Exclusive Interview: Kristin Kreuk and Allison Mack, from 'Smallville'
First off, can you tell us what you guys remember from the very beginning of Smallville? Did you two meet during the casting process, and how quickly did you become friends?
Allison: I think that we met on our first day at a makeup test, didn't we? We were in Vancouver Film Studios at the time, and I don't remember it very well but that was the first time we met.
How early on did you know that Smallville might become the big success that it has?
Allison: I remember talking to the casting director, Deedee Bradley, before I even auditioned, and she said you have to come in for my show, it's going to be the next biggest show on TV. It's the best pilot that they have out there. And she goes "you're not right for Lana, and I think they want ethnic for Chloe, so I don't know if I'll be able to find a character for you, but it's the best pilot of the year." It was also picked up for 13 episodes before it even started, so it had a pilot plus 13 right off the top. That doesn't happen very often.
Did you both know what you were getting into in terms of the big comic book universe?
Allison: No idea, no clue. Also, I had been in the business for quite some time before I started on Smallville, and a lot of the shows I had participated in, you know, everybody thinks that theirs is the best, and everybody thinks that theirs is going to be the most successful. It's very rare that it actually happens. The fact that everybody was predicting it, and then it happened, was outrageous. I had a very skeptical attitude coming into the show, and I was like yeah, it's good, but whatever, we'll see. The fact that it was such a success was really quite a lovely surprise.
Smallville, now that you're in your seventh season, do you ever get tired of your characters? Is it difficult keeping everything fresh from day to day?
Kristin: I think the challenge definitely moves from building a character to keeping a character alive when you're on a show for seven years.
Allison: I think as far as for me personally getting tired of my character, my character's constantly evolving. The writers have been very kind to me in giving me the opportunity to really play something very different every season. Sometimes I get tired of the exposition, and sometimes I get tired of running through the Daily Planet in high heels after Tom Welling, but I think ultimately every year has been different. Every time my character changes I find something very different, so I still love what I do very much. I enjoy playing her, and I don't see myself as being completely tired of it, or tired of her. It's interesting, somebody asked me last week, aren't you going to miss this character that you've played. Nobody has asked me that before. Everybody's been like are you excited to move on, are you going to miss the people that you work with, but this is the first time somebody asked me if I was actually going to miss the character, and I think I will. She's become a huge part of my life.
Is there anything about being on Smallville, or shooting up in Vancouver, that fans might be surprised to learn about?
Allison: It rains a lot. That's not surprising, that's Vancouver.
Kristin: When it's not raining we have to use fake rain.
Allison: That's true, and when it is raining you can't always tell that it's raining.
Kristin: So a lot of times when we have bad hair, it's not just bad hair, it's rain. Oh, and we shoot in like a cheese factory.
Allison: Yeah, our studios are old cheese factories! And we have mice.
Kristin: Big huge rats, actually. Massive rats, and they die underneath the set and then get smelly.
So with anything in the comic book world, you guys are going to have crazy fans. What have your interactions with fans been like, and has that changed or evolved over the years?
Kristin: Allison and I have had really different fan experiences, due to the characters we play and the way we're perceived publicly. I've had a few sketchy experiences, stalker wise, but apart from that people are generally pretty lovely. Sometimes they're so invested in it that they can really care about the character and the show, and they know a lot more than I can even remember about what's gone on in the series, which is pretty neat to see.
Allison: My experience with fans has been amazing. I have an unbelievably supportive group of people that support the show and support Smallville in general. Most of my interactions have just been absolutely lovely. The one change that I have seen from the first season to now is people actually know my name. It was a little weird when that started happening, when people started knowing Allison Mack instead of just Chloe or that girl from Smallville. I was kind of like oh no, did we go to high school together or something? I feel like I should know you because you know my name. There's a level of familiarity when people actually know your name, and that's changed in the past year. It's only been about six months since that started happening.
Can you talk about this season so far, where your characters have gone, and what fans can expect from the rest of the season?
Kristin: The season so far has really been a lot about just introducing Laura [Vandervoort] to the show, just introducing Supergirl to the show, and Clark's dynamic with Jor-El back at home. Then also a lot of watching the sort of the demise of Lex Luthor and trying to protect Clark from that. There's been a lot of what this season's doing. My character's personality has really divided for awhile this season, because of everything that's happened in regard to her marriage with Lex and everything that went down. I've kind of been playing two sides of her personality, and they're both really intense. There's the pure, really good, beautiful stuff about her, then the really vengeful part of her that wants to destroy Lex in some capacity because she feels very hurt by him. That's kind of what I've been doing.
You two are preparing to launch a website. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Kristin: Yeah, right now we're actually launching a survey, so that we can gather information and make our website as potent and interesting as possible. Right now we're sending the links to a button for the website, because what we want is as many college students as possible to come and take the survey. It's like a 15-minute survey, totally fun and silly, and basically just a way for us to gather information about what you like, what your values are, what you want to spend your time doing, what you want to see in the world. Our friend Nicki Clyne from Battlestar Galactica, and another friend of ours, Sarah Edmondson [from Edgemont], and the four of us are starting this website together. Nicki is hysterically funny.
Allison: She's awesome.
Kristin: She took the time to write this survey, and it's really fun and a really great way for us to get information about our demographic, which are college students and the types of things they want to see, so we can really specialize this website for college students.
Allison: And provide them with a service that is not out there yet for them. They can be really excited about it and want to be there every day.
What is this website going to entail when it eventually comes out?
Allison: That's sort of what the survey is for. We kind of envision it as being this really cool, interesting gathering place, with lots of the most innovative and cutting edge stuff that you can find online. Really the survey is there to get information so that we can really figure out what we want to do with it, and where we want to go with it. A lot of stuff about the website is actually quite top secret. We want to keep our ideas close at hand so that we can really keep it unique and individual, but right now it's really important to us to get as many college students to take the survey as possible. We can get as much information for the site to keep in mind for when we're designing it, so that's really what we're trying to push. Suzanne is going to send you guys a button that links you directly to the survey. If we could get as many college kids as possible, and also seniors in high school to take the survey, that would be amazing.
Kristin: And they get to submit a question for either me, Allison, Nicki, or Sarah to find something out, and then we'll select a bunch of questions to answer in like an interview fashion. They can kind of participate and find stuff out about us that they didn't know before.
I think we're going to put that button link on the article, so that should be good. To finish up, do you guys have any projects outside of Smallville that you'd like to talk about?
Allison: Nope, just the Smallville and our survey.
Allison, Kristin, I appreciate you guys stopping by, and good luck in the future.
Allison and Kristin: Thanks.
Kristin and Allison's Website Survey