When Milly Alcock learned she had been cast as Kara Zor-El, she did not get a formal call or a dramatic studio meeting. She got a text from James Gunn.
“James texted me and was like, ‘Open your phone,’” Alcock recalls. “He’d just sent me a screenshot of the Deadline article. I was like, oh, this is happening!”
The moment was thrilling, but also intimidating. Supergirl has been played before, but Supergirl marks the character’s first standalone film in a long time, placing Alcock at the center of a major new chapter for DC Studios.
“It was terrifying,” she says. “A few people before me have played Kara and have played Supergirl, but this is her first standalone film in a really long time, so I was excited, but, you know, anything exciting and new is kind of scary, too.”
For Alcock, the appeal of the film began with Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, the comic book by Tom King and Bilquis Evely that inspired the movie. She was struck not only by the beauty of the artwork but also by the emotional core of the story.
“It’s so beautiful,” Alcock says. “The illustration and the world that has been created is so stunning. And I think also the story about resilience and about these two girls on a mission to overcome their own grief, their own internal turmoil.”
At the heart of the film is Kara’s relationship with Ruthye, played by Eve Ridley. Alcock sees Kara recognizing something of herself in the younger girl, even if she does not always know how to help her.
“Kara sees Ruthye, I think, as her when she was younger,” she explains. “And she’s kind of uncomfortable in her own skin, and she doesn’t really know how to help her avoid all the pain and the feeling that she had.”
That dynamic was one of the things that made the material feel different from a traditional superhero origin story. “I think that a story about two women that doesn’t center on men or center on the approval of men, but kind of the internal, overcoming their own battles, was something that really struck me as something quite special,” Alcock says.
Introducing a Different Kind of Kara
When audiences meet Kara in the film, she is not a polished symbol of hope. She is damaged, restless, and struggling with the weight of what she has survived. “Kara is someone who is uncomfortable in her own skin,” Alcock says. “I think she’s uncomfortable with the life that she’s been given and the responsibility that she’s been given. I think she has a lot of survivor’s guilt, and she internalizes that by self-destructing and deflecting any real sense of responsibility, because it’s easier.”
Director Craig Gillespie’s approach helped Alcock lean into that messier, more unconventional version of the character. She says Gillespie was constantly searching for the unexpected emotional angle inside each scene. “Craig has made this world so beautiful,” she says. “He and Tom Hardy have just painted this beautiful landscape of all these different planets, and I feel so privileged to be a part of it.”
She adds, “Craig is someone who’s always looking for what’s not on the page in a way. Like, you can read a scene and think, oh, so these are the beats, this is the arc, this is whatever. But he’ll kind of try and invert it, which is really fun. And I think it’s very unconventional as a superhero film, and his work has really highlighted that.”
That unconventional quality extends to Kara’s mission with Ruthye. Alcock does not describe the story as one about saving the universe. She sees it as something more intimate. “I think Kara and Ruthye accidentally use each other’s circumstances to solve their own world, in a way,” she says. “But they’re not trying to save the world, they’re just trying to save each other.”
Working opposite Ridley became one of Alcock’s most meaningful experiences on the film.
“Eve is just such a star, and I feel quite protective of her because she’s so young,” Alcock says. “But she is so good at direction, she’s so adaptable as an actor, which I think in young actors, especially, is really hard to find, someone who’s willing to get it wrong. That makes things really interesting and exciting for me, as her scene partner. And I can’t wait to see where her career takes her.”
Alcock also shares scenes with Jason Momoa, who plays intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo. “He’s the man,” she says. “He’s great. I mean, he’s a big star, and working with someone who you see on screen is always a cool experience. It was super fun working with Jason.”
The World of Supergirl
The film’s galaxy is populated by aliens, creatures, and practical builds that gave Alcock something tangible to respond to. She credits Legacy Effects with creating physical creatures that made the work feel alive on set.
