David Corenswet might be a little too much like Clark Kent. While on the set of “Superman,” the actor put on his reporter cap by asking James Gunn frequent questions about his acting skills — so many, in fact, that Gunn had to tell the young DC star to “shut the f–k up.”
“Sometimes his questions are great, and I totally see where they make him better, and because they make him better, they make the movie better,” Gunn told GQ in an interview out Monday. “But every once in a while, it’s just one question too many, and it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, just, David, stop, stop, for a minute.’ And the beautiful thing about me and David is that he knows that about himself and he knows where my limits are. And when I say, ‘David, shut the f–k up,’ David totally gets it and does not take that personally.”
Gunn spoke to GQ as part of an interview with Corenswet in anticipation of the release of “Superman.” The new DC Studios film comes at a key moment in both men’s careers — while Gunn is rebooting the DC universe as a Kevin Feige-like architect, Corenswet has been tasked with by far his biggest role to date.
At the same time, the film comes at something of a perilous moment for Superman as a character. Despite being the iconographic figurehead of superheroes for nearly a century, the character has recently been saddled with grim adaptations and questions of whether or not audiences want to see a hopeful Boy Scout in our current cultural and political moment.
Corenswet spoke to the pair’s relationship, saying the two of them worked together extensively to ensure they were getting Superman right.
“I think in a lot of ways, James and I are made for each other,” Corenswet told GQ. “James has this habit of, as you’re working on the scene, he’ll sit back by the monitors on the God mic and he’ll yell directions at you, which is not how directors generally work. You usually do the scene, they say cut, and then they come and say very privately and quietly, ‘I loved that moment where you did this. What if we tried something else in the next one?’ That is something that would throw lots of actors off, and understandably so.”
“For me, the second that happened, I went, ‘OK, this is going to be great because I have no idea what I’m doing,’” he continued. “I desperately need a director. I need a director who knows what they want and is willing to say it out loud without too much politeness and without beating around the bush. If I’m no good, tell me I’m no good, and then let’s work together to make me good.”
This working relationship evolved into one of reporter-like questioning on Corenswet’s part. As the actor increasingly asked questions about his character and direction, Gunn said he became occasionally frustrated at how far Corenswet would go in his interrogations. Corenswet said it’s a quality Gunn attributes to a filmmaker’s brain.
“After we finished shooting, we were hanging out and [James] affectionately — I think — described me,” Corenswet said. “He said a very nice thing: ‘You’re a filmmaker, and so you want to be involved in the filmmaking and you want to help make the film as good as possible.’ Then he said, ‘I think you’re also like a kid sticking his finger in light sockets and sometimes I gotta slap you on the wrist and say stop f–king doing that.’”
“We have a really, to me, beautiful relationship in that way because I’m used to being very sensitive with actors, and you have to be by default, because many actors are incredibly sensitive because they’re putting their emotions on the line onscreen,” Gunn agreed. “But with David, he’s not that way. He’s not sensitive like that.”
“Superman” flies into theaters on July 11.
