Superman & Lois star Ian Bohen on killing [SPOILER]: Anderson hasn't 'gone full villain'
Warning: This article contains spoilers from the March 8 episode of Superman & Lois, "Anti-Hero."
On Superman & Lois, new DOD leader Anderson (Ian Bohen) has struggled to work with Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) from the start. Unlike his predecessor General Lane (Dylan Walsh), Anderson doesn't know Superman's real identity, and therefore the hero has to keep a lot of secrets from him. It's been a difficult dynamic for a while now, and things came to a head in this week's episode, "Anti-Hero."
When Superman and Tal-Rho (Adam Rayner) broke out of Anderson's prison, Anderson took matters into his own hands, inhaling some X-Kryptonite and tracking them down. What resulted was an epic fight in which Anderson killed Bizarro (also played by Hoechlin). He then ended the hour by going AWOL, and with a warrant out for his arrest, he introduced himself to Ally (Rya Kihlstedt) and even offered her the pendant.
EW spoke to Bohen about Anderson's big hour, what the heck he's thinking working with Ally, and more.
Shane Harvey/The CW Ian Bohen and Tyler Hoechlin on 'Superman & Lois'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How much did you know about Anderson's journey when you got this role? Was any of this a surprise for you?
IAN BOHEN: Todd [Helbing, the showrunner] laid out for me very early on the inverse nature of the season, that everyone is going to be fighting sort of their opposite self. I knew that I would be getting powers of some kind, I didn't know how or to what to extent. I knew I was going to be working with the Supermen of America, but I didn't know who they were at that time. And he did tell me about Bizarro, and that I would ultimately kill Bizarro. But at the time I thought, "How is that going to work out?" I hadn't even read episode 201 yet. But I had no idea who Anderson was, his backstory, what he's all about, so I had to glean all of that from the way that he interacts with Superman and make my own decisions, and then as I got the scripts it became more and more clear what path he's taking. In the beginning when everyone was asking me, "Are you a good guy or a bad guy?" I said, "I think I'm a good guy?" Then of course after episode 6 it's like, nope!
Every bad guy thinks they're the good guy, so you're not wrong.
I said that earlier today! Exactly, he's doing this because he thinks he has to. He just does bad things.
So once you got into the season and discovered what a big deal it was to be the person to take out Bizarro, what was your reaction?
First I was wondering, "How in the world are they going to script this out where it's believable that a person could be powerful enough to destroy this character that we've seen punching through the mantle of the Earth to get out?" That is terrifying! I'm going to go up against him? Uh-huh. So how are we going to do that? But the way they got through it with the X-K, and the last sequence of the back-and-forth and Anderson's clearly so outmatched, the way they then made it so brutally simple of choking the life out of somebody, was so satisfying to me. You could see how gratifying it was for Anderson to win the greatest battle of his life. It was a beautiful death sequence, if there is such a thing.
Now I feel like there's going to be no dealing with this guy. He just killed someone Superman couldn't! His ego's going to explode.
You're right, so then you're thinking, where does this guy go from here? Is he unhinged? Can he get back to work? Those questions will be answered in the upcoming episodes, and he goes into a really interesting new thing.
As the person getting into Anderson's headspace, what do you feel drives this guy?
He's fighting to do what is right for the American people. He's benevolent and able to sacrifice himself and to do bad things for the greater good, as he sees it. But if the ends justify the means, you have to be right. And if you're wrong and you've done all of these things, looking backward then you are truly a villain. He's not a villain at this point, he's just at odds with our protagonist, which makes him kind of a bad guy. But he hasn't quite gone full villain. He hasn't crossed a line that he can't come back from yet and I hope he doesn't, because we always want to be able to reel it in.
Shane Harvey/The CW Ian Bohen on 'Superman & Lois'
Because there's still that question of, when he goes to Ally, do you think he has any idea what he's actually doing in that moment?
That's a great question, because he's ostensibly achieved his goal. Now that Bizarro is gone, what is Anderson about? What does he wake up and have to do every day? He doesn't have his job anymore. So why on earth is he going to talk to this person who Superman said is the real bad guy? Maybe he's going to embark on a new journey to continue doing what he wants and feels is the right thing in another venue, if you will. It's that pragmatic of, well, he's got to do something, so why not go check out what we've been hearing about Ally and see what she's all about?
It was shocking to me how quickly he said "formerly of the Department of Defense." We're moving on!
Yeah, no, he's not there anymore, he's not wearing the fatigues anymore, so he's got a new life. It does happen very quickly. I asked the writers, "Bizarro's dead, I'm walking through the desert, how long does it take me to find Ally?" I was thinking they were going to say, "Oh, it's been like a week, you've been doing research." And Todd was like, "Later that night." [Laughs] I'm like, "Well, of course, Anderson works fast. He's changed into jeans and he found her in a parking lot." But it will accelerate pretty quickly from this point on, because it does leave a little dangler of what is he going to possibly do with this person, and why would he take her the pendant? Because if Superman is right, he's playing right into the hands of the bad guys. At this point I hope the audience still trusts that he's doing what he thinks is right and he's not gone to the other side.
I'm very curious to see his dynamic with Ally because her whole thing is her ability to influence people, and I don't know that I see him falling for that.
I had in my mind a backstory about how did somebody get this job? He's younger than General Lane, he's only lieutenant general — where did he come from, why was he selected? This should be for someone more experienced. And my answer for me was he used to be a CIA operative and he was a manipulator, he was an information getter. He used to be able to get you to arrive at a place that you didn't want to go to gracefully. It was all mental chess. So he would be able to match someone like Ally who does the same thing, who is a charismatic good talker, because he knows all the tricks. And you're going to see them come together and how that relationship plays out.
Superman & Lois airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the CW.
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