Who Are David Corenswet And Rachel Brosnahan, The New Superman And Lois Lane?

On Tuesday, it was finally announced who would headline James Gunn’s upcoming Superman Legacy, moving on from the Snyder Henry Cavill/Amy Adams era with a brand new Clark Kent and Lois Lane.

The two actors are David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan. I’m guessing you know who is playing who. You may not know who either of them are, but if you’ve watched a certain Emmy-winning Amazon Prime show, you probably know Brosnahan, if not her name.

We’ll start with David Corenswet, who even I as an entertainment reporter did not know before these Superman rumors started, only that he looks like a ten-year-younger clone of Henry Cavill, who also, you may recall, was at least somewhat unknown before his casting in Man of Steel.

Corenswet is 29, 11 years younger Cavill’s 40. I actually had seen Corenswet recently in a brief turn as the projectionist in Pearl, the horror movie starring Mia Goth. But his bigger roles have been in We Own This City, the Jon Berenthal corrupt cop drama on HBO Max that was based on a true story. There, Corenswet played an investigator with a local Narcotics Task Force in Maryland.

Corenswet also had a significant role in The Politician, the Ben Platt/Ryan Murphy comedy. There, Corenswet played River Barkley, Platt’s ex-boyfriend and opponent for student body president. There is a third and final season in the works, but no word about Corenswet’s role in it. I suppose he’s rather busy now. But yes, the overall idea here is that despite appearing in a number of shows and movies in supporting roles, this is going to be a huge, huge breakout moment for Corenswet as a new, younger Superman, and we’ll see if it does for him what it did for Cavill.

As for Rachel Brosnahan, she’s certainly quite a bit more established thanks to her long-running, just ended series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime, a role which won her an Emmy in 2018, and several more nominations besides. There she played a rare female comic in 50s/60s New York, and it’s a brilliant series everyone should watch. And it should give you a pretty clear window into why she can play an upbeat version of Lois Lane for Gunn’s supposedly more hopeful, cheery version of Superman in Legacy.

While Brosnahan is most famous for her Maisel role, I remember seeing her first in House of Cards, Netflix’s original series, pre-Kevin Spacey scandals, where she played Rachel Posner, a prostitute, in a long-running role across three seasons. Her “in-between” major role between that and Mrs. Maisel was Manhattan, a drama about the Manhattan Project, for WGN America, which is probably why I hadn’t heard of it until now.

Recently Brosnahan was asked about recent rumors she was auditioning for Lois Lane, and while she played the “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” card, she said it would be an honor if she did play the character, and here we are. It’s kind of funny to watch this now:

I don’t know enough about Corenswet to judge him in the Clark Kent role, and I don’t think anyone should this early. Brosnahan? After five seasons of Mrs. Maisel, she seems like an absolute slam dunk for Lois.

Now, Lex Luthor?

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.