From Superman to super librarian.
“Smallville” actress Kristin Kreuk co-stars in the Fox drama “Murder in a Small Town” returning for Season 2 on Sept 23 (8 p.m. on Fox).
In the show, she plays librarian Cassandra, who is dating the local police chief, Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland).
“We have wonderful chemistry. It’s fun, it’s easy, he’s a pro,” Kreuk, 42, exclusively told The Post. “I think it’s really lovely that we get to play this relationship between these two characters as they are in mid-life, and really have a mature relationship.”
“For Cassandra, it’s really her first serious relationship since she was in her 20s,” the “Beauty & The Beast” actress added. “So, it’s nice to really dig into what it means to have a relationship at this point in our lives.”
Unlike other murder mystery procedural shows that came before it (such as “Bones” or “Castle” or even “The X-Files”), Karl and Cassandra don’t have a “will they or won’t they” dynamic.
“I love that we’re looking at…what does it mean to build a relationship? And finding the tension, drama, and passion within that longevity,” Kreuk said.
“I think there’s an ease to ‘Will they or won’t they,’ or love triangles, but I always wanted to see – we don’t normally spend the majority of our time in ‘will they or won’t they,’” she added. “We end up in relationships. And, there’s beautiful drama within that.”
Kreuk first rose to fame starring on “Smallville,” the show about a young Superman which aired for 10 seasons between 2001 and 2011.
The show followed a young Clark Kent (Tom Welling), and his youthful adventures, including his romance with neighbor Lana Lang (Kreuk) and his friendship with Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum).
In the age of constant reboots and revivals, The Post asked if she’d be open to revisiting it.
“It’s funny, Tom and Michael who played Clark and Lex talked about a reboot of sorts for years, in an animated form – which feels like the way that you would do something like ‘Smallville,’ when all of us are old now,” she said.
The “Burden of Truth” actress pointed out that since everyone has aged, she doesn’t know that it would be possible to revisit the story again “as it was.”
But, she added, “we’ll see what they end up doing with an animated idea.”
Since the show, Henry Cavill’s “Man of Steel” debuted in theaters and the most recent “Superman” movie came out in July, starring David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan. Kreuk thinks the different “Superman” stories are for different people, and different times.
For instance, she noted, when “Smallville” was airing, 9/11 and the Iraq war were the main topics in the headlines.
“There was a real desire for a clear moral compass, and for somebody who could clearly save things. And I think there’s a desire for such things now as well.”
“These are iconic stories that I think will go on forever,” Kreuk added. “They might go away for a while. But there’s truth within them that storytellers can come back to, always.”
“Smallville” also became notorious for actress Allison Mack, who was involved in “Nxivm,” the alleged “sex cult” that was the subject of numerous documentaries, including HBO’s “The Vow” and “Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult.”
Mack was sentenced to three years in prison in 2021 after pleading guilty for her role in helping to brainwash women into becoming sex slaves for Nxivm leader Keith Raniere, and was released from prison in July 2023.
Kreuk previously spoke out about the topic in 2018. At the time, she said that she left the group “five years ago” and was “horrified and disgusted” by the information that had since come out about it.
When The Post asked about it, she declined to discuss it.
