Actor fills some supersized shoes
Cameron Cuffe plays Superman’s grandfather in Syfy’s prequel Krypton
Cameron Cuffe has the weight of the DC Superhero universe on his shoulders.
He is, after all, playing the father of all super-fathers: Seyg-El, the grandfather of Superman and the man who started a dynasty.
Syfy’s Krypton, which debuts March 21 at10 p.m. on Space, takes place 200 years before Seyg-El’s son, the scientist Jor-El, places his own son Kal-El, a.k.a. Superman, in a rocket to see him flourish under the yellow sun of earth.
“I was over the moon when I heard I was chosen for the role,” British actor Cuffe says in an interview in Toronto. “The fact that you are playing Superman’s grandfather sounds surreal. I just feel incredibly grateful and lucky. I’m a huge comic fan and Superman was always my favourite character.
“Movies and television have always been important in my household and comic books have always made my mind race. I think it’s a fresh, interesting way to tell the Superman story. But yes, there was certainly no small pressure to get it right.”
The London-born Cuffe, a graduate of Ireland’s National Academy of Dramatic Art, was cast after an appearance in Florence Foster Jenkins, but he is a relative unknown.
That places him in good company. Christopher Reeve and Tom Welling were also largely unknown when they were cast as the Man of Steel in the 1978
Superman film and the TV series Smallville, respectively, allowing for a blank canvas to reboot a familiar mythology.
“I think this works because it’s different,” Cuffe says. “You have this incredible legacy of Superman, but what we’re doing is deeply science fiction. This is more a society that is utopian, but underneath it’s crumbling. Great science fiction isn’t necessarily about aliens, it’s about how people relate to each other.” Krypton is produced by David S. Goyer, the screenwriter of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Man of Steel and Batman Begins.
Unlike Marvel, with its burgeoning cinematic universe, DC has had a harder go historically of making characters resonate with viewers — except perhaps for Wonder Woman. The Justice League movie was a noisy CGI train wreck of epic proportion. With the exception of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy with Christian Bale a decade ago, DC has not fared well on the big screen.
They have been far more successful on television with The Flash, Arrow and Supergirl.
Still, given that this is set in a world without superheroes, producers are hedging their bets early. Writers have already revealed that the story will have some elements familiar to fans of The
Terminator movie series. In this case, DC superheroes Hawkman and Adam Strange are sent back in time to protect and train Seyg-El to safeguard Superman’s bloodline. And there will be present-day villains sending their own superhero terminators back into the past to assassinate Grandpa.
“I think it really creates a sense of conflict and higher stakes that elevate the show,” says Cuffe, who says as a child, he got his start reading comics.
When the series opens, Seyg-El is the head of a fallen house and needs to find his way back with the help of his future friends. Cuffe says the series is as much a drama as a typical superhero show.
“There are really fantastic shades of grey. While Seyg-El has a hero’s heart, he is on a path where he has to make sacrifices. Even when he wins, it can be a hollow feeling because you’ve made so many compromises to get to that point. That’s the arc where the show explores so well,” Cuffe says.
“The fact that you have this thing called the DC Universe means you have this incredible toy box to play with. It’s important we get it right, and people will be critical if we don’t because it means so much to them. Superman is this person who believes in you even when you don’t believe in yourself.”
“Great science fiction isn’t necessarily about aliens, it’s about how people relate to each other.” CAMERON CUFFE SEYG-EL IN KRYPTON