“It was a challenge because you rely on your other actor to give you stuff, and you can bounce off someone in a scene,” Alcock says. “But working with the animatronics and creatures that Legacy created, because they were so physical, if that makes sense—they made puppets and they made these insane, exquisite creatures—it kind of alleviates that for you.”
She appreciated that the creatures were not just placeholders. “We were not working with a tennis ball, we weren’t working with a blue screen,” she says. “Working with a physical thing, which makes it a creature, I should say, not a thing, makes it really fun, and Legacy were so playful with the aliens. They were beautiful, the craftsmanship was insane.”
The same was true of the film’s environments. Alcock says the physical sets helped her understand the rougher, less polished world Kara moves through. “I think working in those physical sets really made it easier as an actor to kind of understand the world, because this isn’t like a squeaky, shiny superhero movie,” she says. “We’re on dying planets, we’re in very poor places. We’re in places that are in transit and in space. So, it helps you understand the experience of what it would be like to be in these environments and who would go there. And they’re so beautiful. They’re really cool.”
Becoming the Maiden of Might
Becoming Supergirl also meant months of physical preparation. Alcock trained with stunt coordinator Rob Inch and stunt performer Mickey Facchinello, who she jokingly calls “the real Supergirl.” “Mickey is the real Supergirl, she is such a pro,” Alcock says. “I started working with Mickey and Rob two months before we started shooting. I would go and do two hours of stunt training with them each day.”
At first, the work was intimidating.
“At the start of stunt training, I thought, this is a really scary thing to be doing, and I was so nervous because these people are incredible, and I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to do what I needed to do,” she says. “And they were phenomenal in helping me, piece by piece, get my confidence up, because it is a lot of choreography, and it’s also quite dangerous.”
Alcock says the stunt department became essential in helping her physically inhabit Kara. “You end up really leaning on the stunt department,” she says. “Rob created such an amazing world, and Mickey helped me immensely, as a person and also as actually being a stuntee. And I really admire both of them and their work.”
The role also required Alcock to shape Kara’s voice, including her English and Kryptonian. She worked with dialect coach Kohli Calhoun to find a grounded sound for the character. “Kara’s voice, for me, had to be kind of low and grounded and within the world,” Alcock says. “But I also don’t think it really needed to be perfect because she only started learning English when she was about 15, 14.”
Learning and acting in another dialect brought its own challenges, especially during scenes spoken in Kryptonian. “Learning another accent is always a challenge, and then acting in another dialect, that’s always such an interesting experience,” she says. “But Kohli really helped me curate Kara’s voice.”
One of those scenes paired Alcock with David Krumholtz, who plays Kara’s father. “Working with David Krumholtz, who plays my dad, was great because it was a really dramatic scene that we have, and it’s in a completely different language,” Alcock says. “And bless poor David, because he had like a ton of stuff to say! And he was such a soldier.”
Alcock also received advice from David Corenswet, who plays Superman. Their time together was brief, but the handoff mattered.
“I spent very minimal time with him, but we’ll spend more time together and the passing of the torch was kind of nice,” she says. “I think I was way more nervous than he was at the start of filming Superman, but he gave me some advice.”
That advice turned out to be accurate. “He was like, you’re gonna bruise. I definitely did. You’re gonna feel proud of the bruises. A hundred percent true. And you’re gonna hate the harness and the suit by the end of it. And all of those things are true.”
The Timing is Right
For Alcock, the timing of Supergirl feels right because of what the film says to young women about pain, resilience, and self-determination.
“I think that we’re due for a really gritty and fun film about two kickass chicks who overcome something, not in the pursuit of love or lust or marriage or whatever, but fueled by this pain, by this hurt that they have felt from things outside of their control,” she says. “And both of them don’t understand what to do with it, they don’t know where to put it, so they lean on each other to get through it.”
That, she says, is the message at the center of Kara’s journey.
“I think that that’s a really important message for young girls, that you can be your own hero,” Alcock says. “It’s up to you.”
The Geek is a working screenwriter, director and screenwriting instructor.
REELated:
“Why is he in his underwear?” First clip from Supergirl
