- 7/7/2025
Superman star David Corenswet breaks down everything he did to become James Gunn’s adaptation of Kal-El in the latest DC Studios cinematic universe installment. The American actor talks through every step of his journey to becoming Superman: from receiving the casting call during Twisters filming to gaining 45lbs before shooting.----------Director: Kristen DeVoreDirector of Photography: Grant BellEditor: Brady JacksonTalent: David CorenswetProducer: Sam DennisLine Producer: Jen SantosProduction Manager: James PipitoneProduction Coordinator: Elizabeth HymesTalent Booker: Ernesto MaciasCamera Operator: Shay Eberle-GunstSound Mixer: Glo HernandezProduction Assistant: Lauren Boucher; Brock SpitaelsSet Designer: Sage GriffinArt Department: Leah Waters-KatzPost Production Supervisor: Jess DunnPost Production Coordinator: Stella ShortinoSupervising Editor: Rob LombardiAssistant Editor: Billy Ward
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Didn't need a zipper to pee because my intrepid dresser,
00:03Scotty, and I got so good at getting in and out of the suit
00:06that we could do it in about four and a half minutes.
00:15Hi, I'm David Cornswett, here with GQ,
00:17to talk about how I prepared to play the role of Superman.
00:26So when did Superman first present himself in my life?
00:30I really don't remember.
00:31I assume that my first introduction was Smallville,
00:35Tom Welling in the television show.
00:37While we weren't allowed to watch television growing up,
00:40I had like a couple hours after I got home from school
00:42before my parents would get home where I could sneak,
00:44whatever was on.
00:45I think Superman is one of those characters, ideas, symbols
00:50that pervades the culture, and therefore,
00:53you don't necessarily need a first exposure.
00:56I'm not sure I really did want to play Superman.
01:00I never thought it was an achievable goal.
01:03I mean, even when I was auditioning for James' movie,
01:07I didn't really think that it was possible
01:09that I was going to be the person to get it.
01:11I was at home on a ladder, like, changing a light fixture.
01:15And I took the call, and they were like,
01:18well, David, we think you know what this call is about.
01:22And I was like, I really don't know what this is about.
01:25I'm on a ladder.
01:25Please talk faster.
01:26And my agent said, it's an audition.
01:30You know what's coming.
01:31I was like, Top Gun 3?
01:32What am I, like, definitely waiting for?
01:35I said, no, it's Superman.
01:36Superman.
01:37You're not special.
01:38There are a lot of people auditioning.
01:39Everybody's going to self-tape.
01:40There are going to be no, nobody's
01:41meeting with James ahead of time.
01:43Everybody's going to put themselves on tape.
01:45And good luck.
01:47Don't fuck it up.
01:48Luckily, I live with and had just very sensibly
01:51gotten married to my self-tape partner, my wife,
01:55who's also an actress.
01:56So we did about an hour, did the scene a few times,
01:59then came back after a couple of days and did it again.
02:02And I think I did that three times, just in the hopes
02:04that on one of those days, I would find something
02:06that was worthwhile.
02:07I think in the end, I used one of the takes
02:11from the very first session.
02:12You'd let me interview you as Superman.
02:15Sure.
02:15For the audition purpose, it was rewritten.
02:17It was sort of fabricated a little bit,
02:19so it didn't give anything away.
02:20But it was between Superman.
02:23Superman or Clark and Miss Lane.
02:26And it was an interview of a kind.
02:28And then I spent one of these days leading up
02:32the deadline watching the Superman movies.
02:35Who are you?
02:37We watched the first Christopher Reeve movie,
02:39we watched Superman Returns, and we watched Man of Steel,
02:42just to sort of get a sense of the cinematic canvas
02:45that had existed over the decades, which was really wonderful.
02:48And I had some strong thoughts that I told to my wife.
02:51I got very passionate, as I often do watching movies.
02:54I love movies, and I love critiquing them,
02:57and I love celebrating and sort of breaking down
02:59where they succeed and why they succeed.
03:02And I think she was the one who said,
03:03you should probably get these ideas to him
03:06in some form or another.
03:07He should know what you're thinking.
03:10I wrote a letter.
03:11I sat right down and I wrote myself a letter,
03:13addressed it to whom it may concern,
03:15leaving open the possibility that no one would care,
03:19and so it would concern no one.
