Milly Alcock’s Supergirl ‘understands that most of us exist in a grey area’

Milly Alcock connected with her character because she saw her as someone “who’s extremely flawed.” Unlike Superman, “she’s messy and she’s not going to deal with things in the right way,” Alcock says. Warner Bros. Pictures

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He was only partway through reading Ana Nogueira’s script for Supergirl, but director Craig Gillespie already had a vision of who he wanted his star Milly Alcock to embody as the titular heroine.

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The cousin of ultimate do-gooder Superman, Gillespie didn’t see Alcock’s character as a squeaky-clean eternal optimist. This Supergirl was headstrong, determined, rebellious and a bit of a foul mouth. She marched to her own beat.

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He heard Debbie Harry’s anthemic Call Me as her possible theme song. The track was originally written for the 1980 film American Gigolo — but listening to it again, Gillespie thought it could also serve as the perfect introduction for Krypton’s ultimate badass.

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“Blondie is a band whose aesthetic and punk attitude just fit so naturally with Supergirl,” Gillespie says in an interview from Los Angeles. “There’s something about them.”

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Writer-director James Gunn, who was hired to overhaul DC’s interconnected slate of superhero films that began in earnest last summer with Superman, describes Alcock’s Supergirl as a “much more jaded character.”

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“Superman is a guy who was sent to Earth and raised by loving parents, whereas Supergirl, in this story, she is a character who is raised on a chunk of Krypton. She watched everybody around her perish in some terrible way,” he says.

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So for most of the film, which opens in theatres June 26, Alcock’s Kara Zor-El wears a Blondie T-shirt, eschewing the traditional costume emblazoned with the letter S that her cousin dons.

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“It was kind of the only T-shirt we thought about, before we even had approval,” Gillespie says.

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“It just made sense,” says Alcock, who is best known for playing a teenage version of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in House of the Dragon, a prequel to Game of Thrones.

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But in addition to Blondie, Alcock had an entire playlist of rock ’n’ roll outsiders that helped her channel the carefree Kryptonian party girl.

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“I’ve sent Craig many playlists. I was listening to a lot of Amyl and the Sniffers, they are an Australian punk band. I was also listening to a lot of Fontaines D.C. … And Radiohead’s In Rainbows. That was my bag for getting into Kara,” she says.

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Based on Tom King’s 2021-22 Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic book series, Supergirl follows Kara as she’s in the midst of an intergalactic bender with her beloved super pooch Krypto after her cameo in last year’s Superman.

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Having had to witness the demise of her home planet of Krypton, and see everyone she loves perish, Kara isn’t guided by the same altruism as Superman.

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“I’m just worried that you’re not gonna find your stride here if you keep going off-world all the time, Kara. I’m worried you’re not gonna find your people,” David Corenswet’s Clark Kent/Superman says to Kara early on in the film. She responds: “Yeah, well, that’s the thing, Clark. I have no people.”