar, and we said, “Let’s make this Eve’s perspective, because we’re going to see a lot of action through the film.” So that was fun to see with her and to see the wonder of it. The second one, she’s angry, and to have her be angry with a superpower and also poison, so she’s not completely in control of her faculties, to see a superhero on the edge that might lose it and go too far was a really fun dynamic to have in that sequence. But then, I love the final sequence of the big wraparound because it’s poetic. She’s fully embraced her character, and you see the awe from Eve. So, I love how they’re all so different, honestly.

One thing people don’t realize is that when you’re filming an action set piece, that can eat up a lot of time in your schedule, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. Hypothetically, let’s say you had 80 days. You have to calculate, “Where and when do I want to deploy my additional resources in my schedule?” Can you talk about working with everyone to figure out, “Where do we want to spend extra time?”

GILLESPIE: It’s amazing. It’s kind of incredibly surprising how much those action sequences take up. I like to do it myself. We don’t have a second unit director to do the action because I’m a little too specific about what I want and a bit too much in control, I guess.

You like to micromanage? What?

GILLESPIE: As a director? [Laughs] So, we shot all of those sequences, so that middle sequence probably ultimately ended up being maybe six weeks of our shoot. And then you get to do these dialogue scenes where Lobo in the bar is one day. It’s such an impactful scene, and it’s just the kind of stuff that people love. But the flip side of that is our actors are so good at their craft, and so dialed in, that we can do that in a day. Then you might do three big action set pieces in a day, which is 12 seconds of the movie. It’s such a crazy imbalance, but it all is important. Obviously, the character stuff is the stuff that you connect to and resonate with, so you’ve got to make sure you have space for that. There is that dance, but when you break it down, the amount of time that you have two people talking in a room, percentage-wise, is kind of shocking.

Every movie is going to have big action set pieces. The thing that I visually really remember is the two of them in the apartment talking after she’s back. That scene means a lot.

GILLESPIE: I love that scene. Again, that scene is probably two-thirds of a day. It didn’t need to be more. Milly is so good. She sat down, and that was her body language out of the gate, tucked in that corner, not wanting to talk, resisting, trying to keep her space from Eve. Then it was the blocking on Eve, when she’s sitting, and then she lays down. Once you figure out that blocking, and then you let them go, she didn’t do a bad take. That’s the amazing thing. You get to see this beautiful performance, and we get to do eight or nine takes, and we have it. You kind of want to step away before you wear it out, in a weird way.

Your filmography frequently explores characters who build emotional walls to cope with isolation or trauma. How did you approach Kara’s specific flavor of grief, the burden of remembering a dead world that her famous cousin never knew?

GILLESPIE: It’s emotional walls, and often, too, humor is used to deflect, which is something that I think is often a tool of humor. It gets overlooked. So she might make a joke or dismiss something, or throw a line away. That’s her way of deflecting the moment. It’s just a very natural human trait, and I think it’s something that people identify very quickly with and can relate to. It’s so much more interesting than somebody who doesn’t have things to explore and work out within their own selves.

Supergirl has Krypto, Lobo, alien worlds, revenge, and comedy. What was the hardest tonal ingredient to balance?

GILLESPIE: It was the tone. It was exactly that. Like I said before, I’m getting a bunch of different jokes, knowing in the edit we’re going to have to sacrifice some of those jokes. Interestingly, that was the thing we lost more than I expected. There was a great scene between her and the alien that’s drooling on her shoulder on the space bus. It’s so much fun, but we were kind of like, “We kind of don’t want her wasting her time with him.” So, things like that, that I thought would be just fun to sit in for a while, we had to release.

Supergirl is in theaters now.

Release Date

June 26, 2026

Runtime

108 minutes

Writers

Ana Nogueira

Producers

James Gunn, Lars P. Winther, Nigel Gostelow, Peter Safran

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