03:20And I just laid out some of the thoughts that I had
03:23and the passion that I had for the possibilities
03:25of this character and the great drama available
03:27to a character like Superman.
03:29And I sent that along with my audition tape
03:32to whomever it concerned, and then I forgot about it.
03:38I got cast in Twisters after that,
03:40so I went to Oklahoma, and it was just before
03:43my first day of filming that I got the call
03:45that I was gonna screen test for Superman,
03:47one of the most iconic characters in all of film
03:50and print media.
03:51I found out that Nick Holt was gonna screen test,
03:54and I was like, well, I'd give it to Nick,
03:56who I had sort of tracked all through his career,
03:58and every time I saw him, I thought,
04:00I wanna be like him, and also I'll never be like him.
04:02Like, I could never be as facile and specific
04:05and charming an actor as he.
04:07But in some ways, that's good news,
04:09because then you go, well, if they give it to him,
04:11like, who can blame them?
04:12We arrived, we were paired up into Clark and Lois's,
04:16Clark's and Lois's, no, Clark and Lois's.
04:19We were paired up into pairs of those pairs.
04:21You know, like a pair of shoes where it's one thing,
04:23but two, anyway.
04:24And then we stepped out onto sort of a sitcom set,
04:27three walls and a living room,
04:29and we had some props and we had some things to play with.
04:33There are very few actors, I think,
04:34who really love a director on a mic in a different room.
04:38Say it like this now.
04:40You know, interrupting every three lines to say that.
04:42And that's how James directs.
04:44Not all the time, but a lot of the time.
04:45He loves to get involved like that.
04:47And I loved it.
04:48I just thought, I don't have to do any work in this situation.
04:50He's doing all the work, I just have to do what he says
04:52and like play with it and react to it.
04:54He had three cameras going, I think,
04:56and we would do take after take after take.
04:58He would give us notes.
04:59We did costume tests where we got to try on
05:02Henry Cavill's Superman suit,
05:04which is an amazing piece of costuming,
05:07technological innovation.
05:08It's just, it's an incredible suit and beautifully made.
05:11In the same way that Henry got to put on
05:13Christopher Reeve's suit for his screen test,
05:16that's the moment when you're stepping into something iconic
05:19that you've seen up on the screen.
05:20In addition, we got to do,
05:22I got to do an afternoon with the stunt team.
05:24They put me in blue spandex and strung me up by wires
05:27and did some flying and some fighting with me.
05:29I think both to give me a sense of, you know,
05:32what it felt like and also to evaluate us
05:34on how well we could handle it
05:35and how prepared we were for that.
05:37It turned out that that was going to be
05:39one of the biggest demands of the shoot.
05:41All of those elements making up the weekend,
05:44I left feeling, again,
05:47it's absolutely impossible
05:49that I'm going to get picked to do this.
05:51So I'm not going to hope that I get picked to do it.
05:53But I think these are my people.
05:56We get along.
05:57I think they get me.
05:58I think I get them.
06:00Scarecrow's up! Scarecrow's up!
06:02I had flown from Oklahoma to LA
06:05for the screen test for a weekend
06:07and then flown straight back
06:08and I filmed on that Friday and that Monday on Twisters.
06:11And then I got a call from an unknown 310 number.
06:15So I walked in the other room, answered the phone
06:17and I heard, David, it's James Gunn.
06:20And I said, can you prove that?
06:22He was like, I don't know.
06:26I'm calling you to offer you the role of Superman.
06:30Hell yeah.
06:31We got it.
06:32We got it.
06:33All right.
06:33He hit three or four important points to him.
06:36The first of which was really caring for the work
06:40and the time that people are putting in everybody
06:43from the heads of the departments to the PAs
06:46and the costumers, the dressers.
06:49James was sort of making clear to me,
06:50it's our job as the director and number one on the call sheet
06:55to sort of shine the glory on those people who don't usually get it.
07:00And then he said, I know you're in good shape,
07:02which was nice of him to say.
07:03I was 190, 195 pounds at the time,
07:06which is not very much for somebody who's 6'4".
07:08He said, you're in good shape, but I want you to get a trainer.
