Taylor Swift‘s Invisible String may be universally accepted as a folk hit exploring the concepts of soulmates tied together by fate, but a strong case could be made that it’s actually about Brandon Routh and his role as Superman.
Whether it was divine intervention, luck, tenacity or talent that got him there – the latter is apparent from a quick glance at Superman Returns‘ box office figures and critics’ reviews – Routh’s casting as Clark Kent/Kal-El seems like it was written in the stars.
“It was absolutely daunting but it also felt right,” the now-44-year-old tells 9honey Celebrity of getting the call ahead of his appearance at Metro Comic Con in Melbourne this weekend.
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Routh seized the mantle after an audition process that some could argue started at birth – he was raised in Norwalk, Iowa, a city right near where George Reeves, the first actor who played Superman on television, was born.
He also attended high school with fellow future DC star Jason Momoa, playing football with the actor who would go on to be cast as Aquaman in 2014, 10 years after Routh’s foray into the property was announced.
But it was the reason his former manager agreed to sign him on in the first place that Superman Returns director Bryan Singer cast him – Routh has an uncanny resemblance to the late Christopher Reeve, who famously played Superman in the ’70s and ’80s.
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Routh, who was working in a bowling alley before being cast, first met Singer at a coffee shop after Singer saw one of his audition tapes. The director knew Routh was his Superman immediately, but didn’t inform the actor of that fact before letting him sweat first. For months.
In October 2004, Warner Bros. finally announced Routh would be the next Man of Steel. That same month, Reeve died from heart failure at the age of 52.
All of a sudden, donning the billowing cape Reeve had made his own was an even heavier weight on Routh’s shoulders.
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“I think I kind of – mostly unconsciously, but slightly consciously – accepted the challenge, the journey,” Routh recalls hours before boarding his flight to Australia.
“I didn’t understand the depth and breadth of what it might be or what it was. But I thankfully had enough groundedness to understand the power of the character and respect it.”
It’s not just Reeve’s legacy Routh is talking about, but also the fact that, for many fans, Superman is a symbol of hope – and Routh had to live up to their own expectations and relationships with the character.
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Looking back, that’s something Routh wishes he could have approached differently.
“If I would have been able to give myself the freedom to just know that I could make it my own, just a little bit, instead of being word-perfect [to the script], that would have opened up a lot of a lot for me,” Routh says.
“That little shift, an ability to have some more ownership… would have relaxed me because I think my challenges that I have in the movie [were] moments when I was not as free as I would have liked.”
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Routh, who most recently played the Earth-96 version of Clark Kent/Superman in the Arrowverse’s Batwoman and Supergirl series, says that because Superman Returns was a “loose sequel” to Reeve’s films, he was “in a way carrying on [Reeve’s] version of Superman”.
“Embodying enough of that to resemble [Reeve] was important,” he says.
“The more important thing about that was the ethos, the energy. It wasn’t about the way I pushed up my glasses or an exact rhythm of my speech.”
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