We Asked Supergirl‘s Cast and Creative Team What They Want Young Women to Take Away from the Show

While at Comic-Con over the weekend, The Mary Sue’s Sam Maggs had a chance to speak with Supergirl stars Jeremy Jordan and Mehcad Brooks, as well as series creator Greg Berlanti, and writers Ali Adler and Andrew Kreisberg. So what does Supergirl’s cast and creative team want young women to take away from the upcoming show?

Jeremy Jordan [Winn Schott]: I think that they’ll take away and find their own strength, because we see both sides of her. We see the young, vulnerable, ‘I’m still figuring out who I am as a person,’ and then we see this secret side that nobody else knew about, but is that really her? Who’s the real person? I think it will have people really being strong enough to start figuring out who they really are, and be okay, and be strong about it. And one of the things that I like about my character, is that he really likes her for who she is before he finds out she’s Supergirl, and I think it’s really important for people to know that. You don’t have to have superpowers in order to be great and to be loved.

Mehcad Brooks [James Olsen]: Same thing I take away from the script! Here’s the thing, I don’t think it matters if you’re a man or a woman. She is a person coming into her own, accepting her own greatness, that’s not gender-specific. That’s a struggle we all have internally, ‘am I going to be my higher self, or am I just going to hide’? I think that’s a great message for young women, because this country has really disenfranchised them, for a long time. And to instill that sort of confidence, to instill that, ‘live as bright as you are, be as bright as you can shine,’ that’s a great message. I don’t have any kids yet, but when I do have a daughter, she’s going to watch this show.

Andrew Kreisberg: I think that she’s every bit as kick-ass as every guy who’s out there. I think that, you know, doing all of these shows has been a dream come true. I mean, my twitter picture is actually me at age 7 with a cape tied around my neck a yellow cape because I went everywhere and I wanted to be Robin. But I think all of these shows,they really speak to everybody and to young people about what you can do.

[The Flash‘s] Candice Patton and I were both in tears, there was a tweet from a mother, an African-American woman, who said ‘thank-you for your show, my six-year-old daughter watches it and said “Mommy, look at Iris, she’s so pretty like me.”‘ And Candice and I were in tears when we saw that. So I think for young women to be able to see Kara do all the things that she can do… I don’t know why it takes so long for some of these things, but obviously there’s been a lot of changes in the world recently and certainly for the better, but seeing a female hero, and seeing somebody who’s strong but vulnerable, and real, usually when you see a female hero they’ve had to abandon what made them a person, or made them human, because they had to become really tough. But Kara’s still just a girl, and what we’re saying is that’s not a bad thing. Her weaknesses are the things that make her a better hero, so for us, those are all the important things.

Ali Adler: I hope it’s not just young women. I have a 7-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son, and I hope that they get to watch something that I’ve written finally, because they couldn’t watch Glee. But I think she is inspirational and she is also universal. It’s nice that she’s a woman, but she’s powerful, and power has no gender. What’s cool is we’re putting this woman in the same situations that any powerful person has been in before, and she’s going to triumph, probably. But not always in the way that maybe a male superhero would do it, it’s a little twist on that. She’s not always going to beat up the bad guy to defeat him, that’s what’s cool about Kara.

Greg Berlanti: I hope that young women and young men see her as just as powerful as the male heroes, so many times we’re breaking stories or we’re pitching stories, and people say ‘would she do that?’ And if it was a guy and we were pitching it, nobody would have even asked those questions. So it’s interesting how we’re all still asking some of those things, and it would be nice to sort of move on to whatever the next phase of all that is.

What do you think of your answers, gang? And what kind of messages do you hope the show will have for its audience?

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