07:11I want you to work on your shoulders and your vulnerability,
07:14which I thought was very funny.
07:16The final thing he told me was that Rachel was going to be cast as Lois Lane
07:19and that I had maybe a couple of hours to frantically tell all the people
07:24I wanted to tell personally before they were going to announce it
07:27because they didn't feel like they could keep it secret for very long.
07:29I desperately tried to tell my high school acting teacher, Phil Brown.
07:34He was the first teacher of mine who took me seriously enough
07:37to sort of call me on my high school bullshit of like,
07:40stop fucking around.
07:42We're not operating at the highest level here
07:44in our little Quaker high school, you know, theater program.
07:48Don't let that be an excuse not to push yourself
07:51and not to work harder than everybody else
07:53if you're going to take this seriously.
07:55And he was the last person I got to tell for the first time
07:59that I was going to play Superman.
08:01And that was a good little celebration, that phone call.
08:04The funny thing is in that moment of success where you get the part,
08:08really all the celebration is, is now I have work to go to.
08:17My personal sort of internal preparation to play Superman was pretty simple,
08:22which was I just immediately latched on to this sense of he so loves getting to do what he does.
08:30And I think that shows up in every big screen iteration.
08:33There is just this love that Superman has of his ability to protect people
08:38and to save people and to be a symbol of hope.
08:41He doesn't carry it as a burden.
08:43At the same time, there's an isolation and a loneliness that comes with that
08:47because he is the only person in that position.
08:50There's no one else who is truly his equal in that respect.
08:53And he's not one of these loner characters,
08:56one of these great superheroes who likes to be alone and wants to be different.
09:01Spider-Man's whole thing is like he's always been too normal his whole life.
09:05And when he becomes Spider-Man, that's his opportunity to be different
09:08and to stand out, to make something of himself.
09:10And for Superman, he just wants to be like everybody else.
09:14He desperately wants to be a part of humanity.
09:16He loves humanity.
09:18So what would it be like and what would the drama be for this character who's pretty much good?
09:23He's like, okay, he's cool.
09:25And he also is the most powerful superhero in the universe.
09:27What's the problem?
09:28Well, immediately I was like, well, the problem is you can't relate to anybody
09:32and nobody can relate to you.
09:34And sure, people are happy to see you in there.
09:36Like, you know, they're like, oh my God, it's fucking Superman.
09:38But you don't have heroes unless you have struggles, unless you have crises,
09:42unless you have calamities and tragedy.
09:45And so you sort of need an imperfect and fragile humanity to have heroes.
09:50But then those heroes, that hero in Superman, doesn't get to be a part of that other thing.
09:55He can come in and out of it, but he doesn't quite get to be a part of it.
09:59So that led me into reading All-Star Superman and Superman for All Seasons,
10:03which were the two comics that James pointed me to.
10:06I found immediately a one-to-one reference in a quote from Grant Morrison,
10:12who along with Frank quietly created All-Star Superman,
10:15which turned out to be one of the main references that James had pulled from,
10:19where he makes exactly the same point years before I did.
10:23All credit to him.
10:26I was aiming for about 4,500 calories a day.
10:29The gym was the first place I went to prepare.
10:31And there is a certain loneliness and isolation that comes at the gym.
10:35It's just you against the heavy weights.
10:37Yes, I had a wonderful trainer, Paolo.
10:39But in the moment when you're going for that ninth rep,
10:42or you've put a little extra weight on the bar, nobody's going to do it for you.
10:47It's just you alone in your mind,
10:50seeing if you can go a little bit further than you thought you could go.
10:53And you have this great noble goal of, like, you're prepping for Superman.
10:56But at the same time, I guess, you know, you're the only one doing that.
11:00Juilliard prepared me surprisingly well, actually,
11:02when we were doing all of the stunt work, especially.
11:05I was astonished at how much I was drawing on the years of movement classes that we would do.
11:10We trained with Moni Hakim,
11:12and his classes were sort of the most classic Juilliard experience of super high intensity,
11:17almost to the point of being impossible.
11:19And a lot of, you know, just holding your leg out and pointing.
11:23And point, under flex.
11:25For hours and hours and hours, it feels like a lifetime.
11:28It became so directly transferable to the stunt work and the flying,
11:32where I was strung up by my underpants and had to hold my limbs and my torso in
11:39in this steady, exact position.
