For David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan, their chemistry read like Clark Kent and Lois Lane—or Superman and Lois Lane—was over and done with as quickly as it began.
Corenswet told People that he met “the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” an Emmy winner, “in a kind of flurry of handshakes and hellos.” It was summer 2023, Brosnahan had flown into Los Angeles from New York City, and she was back for a performance of “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” on Broadway.
“We said a quick hello, and he was… really nice and really tall, and we read the scene together,” Brosnahan told People. The scene in question, Corenswet recalled, was on the long side, 10 to 12 pages, and ended up being reshot for the final film.
“Neither of us knew what we were doing,” he said. “We each did the scene with other people, so we weren’t sure if the blocking would be the same or if we were going to figure something out between the two of us. So, I think we both thought it was… kind of a warm-up, and we’d have another shot. And then [writer/director James Gunn] yelled, ‘Cut,’ and said, ‘Great, that was amazing. All right, Rachel, I think you’re catching a plane.'”
“The whole thing is kind of a blur,” Brosnahan said. “Honestly, I don’t remember anything about it. And then we said goodbye, and that was it.”
“The next thing we knew, we were being launched. We didn’t know each other,” Corenswet said.
As they would follow in the footsteps of previous portrayals like Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Henry Cavill, and Amy Adams, the stars knew they had to meet and get to know each other.
“We had this brief but obviously impactful moment together, during our chemistry, I read… but I think we both left feeling like we didn’t remember anything about it and wanted to spend some time together. We had a really lovely breakfast [in New York] after we found out we were playing the roles together… and we got to know each other that way,” Brosnahan recalled.
During the long production session, the two got to know each other very well and discovered that they were such good scene partners, they often lost themselves completely in their characters.
“She made me curse at her,” Corenswet laughed. “The way she delivered one line in particular made me involuntarily say, ‘Oh, fuck you,’ which I think was a huge shock to all of us… she caught me off guard and made me feel really hurt in that moment, and then I, in character, went back to her.”
Not all moments were so dramatic, however. Brosnahan recalled a lighthearted take where Corenswet made a “hurt expression,” which she found “so funny.” “I think about that face he made in that moment all the time,” she said.
