He’s good-looking, talented, popular—so what, exactly, is wrong with James Marsden? First he loses the girl—namely Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey—to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in the X-Men films (she breaks his heart—and more of him). Then Rachel McAdams writes him off in The Notebook for Ryan Gosling, and now he’s trying not to let his latest girl Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) get swept off her feet again by the Man of Steel himself (Brandon Routh) in Superman Returns. Yes, Marsden‘s batting average is looking worse than Bill Pullman’s epic run of also-ran beaus in those ’90s romantic comedies, but Hollywood.com still loves ya, Jimmy, especially when you give us the early lowdown on Superman Returns!
Hollywood.com: You have a much bigger role as Richard White in Superman Returns than you did as Cyclops in X-Men: The Last Stand. Still, was it a difficult decision to make when you realized the production schedules on these films were going head-to-head, knowing you might not be able to fit Cyclops in?
James Marsden: It was just one of those things that—Bryan [Singer] is a great friend and has been very, very helpful with my career—and it’s Superman, and I love Bryan as a director and I think that he is going to give people exactly what they want and he’s going to…not revive, because I think he has a great deal of respect for the Richard Donner films, but they were in the ’70s and now we have a generation of people that obviously know who Superman is but might have forgotten that movie or not seen it. So to me it was a safe and creatively gratifying move to go to Superman and work with Bryan again. And shed the glasses and be a regular guy.
HW: Were you worried about any bad blood with the X-crew?
JM: No. Obviously if they can have you on board when they want you, it’s easier for them to not have to work out scheduling details. That was the only conflict, really. I’ve got to hand it to both Fox and Warner Brothers, because they were really collaborative in working out my involvement for both of them. So it wasn’t as dissonant as some might have thought, it was just a scheduling thing.
HW: Richard White is a character created expressly for the film, and is not part of the Superman comic book canon. Were you worried about any fanboy backlash—criticism from the die-hards who always tend to loudly express their misgivings about any tweaks before they seen the finished film?
JM: No. I feel very safe in Bryan‘s hands. He is a super-confident director and one of the most talented guys out there, and if he concocts this character who didn’t exist in the comic books, then he did it for a reason and I didn’t really question. Obviously, it is difficult to be the competition for the Man of Steel. How do you compete with that, you know? But the movie works on so many emotional levels that it transcends the physicality of Superman and gets into his emotional struggle. It’s an interesting situation.
HW: Superman is Richard’s rival for Lois’ heart—and yet how do you hate Superman? That must have been tricky to play.
JM: I think Richard is conflicted about what’s going on, but I think that Richard’s standpoint is that it is Superman. It sucks to have the ex-boyfriend be Superman, but Bryan came to me and said “I think that Richard likes Superman, and he is a fan of Superman. He is a normal guy who, if you see a guy streak across the sky, it’s like ‘That is really f-ing cool.’ This guy is amazing and he does great things.” And Richard embodies a lot of that, Richard is a good guy and charming likeable guy, and so the difficulty and challenge for him is that when you have feelings for somebody and you love somebody, I don’t care who you are, it just makes it more complicated. For Superman and Clark. And for Lois because of her conflicted feelings. And me, too, because we are engaged and we have a whole life together. I just think it makes for an interesting very realistic approach to an emotional relationship.
HW: Why do you think Brandon Routh makes the right Superman for right now?
JM: You know, I think whatever Bryan saw, I believe he has this eye and he has impeccable taste. It sounds really narcissistic [Laughs] but I think when you see Brandon walk into a room you immediately look at him and go, “Oh my God.” Not only physically is he this commanding presence, but he is a very sweet guy, a very generous actor. It was amazing because when I first met him I went, “Okay, he doesn’t look like the man I remember in Chris Reeve,” then he will do some facial expression and he will look exactly like Chris Reeve. Not that Bryan is even worrying about emulating Chris Reeve—he’s not at all—but it’s obvious when he walks into the room and speaks, he just embodies this in his real life, I’ve gotten to know him, and there are so many aspects of Brandon that are not only Superman but Clark Kent—and Clark Kent from the farm. He is playing three different characters in the movie, and there is a lot of him in each role, and so he is a terrific actor. I think that people are going to be very pleased. He is the obvious choice, I think.
