Michael Rosenbaum, Smallville
Over Smallville's nine-year run, the show's universe has fittingly expanded; yet, fans would like to see a few characters come back.
Though we haven't see her in quite a while, Martha Kent (Annette O'Toole) is still alive and well. Even though Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) is presumably dead, the Superman mythos would have to disagree. Jimmy Olson (Aaron Ashmore) was also lost last season, but the real photog and eventual best friend to Clark Kent (Tom Welling) is still running around somewhere.
Executive producer Kelly Souders discusses the fate, fortune or future of various Smallville characters who've been missing in action...
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Mazel tov! I've been to my share of crappy b'nei mitzvot (there was a time, just over a decade ago, when I could have filled my entire closet with shirts that said, "I Had a Blast at [X]'s Bar Mitzvah!"), but even I am not sure where on the awkward scale that party fell. Between Larry's vigorous defense — which started out with "There's a guest here spreading a vicious, nasty, scurrilous rumor about me and a gerbil," and unfortunately ended with "I do have a tickle in my anus…" — his admission to wearing "No Fly Zone" underwear, and apparently ending up with Loretta (if it wasn't just a St. Elsewhere dream), well, it might just belong on a scale all its own.Oh, Larry. Where do we even start? It seems pretty clear that he wasn't crushed by the loss of Cheryl, per se, it was more just that he was worried he'd never find someone else willing to put up with him. His flirting technique indicated that he was right to worry ("Let me ask you a question: Did you ever go out wi...
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Geez, who had Stiffler pegged as the career feature-film star? But I get ahead of myself. The latest pilot-casting news from Variety and the Reporter:• CBS could soon be home to three American Pie stars. Jason Biggs is a Wall Street whiz who dies in a Blackberry-related car accident and, since Hades is full, is forced to endure "Hell on earth" (aka a life devoid of his fancy career, apartment and such) in I'm in Hell. Chris Klein, meanwhile, is the series lead's best buddy in The Captain, which has also added comic Al Madrigal as a janitor.• Ricki Lake is the mom in The Middle, ABC's comedy about a lower-middle-class family in the Midwest.• Michael McKean is a low-level congressman's chief of staff in ABC's The Thick of It.• Penn Badgley (John Tucker Must Die) has joined the CW's Gossip Girls.
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Michael Rosenbaum and Tom Welling, Smallville
You asked, and we got you answers, as series cocreator Al Gough continues his campaign to address your burning questions about Smallville (Thursdays at 8 pm/ET, on the CW). This week's hot topics include the Clark-Lex rivalry, the last days of Krypton, and TV's "other" Superman.
A lot of fans originally started watching Smallville because of the promotion of Clark Kent and Lex Luthor, and the much-talked-about friendship of legend. Epic stuff! Do you feel you have done justice to this friendship? Did you have the story mapped out from the beginning and then follow it to the letter? Or did your "Clex" plans adjust over time? Are there any Clex times you wish you had done differently? — OriginalClexFan Gough: Thanks for your questions, OriginalClexFan. We've always known that the friendshi
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Question: Two weeks without AA, and your comeback does not include Veronica Mars? In the words of Gob, come on!
Answer: Maybe this'll make up for it. Rob Thomas conveyed to me the "most depressing casting news in the world" last Thursday. "Yesterday morning we had Michael McKean to play the dean [of Hearst College], which I was so excited about I was doing backflips. It made my day yesterday. And then I got the call last night that he had passed [on the role]. So, somewhere his agent got confused over the course of 12 hours. I'm such a huge fan of him, and he's exactly who we wanted to use. He was at the top of my list. That's a drag."
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Question: As a Smallville junkie, I feel that I am entitled to know whether or not Michael McKean has been signed on to return as Perry White any time this season.
Answer: "We are talking about that," Al Gough tells me, "but if it happens it'll be in the back of the season. We tried to bring him back last year, but he was very busy [on Broadway] with Hairspray and then he did a Woody Allen play."
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Michael McKean is Hopeless' Mel
This Friday IFC will unveil a trio of new Hollywood-skewering comedies — "three new series, one deranged hour," as the net puts it. Kicking off the pod at 10 pm/ET is Hopeless Pictures, an animated take on the adulterous love life and disastrous professional life of indie-movie-studio boss Mel Waxman. With Michael McKean (Best in Show, Spinal Tap) voicing Mel and Bob Balaban (A Mighty Wind, Waiting for Guffman) as the series' writer, director and producer, there are decades of comic brilliance behind this look at Tinseltown wheeling and dealing.
then again, doesn't TV already have enough of such fare? Balaban acknowledges a kinship with such shows as The Comeback and Entourage, but is confident that Hopeless Pictures h
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