krypton
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through it all, is how he comes to understand
what it means to be a hero, to not lash out, to
not live your life in a very self-centred way.
He does make selfish choices and he makes
mistakes and that’s one of the things that
makes him a fascinating character.”
Having watched Val-El’s execution at the
hands of the council when still a youngster,
Seg’s life takes yet another grim turn
when his mother helps him steal a ship (or
Skimmer as they’re known), shows him
Val’s Fortress, and is punished as a result.
Revenge soon becomes paramount to Seg’s
thinking, but he must learn to look at the
bigger picture. “That’s exactly it,” Cuffe
affirms. “Seg has started life at the top of
Krypton society and quickly his family, a
great family of freethinkers and scientists
and revolutionaries, lose their status and lose
their honour and that affects him badly. He
loses people close to him and that shakes his
worldview and it makes him very afraid to
lose anyone else. It also makes him do the
reckless thing where he probably shouldn’t.”
Risk-taking is part of Seg’s nature, and
Cuffe believes this is reflected throughout the
new series on many levels. The showrunners,
Goyer and the chief creatives at DC, he says,
have shown courage in delving into an area
which, while referenced in much existing DC
mythology, is largely unmapped, certainly
when looking at the details.
“The show is not afraid to take risks,” he
insists, “and it’s not the kind of show where
our heroes go on an adventure and they meet
this baddie and they defeat this baddie and
they go back to their home base and start
again. Every single time an episode ends, it
ends with a massive shift in the status quo,
which affects all the characters and which
affects the entire world.”
Cuffe grew up an avid reader and collector
of comic books, counting both Superman
and Batman among his favourites, and
understands how that world works. “The
very nature of comic book series storytelling
is that you have to put all the toys back in
the box so you can start again. This show
isn’t like that. There is a cost to everything.
Even when a character wins there’s a price
to pay and as an actor that’s one of the most
exciting things.”
His character is here called to adventure,
to look beyond survival and revenge, whenAll is not well in the
house of El...