Legends of Tomorrow: Phil Klemmer Talks Hawkman, Romance, Atom vs. Ant-Man & More

The Legends of Tomorrow are coming!

At the recent press tour for TV critics, we caught up with DC’s Legends of Tomorrow Executive Producer Phil Klemmer to try and get some more intel about the series, which premieres at midseason on The CW.

Some spoilers come within our interview, and there’s a lot of talk about Hawkman being added to the cast.

Enjoy:

DCLEGENDSTV’s CRAIG BYRNE: It has been announced that Hawkman is coming, and that Falk Hentschel will be playing him. Is it true that we will first see him on The Flash or Arrow?

PHIL KLEMMER: Yes. He’s going to be in the crossover. I believe he first appears in  408.

When they did the Arrow and Flash crossover last year, some writers of Flash went over to Arrow and vice versa. Is that happening here as well?

The same is happening. We’re getting Beth Schwartz from Arrow and Grianne Godfree of Flash, who I worked with on Tomorrow People. I couldn’t be happier to have those two ladies.

Are there any challenges in bringing The Atom to weekly television when we just had an Ant-Man movie – and to make him different?

The only challenge is how expensive his costume costs, and the danger that we actually injure him doing stunts, because his costume actually costs not just more than a car — more than, like, your average American home — so the scariest thing about Atom is I’m thinking, like, “when do you use a digital double, and when do you use Brandon?” I mean, obviously Brandon is irreplaceable.

I loved Ant-Man and I love Paul Rudd, and I think he’s a hilarious guy, but to me, they’re just such different people — the fact that they share a crossover of powers… it also helped that I was thinking about Legends of Tomorrow before I ever saw Ant-Man. I mean, if I hadn’t started to write this first, I just never would have seen that, because you don’t want to be contaminated with another pre-existing idea.

To me, Ray is a billionaire do-gooder with a secret and Paul Rudd (Scott Lang) is like a wisecracking cat burglar. So aside from the fact that they shrink, I don’t see a whole lot of overlap.

With Legends of Tomorrow being on The CW, will there be any romance?

Absolutely. I mean, there’ll be more sex than romance, but eventually, there’s the possibility of romance. It’s not a sentimental show; I mean, the fact that we are traveling through time and people are doing something as emotionally fraught as getting to examine their own past… the way that you leaven that is with humor and irony and irreverence. So, it definitely isn’t a romantic show… which isn’t to say that it can’t be earnest at moments, but I think it’s going to be a good bit funnier and filled with irreverence… it’s wry, and it’s adult. That’s how you leaven something like time travel.

Is every episode going to have every character in it?

Yes!

Really?

Yes.

Wow! You’ve got quite a cast.

Yeah. There’s been some long scripts. When you realize that you could basically have an entire episode of people arguing about what they’re going to get for lunch, and once you get to a scene, you could live there forever, because you’d hear their voices so distinctly, and their character dynamics and conflicts… I’ve never had a show like this where every script comes in at 80 pages… it’s just, the amount of story that we can cover is limited by the amount of characters… you want to hear everybody’s take on everything, which is truly a joy. There’s been times on shows where you’re like “how do we fill the board up?” and this one you’re like “Okay! We’re going to fill the board up with that!” You remember the shrinky toys that you add water to? That’s the best way I can describe this. It’s like one of those things where you add water and it blows up to such incredible proportions, that you’re like “I have no idea how we’re going to fit this in to a 42 minute television show.”

Is Hawkman going to be a regular part of the show?

He is. He absolutely is.

Does that take away from Hawkgirl’s character at all?

It doesn’t, because the way we’ve imagined them is that they’ve obviously been reincarnated through the ages together, but the fact that he remembers their previous lives and she doesn’t… it gives them very much like a Bogie & Bacall sort of [relationship].

It’s like the Geoff Johns comics.

Yeah. Exactly! They’re constantly fighting, and the fact that they’re destined to be in love is something that seems impossible to her.
That’s the kind of sentimentality that we really strive to avoid on this show. The fact that they’re going to be together someday, we try desperately at every moment to disprove that, this is going to be the one time that they decide to, like, shoot each other in the face.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow premieres midseason on The CW. Be sure to be following our @DCLegendsTV Twitter account for more updates!

Follow @DCLegendsTV