11:43And then, as much as possible, sort of relax my face and look like it was effortless.
11:50All that training, so I couldn't fit into my costume.
11:53They had built my costume based on my screen test measurements,
11:57where I was 6'4 and 195 pounds.
12:01And then I showed up four months later, five months later, still 6'4, but 240 pounds.
12:07So that first fitting was a bit of a squeeze.
12:10There were always situations where things would work great in the fitting,
12:14and then you would get on set.
12:15You'd be in a specific flight pose or a specific fighting stance,
12:20and you would realize that this great move that the
12:22stunt team or the fight choreographer had come up with, you just couldn't do.
12:27You just physically couldn't do.
12:28I can't move my arm in that way.
12:29If I move my arm in that way, it moves the rest of me in this way,
12:32so we can't do what you think we can do.
12:34I can't lift my head up and put my feet back in the...
12:36All these things.
12:37So it's important to know that building a superhero suit, it's not fucking easy.
12:42Months and months, and really, ideally, a year of research and development about fabrics,
12:48and they're printing stuff on the fabrics, they're dyeing the fabrics,
12:51the colors are so specific.
12:52All of this makes every iteration of the costume time-consuming, complicated,
12:57and then you have to fit it on a person.
12:59Huge credit to Judiana and to her whole team.
13:03I spent so many hours in fittings with them, never once poked me with a safety pin.
13:08They, with limited time, especially because of the strikes leading up to shooting,
13:12our time prepping was limited, and they did an amazing job building this suit from scratch,
13:18making it so that I could fight and fly in it.
13:21I think the one thing we never figured out was how I could sleep in it.
13:25Only matters to me because I'm the one who wants to take a nap at lunchtime.
13:29It doesn't really matter for the movie that much.
13:30Aren't too many sleeping scenes in Superman movies.
13:33Didn't need a zipper to pee because my intrepid dresser,
13:36Scotty, and I got so good at getting in and out of the suit that we could do it in about
13:40four and a half minutes.
13:41So the Superman Clark Kent hair was a big thing.
13:47The slicked back Superman look is mainly artificial and works because that's the only hairstyle that
13:53holds up under extreme wind, as they say in hairspray, for hair that holds up even in a NASA wind tunnel.
13:58The curl is the one thing that actually is just sort of happens if you pull a piece of hair down,
14:03it curls up like that.
14:04And then the Clark Kent hair was just once we got the Superman hair, what happened if you didn't do
14:10any of that. If you just let it dry naturally, my hair gets very curly and wavy and a little bit
14:15voluminous.
14:16Mannerisms wise, I drew directly from All-Star Superman, which I think is parallel to what
14:21Christopher Reeve did extremely well, uncannily well, which was the posture where Clark is obviously
14:26as big as Superman is, but he wears his clothes and he hunches in such a way as to make himself
14:32seem smaller. And Superman obviously being a public facing symbol of hope and safety and truth and
14:38justice in the American way. He stands chest out proud, just as ready to defeat a superhuman foe
14:46as he is to be asked for directions. And that's the main thing is I think Superman wants to be seen
14:51and wants to take up space because he wants to draw all of the negative attention of the
14:57no good doers to himself so that he can take that on. But he also wants to draw the attention of people
15:04who are in need or who want reassurance or kids who want to take a picture or get an autograph.
15:11What do I want to what?
15:11I want to build Legos with the Superman. I would like to have Legos. Please, Lego, make me a Lego.
15:18All of these toys are great. It's amazing. I'm an action figure, indomitable Nick Holt with his
15:25with his amazing purple suit and his interchangeable faces. That's his sort of neutral, you know, everyday face.
15:32And then if you'll notice, this is a very different look. Nick has very different faces that he makes.
15:37This is his angry face. And then another extremely different look. This is his slightly less angry face.
15:45That's Nick Holt for you and his enormous range of facial expressions. Make us a Lego.
15:52Hey, listen, thanks for spending a few minutes listening to me talk. And if you talked back,
15:56I didn't catch it. Please send it in the mail to the appropriate authorities. And I'll,
16:04I can't wait to, anyway, look, I've wasted enough of your time, but I appreciate you wasting it with me.
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