Superman Returns crash-landed into movie theaters twenty years ago this year, and the film’s lead, Brandon Routh, is finally revealing just how strange his journey to playing the Man of Steel actually was. For the film’s 20th anniversary, Routh was interviewed by Cole Haddon on the 5 a.m. Story Talk podcast, and revealed a chain of “wild” coincidences that led to him playing the world’s most popular superhero.
It Started With a Karaoke Party in 2003
A full year before he was cast, in October 2003, Routh attended a karaoke birthday party. “There was a young lady there who I was conversing with, friend of a friend, who somehow we got on the topic of what she was working on in Superman, and her boss, her writer that she was working for – she was his assistant, I believe, at the time – was writing the Superman movie,” Routh recalled during the interview. At the time, he had heard that Nicolas Cage was up for the role, but the woman, who thought he looked like Clark Kent, quickly corrected him, “No, they’re moving on to a different version. It’s a younger Superman.”
Over the years, Routh had been told he looked like Christopher Reeve hundreds of times. “I kind of told her the story then about my manager and my kind of connection with Superman, loose connection,” Routh said, referencing an earlier manager who had also told him he resembled Superman actor Christopher Reeve. “So I was like, ‘Okay.’ ’Cause I kind of — that was funny that she brought it up, because as I had a little more backstory, I’d started working at Lucky Strike… and there had been more than one person who had then remarked about my resemblance to Chris. So it was kind of become a running thing for me a little bit.”
During this part of the conversation, Routh also points out that he was struggling at the time and drove to Disney to drop off his headshot for the woman to pass along to the powers that be. It was here that he discovered that she was actually working for J.J. Abrams, and he was currently trying to put together a Superman film for Warner Bros.
About a month later, Routh met Courtney Ford, who would become his girlfriend and later his wife.
“Her brother, Bob Orci, was writing partners with J.J. at the time on Lost,” Routh said. [Public records credit Orci’s writing partnership with Abrams at that time to Alias, not Lost — and list him as Ford’s step-brother.] “So I thought… a month later when I met her, I was like, ‘This is weird and strange.’”
The Mountain Audition That Led to Brandon Routh’s Superman Casting
Then, in early 2004, Superman came up again. Routh auditioned for a CW pilot called The Mountain, executive produced by Stephanie Savage and McG, who was, at that point, attached to direct a Superman film. [The Mountain actually aired on The WB in 2004 — The CW wasn’t formed until 2006.]
“I saw that fax paper come through the fax machine, and I saw his name on there, and I thought, ‘If I go and have a good audition for this, maybe he’ll be in the callback and I’ll see him and he’ll be like, you should come in and meet about Superman,’” Routh said.
After several rounds of meetings, including one with McG that wasn’t Superman-related at all, Routh’s manager delivered the biggest news of his career. But it came with a warning to pull the car over first.
“The bad news is that you are not getting the role in The Mountain. They just couldn’t — they didn’t see that it was going to work,” Routh remembered being told. “And then I said, ‘Okay, so what’s the good news?’ He said, ‘Well, you know, after meeting with you, you know, they basically sent word to McG that they think that he should meet with you to come in about Superman.’ So the literal thing that I thought I made happen — happened.”
But that was only just the start of his bizarre journey to becoming the Man of Steel in Superman Returns. His story gets stranger.
In the interview, Brandon Routh revealed that two more moments sealed his belief that the role was actually fate and that he was meant to play Superman. Firstly, he remembered a childhood dream, and secondly, a strange experience he had the night before meeting about the part.
The Koala Bear Dream and a 3 A.M. Sign From Christopher Reeve
“I have a memory of this dream, and I was flying — as a kid, I was still a kid in the dream — above a metropolitan city, and I had a red cape on… and around me were koala bears with red capes.” Routh notes the strange resonance years later, as Superman Returns was actually filmed in Australia.
The second experience happened the night before his first meeting with McG. He was working late at Lucky Strike bowling lounge, then went to the gym at around 3 a.m. to try to buff up before his big day.
“Nobody was in there, but the TV was on,” Routh said. “And it’s Saturday Night Live. It’s a rerun. And the announcer says, ‘Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night Live, with guest host Christopher Reeve.’ And Chris hops out in his one and only performance on SNL in a pink bunny suit. And I was flabbergasted. I looked around — there’s nobody around to watch me see this — that on the night, the little night before I’m going to have my first meeting about this, of all the channels that could have been on, and all of the reruns it could have been on, that I just happened at 3 a.m. to come into the gym right at that moment.”
Routh says he understood, even then, why he was collecting these moments. “When Superman kept coming up in my life, I was like, I kept building this — like, what is this? Collecting these oddities of experiences… but it feels like that means something that’s positive. So I took that with me.”
Around six or seven months later, after his meeting with McG, Routh got the call confirming the role. In the interview, Routh recalled a phone call with his parents. “To finally call my parents and say, ‘Do you know — do you know who you’re speaking to?’… that was incredibly exciting,” he said. “I think maybe I need to go back and have a meditation about that experience… and not just go from, ‘Okay, now what do I do,’ but honor that it happened.”
Brandon Routh went on to play Superman in 2006’s Superman Returns. And although that film didn’t get a sequel, he did return to the role 13 years later in The CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. It was always meant to be.
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Watch the full interview below.
