On the occasion of the 25th anniversary for the movie “Supergirl”, and 50th anniversary of Supergirl the character, Planet Origo had the opportunity to chat with Helen Slater (Supergirl, Smallville’s Lara-El).

I added a snippet of the interview below, including where Helen touches briefly on Smallville and meeting Laura Vandervoort:

Helen’s career was indeed not hindered from starting with Supergirl. Apart from several dramas and comedies, she has also been in the animated Adventures of Batman & Robin, the time-travel TV series 12:01, National Lampoon’s American Adventure, Supernatural, Eleventh Hour and of course Smallville, the long-running TV series about Superman’s younger years. Helen Slater played Lara, Superman’s biological mother in two episodes.

Helen: They offered me that part and I had so much fun doing it, they are just wonderful peple over there. They tip their hat alot to the movies that were made, by bringing in actors or voices, so for people who love the Supergirl comics or Superman comic books, it was fun to be that surprise in that I was playing Superman’s biological mother.

Another Supergirl connection is the fact that Marc McClure, who played Jimmy Olsen in Slater’s movie, was also in Smallville as a guest actor. He is the only actor to have been in both Supergirl and all of Reeve’s Superman movies. While it would have been fun to have met him and talked about the old days, Helen says, they never got the chance to work together on the Warner Bros. TV show. And would she consider returning to the series if they asked her?

Helen: Yes… They did blow me up in a trillion pieces, but as someone was saying to me, that means nothing if you’re in science fiction show [laughs hearty].

Many years after doing Supergirl, in 2007, Helen were in talks with comic book creator Jake Black about creating a new Supergirl comic book series. They even pitched the idea to DC Comics, the publisher who owns the Supergirl character. A change in the creative team at DC prevented further negotiations, but Helen is optimistic:

Helen: We had the most interesting talks. I went to Metropolis in Illinois, to a Superman convention, or was it a festival? When I was there there was a bunch of comic books artists and I went to a dinner, and Jake Black was there, and we started talking about the mythology of which I’m a huge fan, and about what is going on for young girls of today, and what a Supergirl story might look like. I had a great time working on that [idea], but… it might not be totally dead, it may come back, you never know.

Planet Origo: Is there any particular incident or situation you remember more than anything else from your 25 year old involvement with the Super universe?

Helen: I was very moved when I met Laura Vandervoort, who plays Supergirl on Smallville, because she was my age when I played Supergirl, and that was a little bit of a shock. She might have been one or two years older, but I almost felt like seeing myself 25 years ago, and walking on the set I had that really odd feeling watching her. She was so poised and lovely, and I had a kind of… not eerie [feeling], but I was thinking ‘wow, that was me 20-something years ago’. That whole young ingénue thing, it just had a certain energy to it, and I remmeber I thought about being aware of the difference [between then and now] and how pure that age is. It’s beautiful and unusual because it is not who I am now, I’ve grown and got married, had a child and travelled and read books, so it felt like a Star Trek episode where you go back in time in your life, and see yourself.

To read the full interview, go to Planet Origo here. 

In addition, you can also catch Helen at the Screaming TikiCon in Cleveland, Ohio this weekend, where she’s participating in the Smallville panel with Michael Rosenbaum and Sam Witwer.