I'm (slowly) trying to do transcripts of the audio interviews, but they're so much ruckus in the background and no one's speaking loud enough, nor do they speak with correct grammar! Here's the first half of Brian Peterson and Kelly Souders for now:
CC: When you're facing a series of multiple years and major cast changes, you know, losing some of your key actors and having to deal with mythology... How'd you approach the season once you knew certain actors weren't coming back? How did you piece it together in the writer's room?
BP: Well, first of all, Michael, we can't say enough great things about Michael Rosenbaum. He just made the character of Lex Luthor for our show. It was sad to see him go pursue his own interests. The character's going to be very much a part of this season. It's opened up the doors to bring in new villains from the DC universe, and we needed a foe that was as great as Lex, and there are very few of those out there, so we brought in Doomsday who's going to be a great part of the season.
KS: And we brought in Tess who's going to be a formidable opponent for pretty much everybody on the cast at some point. I think as much as we lost tremendously in Al and Miles, we're still in communication with them, and they've been really supportive. Obviously, we took some massive hits this year, but in a strange way it sort of forced everyone to look at the show differently, which I think you don't often have an opportunity like that after 7 seasons. It allowed the writers to walk in with a blank slate in some ways and look at how to reinvigorate and reinvent the show, the characters, the situations, the relationships. We're actually all very energized. I haven't seen the writer's room as energized in a little while. Not that we weren't really passionate about it before, but I think it's just forced everyone to think deep.
BP: I would just add that the dynamic of Clark and Lois at the Daily Planet, when the dailies are coming in, is fantastic. It's iconic, it's exactly what those two actors feel like they were meant to do. I mean, they are just great together. Watching Clark and Lois together in the way that we're used to seeing them from everything that we remember, I think is making it a really fun show this year.
CC: Can you talk about the Clark and Chloe interaction, especially on the romantic side that might be coming up on the show?
BP: We definitely have an episode this year that addresses a lot of the underlying tension, the sexual tension, the love tension between the two of them. So we do touch on it this year. Definitely.
KS: It's also a season for all of the characters across the board to move on to the next phase of their life which is kind of exciting. So there's a lot of some sense of leaving the past behind and moving to the next part of the Superman mythology.
CC: Is this a full sort of pushing Clark really now, assuming this is the last season, there could be more, but assuming this is the last season, is there really a drive to push Clark [mumbling] Superman?
BP: What's great is that we up until this point haven't done a lot with Clark trying to balance the double identity of Clark Kent and this Superman figure. So this year is very much about double identity and him learning the balance of that because that's a long journey in itself that we haven't even touched on really until now.
CC: I'm kind of gullible. Is a crossover with Supernatural really a possibility?
KS: We never cross anything out. We haven't talked about it in these first two months that we've been hitting the ground running on season 8.
BP: It was talked about in previous seasons, so it is in the realm of possibility.
CC: You talked about a lot of reinventing and changes that are going to happen. What do you think needs to stay the same? What do you think you need to keep to make sure the show still has an audience and is still going to be Smallville?
KS: Well, the great thing for the four of us since we've been on the show as long as we have, it sounds kind of cliche but these characters and the world and the show have a life of it's own, and so you can't ever come in and change some things. You can't come in and do a 90 degree turn, even if that's your intent because the characters are so true to themselves and I think our cast does such an amazing job of embodying the characters that they really live as real people. So when we talk about all of the changes, it's probably more of an evolution than a change. I think Allison has been such a great Chloe and she will always be that Chloe. This year, it's just about opening her world up a little bit more. Same thing with Clark Kent. So I think that show has been successful based on it's ability to kind of give us an origin story of Superman that felt real but also had some reinterpretations in it. So I think we're just following in those footsteps that Al and Miles created for us. Clark Kent's still the same Clark Kent, we just wanted to get him closer to the Superman that we know, that the general public is more familiar with.
CC: We've heard of Lois and Clark before and the relationship between them, is it unfair to say that this could sort of be viewed as, you know, the old show Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, is this closer in tone to that banter that really [something] between the two of them a lot?
BP: I would say no. Because that isn't the feel of our show and isn't the characters that people have gotten to know on our show. I think as they work together you see the tension and the sparks fly which is really fun, but it's all born out of the same Clark Kent that we know, and the same Lois that we know on our show, so there is not a change in tone on the show in any way.
The second half of Peterson and Souders:
CC: Has there been any talk of getting Erica Durance for more than 12 or 13 episodes this year?
BP: We have an option for her to do more, and what's great is she is really present in all of the episodes so far. She's front and center and is doing a great job. So yes, there's an opportunity for more.
CC: With the character of Doomsday, obviously you're in an interesting transition of Lex being the iconic villain for all of these seasons, now you have to transition into somebody new. Plus you're playing around a little bit with the origins of Doomsday versus what comic book fans know. How do you toe that balance of not tinkering around too much so that everybody gets in arms at the same time being able to establish somebody that needs to fill a large gap on the show?
KS: Nobody can ever step into Michael Rosenbaum and Lex Luthor's shoes, so I think was the first, that's when we sat down to really think about the season and about the villains and Clark was eventually going to be fighting, that was our number one thing. Don't try to replace Lex Luthor, there's just no point to it, we can't do it, we would never want to. We honor the character, we honor the actor so much. But, that said, we looked at who was the biggest villain we could possibly bring in, we talked about Doomsday, we sat down with DC Comics. We have great reps over there that work with us tirelessly, and they kind of said that there hasn't been much backstory on Doomsday, so what Smallville always tries to do when they reinvent something is also try to link up eventually with what happens or to get the sense that that's where that character's going or that storyline so that everything kind of matches up. Just because he comes onto the scene as this really great, fun-loving, charming guy paramedic, doesn't mean that we aren't also trying to figure out how to make sure that he lines up down the road.
BP: I think Al and Miles created a show that uses DC mythology but always puts a little spin on the new characters and very much the way we introduced Brainiac the way we did. I think we got to a place that people understood we were linking up and we actually were really true and respectful to the mythology. It's exactly what we're doing with Doomsday.
KS: I think the character of Doomsday in the comics is a lot of fun and he's certainly a great villain, but when you think about having this play scene after scene after scene, you want to start with the human side of that or how did this person get to that point? And that's the part that Smallville's always done a great job of investigating.
CC: With Lex Luthor, are you kind of holding that card as [something], like when the show ends, if it's this year, if it's next year, so that you can tell that final moment that Al and Miles were talking about between those two characters and maybe get Michael back for that?
BP: Yes, although we did sort of play that final moment in the season finale and actually Al and Miles were kind of instrumental in that finale, not knowing what opportunities we had ahead of us. But we definitely have some ideas... his character's very much threaded throughout the season.
CC: I read somewhere that we might see some flights but no tights. So I do want to ask the flight question but I am also curious, is Clark going to play a little with the idea of a secret identity?
KS: Yes. That's actually his main thrust this season is realizing... as he moves in... You know, saving people in Smallville was one thing where he kind of had to run to the factory to save Chloe or you know the roads weren't very crowded, the streets weren't very crowded. Being alive in Metropolis as Superman is a very different experience and he will find very quickly in the season this year, he discover it's not so easy when you're running through crowded streets or you're having to run into a crowded crisis situation.
BP: Or you're accountable to Lois back at the Daily Planet.
CC: Does he fly this year?
BP: We have a lot of conversations. The only thing that we were saying is that we can absolutely confirm that there's no tights. That's pretty much all we can say on that.