Smallville's dearly departed Lionel Luthor is back in action this week, and we just had the pleasure of chatting up his alter ego John Glover (who also happens to be one of the nicest men in the biz--pinkie swear!).
Here's what he tells us about the sometimes-evil patriarch's return from the dead:
Shocker! Lionel Luthor is alive. We're so happy to see you back on Smallville.It was so great to come back! I got such a warm welcome. So much of the crew is still there and they missed me and let me know it. It was so beautiful.
What was your reaction to finding out they wanted you back on the show?It was a big surprise. When Kelly Souders and Brian Peterson called me and said, "Would you be interested in coming back?" I said, "How in the world could I do that? I must have been a pile of broken bones and organs all smooshed together--I got pushed out of a 30-story office window." But they found this quite interesting way and the episode is a lot of fun.
Did you ever think you'd play Lionel again?No, I thought once I was dead, I was really dead.
Well, welcome back! Tell us a little about your four-episode arc. We hear you have some different family members this time around.Yes, I threw my seed around a lot. [Laughs.] I've got an illegitimate daughter and I was the one who found Clark out in the cornfield. The Kents were home reading the Sunday paper or something. They were not out by the cornfield that day. So his name is now Clark Luther.
Talk about that father-son dynamic.Clark is the son that Lionel always wanted. But in the episode, it's Clark Kent who wakes up in Clark Luther's bed, and it takes him awhile to figure out what's going on--he's not who Lionel thinks he is.
What about the surprising new father-daughter dynamic between Tess (Cassidy Freeman) and Lionel?When they told me that I had an illegitimate daughter who's running the Daily Planet, I was shocked. But then I saw her and everything was fine, because Cassidy is swell. We had a great time working together.
Are fans going to like this Lionel Luther, or is he bad news?Hopefully you'll be fascinated by him. I don't know if you're going to like him though--he doesn't have the heart and soul that real Lionel has. This is the same man, only different and from a different world.
Any chance alterna-Lionel is a big ol' softie?See, I believed in [the original Lionel]. I saw the love and the heart and the soul of that Lionel. He did such beautiful things for Lex; what other father, in a way to strengthen his son, would give his son shock treatment--twice! That's because he loved him so much. It was only to make him strong, you see? [Laughs.]
Don't miss "Luthor", the start of John's incredible four-episode arc, on Smallville this Friday at 8 p.m. on the CW.