The CW’s Supergirl returns for its fifth season on Sunday, October 6, 2019, airing at 9pm ET/PT immediately after primetime newcomer Batwoman. Last season was an emotional rollercoaster for the key Supergirl characters, and season five is certain to be just as much of a twisted journey for Kara Danvers and her friends.
Katie McGrath (“Lena Luthor”) and Andrea Brooks (“Eve Teschmacher”) were paired up at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con to discuss the new season of the popular comic book-inspired superhero series. They kept the discussion spoiler-free, and in fact McGrath revealed not even her mother can get juicy Supergirl spoilers out of her although she does try.
Hello, Miss Teschmacher!
Katie McGrath: (Laughing) “You’ve been wanting to do that all morning, haven’t you?”
Andrea Brooks: “Sometimes I get it on the street and every time I’m like (reacting in shock and straightening up). It’s an automatic response at this point.”
Katie McGrath: “The day he did it…because he didn’t do it full volume until he was in the take and it was like, ‘I’m going to break character, break character! This is the coolest thing ever!’”
Andrea Brooks: “And I was waiting behind and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! I have a gun.’”
Katie McGrath: “And you’re going to kill me!”
Andrea Brooks: “It’s very hard to point a gun at your beautiful face. I did not like it.”
Katie McGrath: “I was really upset when you were filming that scene. I was like genuinely crushed.”
Andrea Brooks: “That was a hard day.”
Katie McGrath: “She’s so angelic-looking and then she puts a revolver in your face and you’re like, ‘This is not fair.’”
Andrea Brooks: “Sorry!”
You were really affected by it?
Katie McGrath: “I was, honestly. I was, really. Between that and finding out my brother that I trusted – it was a heavy day.”
Andrea Brooks: “That was a very heavy day.”
Katie McGrath: “It was.”
Andrea Brooks: “And on the reverse I asked to not hold it. Do you remember? I’m like, ‘I’ll put it to your face if you want but I really don’t want to. Do you need it?’ I was being very selfish. Like, ‘I don’t want to.’”
From where you ended season four and going into season five, what’s your sense of where Eve Teschmacher and Lena Luthor are now and where, as people, they’re going?
Katie McGrath: “I think for my character you’re going to see what it means for somebody when everything they believed has been taken away. It’s kind of like getting the rug pulled out from under you. Everything that was solid in her life that she was holding onto, especially as season four went on and things started being taken away from her and she found out things, she started holding on more and more to the things she thought were real and what does that mean when their whole world is emotionally destroyed?
We’re not dealing with the biggest time jump between season four and season five; it’s only a month. So, where does somebody put their energy when they’ve been kind of emotionally destroyed? And for Lena what she’s doing is that’s never going to happen again, but the problem is humanity’s broken. I mean, listen. Luthors don’t have small plans, okay? Lena’s decided she’s going to fix humanity and everything’s going to be fine. That’s how she’ll never get hurt again. We’ve got to think big. (Laughing) That’s how we’re going.
So, I think for her that’s how she is. It’s how she deals with being so destroyed and how does she move forward from that. What is the way to stand back up and go on? It’s hard. You got knocked down and you’ve got to move forward.”
Andrea Brooks: “I think Eve is an interesting puzzle and the puzzle has just been smashed to pieces and they’ve been scattered all over the universe at this point. Goodness. I always say Eve is an enigma. You never know what you’re going to get with her, and I do love that she’s in the most vulnerable position right now.
We know that Leviathan has been affiliated with her for a very long time, and then Lex Luthor. The fun in that is where are her alliances? Who is she as a person? Where is she going? She has no idea. I think being able to deep dive into that and explore it further is going to be really fun.”
Do you have any idea about the answers to those questions? Do they tell you a lot about what’s going on in the upcoming season?
Andrea Brooks: “They give us a general idea, but luckily not in too much detail. Good for situations like this.”
Katie McGrath: “The less you know is generally better. Especially because people so want to know the answer. My mom is always ringing me up for spoilers and I’m like, ‘No, mom, you don’t want them. You’ll be disappointed if I give them to you.’ This is why I don’t read that far ahead.”
Andrea Brooks: “And you don’t want to focus on the end result. You need to focus on what’s in front of you, what your character’s going through in that exact moment. I don’t want to know the future. I don’t want to know too far ahead.”
Katie McGrath: “You don’t want to spoil anyone else’s experience as well. You know, when we get scripts and we read them, then we’ll do a group chat and there’s always somebody on group chat like, ‘Have you gotten to this?! Have you gotten to that?’ You want everyone else to figure it out at the same time.”
Andrea Brooks: “I don’t like to know too much about everyone else’s character choices or their storylines because if I confront another character, I want to approach it from an honest position – from Eve’s honest, authentic self. I don’t want to know their answers. I do like to protect myself and stay in a little bit of a bubble when it comes to storylines.”
Katie McGrath: “And TV’s very different from movies. When you do a movie, you get the first script and you know your character’s arc. You can point it and plot it through because you know the start, the beginning, the end. With TV, you only have one script to work on – and we do 20 episodes. There’s no way you’re going to know. You get a general character arc but sometimes that can change.”
Andrea Brooks: “It does, yeah.”
Katie McGrath: “So unless you see it in print, it’s hard. You’re told not to rely on that because it might move or something else like that. You try to rely on what you have in front of you.”
Andrea Brooks: “It’s more like real life. You just treat it as it comes. And it’s fun, the spontaneity.”
So, your own mother can’t get spoilers?
Katie McGrath: “No! And lord knows she tries. She’s going to be watching this and she’s going to be sitting there saying, ‘Damn right, Katie. I gave birth to you and I get nothing!’ Shame on me. Bad daughter!”
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