Melissa Benoist Talks Carol King, Buffy and the New Season of Supergirl
If this means more musical episodes, we're all for it.
What does Kara Zor-El have in common with Carole King? A lot, it turns out. Melissa Benoist, who is currently wrapping up her Broadway run in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, sat down with Deadline to discuss her summer on Broadway and the upcoming season of Supergirl. After treading the boards as iconic singer and songwriter Carol King, Benoist plans to bring what she learned from the experience into season four of the series.
I think that playing Carole and learning so much about her will certainly affect how I approach Supergirl at this point. Every role affects you. I do think that heading into Season 4 and walking into Supergirl’s shoes and donning the cape will feel different in a great way, especially because Carole’s story is about, in essence, owning yourself and being true to who you are, that you are enough. That’s something I’m always searching for in Supergirl: ways to further her development as a woman and find more empowering stories to tell through that. Also, it made Comic-Con a blast. It was so great to see everyone. The cast, we all genuinely love each other. We’re really excited for the season.
While we don’t know much about season 4, we know that it will feature a new transgender superhero, Nia Nal played by Nicole Maines. In addition, the series will be taking on the real life refugee crisis, a topic it has explored via Kara’s own refugee identity and Lynda Carter’s President Marsdin.
Benoist also discussed the Reign storyline in season 3, and the influence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the season’s arc:
The writers’ room is being really great this year. Last season, it was a lot of fire and brimstone and a lot of homages to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was great because I was such a big fan of that show. This season they really want to thematically tackle more topical stories that maybe mirror what’s going on with the state of the world and our country. There’s a lot of anti-alien sentiment at the beginning of Season 4 that Supergirl is going to have to grapple with. I think their main premise is that fear itself is a villain, and can hope conquer it? Supergirl stands for hope, so we’ll see. I think fear is her biggest opponent yet because it’s more of a wildfire-type emotion.
Are you excited for season four of Supergirl? Where would you like to see the series go?
(via Deadline, image: The CW)
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