The One Smallville Sex Scene That Went Too Far
More than ten years have passed since the end of the successful American superhero series Smallville. It told the story of the adolescence of the young Clark Kent in American suburbs and his road to becoming the Superman we know.
Many things have changed since the end of Smallville. Superheroes became trendy again and Superman didn't. Most of the series' former stars went on to explore separate acting careers. Tom Welling, the on-screen Superman was most recently seen in The CW's Professionals and is set to appear in The Winchesters. Michael Rosenbaum, who was his on-screen nemesis, Lex Luther, played Martinex in Guardians of the Galaxy. But behind the screen, they are best buddies and even run a podcast together.
The name of the podcast is TalkVille. It was launched in July 2022 and it is, as one can easily guess from the name, a Smallville rewatch show, where ex-costars discuss an episode every week with guests' and fans' comments. The aim is to review the total 217 episode week by week and rebuilt the total arc of the show.
One wouldn't imagine the rewatching of teen TV drama from the beginning of a millennium to become awkward. But it did.
In a recent episode of the podcast Tom and Michael discussed an intimate scene on Smallville in season one, episode 15 they felt went too far. In the scene Welling's character of Clark Kent walks in on his adopted parents, Martha and Jonathan Kent, having sex in the kitchen.
While watching it over 20 years later Rosenbaum noted it might be "a little rapey". As Welling stated, the scene "was uncomfortable for everyone, including me," so it was eventually cut from the series. So no viewers saw it, and no one should.
The discussion on the podcast was another way to draw attention to the importance of properly filmed sex scenes in the modern TV industry. It is not for nothing that nowadays there are intimacy coordinators and general concerns about showing consent on screen. Has the scene made it to the final cut, it could probably destroy the whole Smallville experience for generations of viewers. But it didn't, and we are happy with that.