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Caged Lionel

He's mad, bad and dangerous to know. John Glover explains to Paul Simpson why mere bars cannot stop Lionel Luthor...

Smallville Magazine Issue #3


The gleam in John Glover's eye is because the veteran actor loves playing the enigmatic Lionel Luthor, whose machinations have fascinated audiences of Smallville for the past three years--and even more so, he loves the fact that no one seems quite able to work out exactly who Lionel is and precisely what he's after.

"Especially since the end of last season," he reveals as he prepared to return to Vancouver to shoot season four's Clark/Lionel body-swap episode, Transference, "I've run into people who have commented that it's so frustrating because they can't tell whether I'm good or bad. It's such an incredible compliment, because that's what I'm after, and it's working with the people who watch the show."

Glover admits that the role of Lionel has started to dominate his professional life over the past few years. Originally almost just a cameo in the pilot episode, executive producers Al Gough and Miles Millar realized that they had a potential goldmine in the character of Lex's father, and presence began to be increasingly felt during the first two seasons until in the third year, Lionel's cloning experiments and his desperate battle to find a cure for his liver disease became central to the series' ongoing plotlines. "It's happened gradually," Glover notes, "But it's been quite exciting to feel that we've made Lionel so important, so it's nice. It sure was exciting last season."

The actor wasn't aware of Lionel's medical condition until shortly before he filmed Obsession. "They don't tell me much of anything beforehand," he comments. "It just kind of happens! I was just using my imagination up till then, and I'm pretty sure that the writers and producers are keeping a lookout for what the actors are doing. It's a give and take situation where they see things in our performances that spur ideas of where to take us."

Glover talked about his early experiences in the season in the Smallville Yearbook, but at the stage hadn't filmed the episode that he describes as his highlight of the year, Memoria. "That was wonderful," he enthuses. "I had the chance to play with Michael as Lex, and then with the wonderful Wayne Dalglish. To go back to the root of what happened and where the sickness began between us was just wonderful, and to put all that love there in the beginning. Remember that scene with the birthday party where I tell Lex about the box? There was such love there, and to have that color on top of the difficulty that I have with grown-up Lex riding underneath -- it was so wonderful. I so appreciated that chance."

Describing Memoria as "a beautiful script," Glover adds, "I didn't know what there was in the past between Lex and Lionel, but I figured that there had to be something I know that indicated there was love involved in the present, and I was so pleased to find out what it was. I can't imagine what's coming with most of it when I get the scripts, but that was so wonderful and seemed to fit with what I'm doing. Miles was saying that they might have our trio back in a flashback form. Alisen Down, as small as that role was of Lillian, was so stunning. I wish we could have another episode where we could go back to that time with Alisen and Wayne, there were so wonderful."

Glover was pleased to have executive producer Millar on the set. "It was so good for all of us," he says. "Miles has an eye that's just amazing. Day two, we had a disagreement. He wanted to go one way and I wanted to go another -- and I went his way, but I might have been a little upset about going his way at first. But I went there, and as soon as I did it, I realized that he was right. We had a good laugh about it, thank god, and I just trusted him completely after that."

The following episode, Talisman, saw Jonathan Kent himself. John Schneider, behind the camera. Glover points out that the two actors had bonded during their fight scene at the end of Legacy. "We had such a good time doing that," he remembers. "We haven't had a lot of work together as the characters, and everything we have had has been a talking scene. But we spent a couple of days together down in that cramped cave set, rolling around on top of each other in the dirt."

Glover notes, "it was interesting to have John direct because our characters are such rivals. There are certain choices that he made as a director that I could see that he was making as Jonathan Kent! There was a scene where I went to the university, and they had a huge stretch limousine waiting for me. I kept thinking, no, Lionel doesn't ride in these. I see him as being powerful without having to be flashy, but John was dwelling on Lionel's power. It's little differences like that which make it really interesting. He was seeing Lionel from Jonathan's point of view."

Admitting that he would probably do much the same thing if he ever directed an episode, Glover says that he can imagine playing Jonathan Kent, "although I don't know if it would appeal for four or five years. It's so much fin to play warped people. I've always enjoyed playing a little warped -- my Jonathan Kent might turn out to be a little warped. That's the way I run!"

As a number of his fellow actors have noted admiringly, the idea for Lionel Luthor's head shaving came from Glover himself. "A lot of it was the fact that I've never played a part for so long," the actor explains. "I'm used to doing a lot of theater, and ever within theater, a lot of repertory. I'd go from one character one night to another character the next. When I knew Lionel was going to prison, I just thought it could bring out a different aspect of Lionel that could be fun. We're into season four now, so I thought such a drastic switch could be exciting and liven things up a bit."

The idea occurred to Glover during the filming of Memoria. "The day before, Miles told me I was going to prison, and I was putting my wig on when he came into the trailer to talk about one of the scenes that day," he recalls. "I said, 'If you film it, would you be interested in me shaving my head for the season finale?' I thought Miles was going to go through the ceiling of the makeup trailer, he was so happy. That's why the job is so wonderful -- ideas come from all around. We have a good group of people who are open to ideas and suggestions. Nobody's ego is too big."

One of the most powerful scenes in season three was resolved through such a discussion. The moment at the end of Crisis, when Lionel puts the gun in his mouth, was a late addition to the script, and was actually filmed during the shooting of Memoria. "At one stage, Miles, Greg Beeman and James Marshall were all watching the monitors for that," Glover says. "It was Beeman's idea that the phone call comes in."

For those fans who don't believe that Lionel could ever consider suicide, Glover points out, "the show is all about opposites." He didn't have the same problem with the concept.

"Here's this man, so willful, so strong, so intelligent, and he's just hit with the news that there's nothing he can do to save himself," he explains. "He's human. A friend of mine, who was an incredible man and very strong, was a cheerleader to people. Instead of getting them to do what he wanted, he supported them and boosted them when they were down. He got cancer, and worked very positively to get over it, but when he found it wasn't going to happen, he just went to bed and stopped eating, and went in a bout a week and a half. That surprised everybody, but we'd seen a lot of friends go in very debilitating ways, and he didn't want that. What I say to people is 'how do you know how you're going to deal with you own death until the time comes?' And Lionel didn't. Then he got a phone call, and he goes for the hope. But those contradictions are the moments that make the show exciting."

During the hiatus, Glover played the role of a man in love with a goat in Edward Albee's play The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? "It was the best thing I could have done," he says. "I played a whole new person."

He admits honestly that he was attracted to the unusual role by the fact that "I had no idea how I should play it. It scared me, so I thought I had to do it. I had no idea how I was going to get there but I found a way, by just trusting the universe, I guess!"

Looking ahead to the new season, Glover says that he hasn't asked too much about what's coming up for Lionel. "The one thing I suggested was that if I'm in prison for some time, I hoped they would write a bit of a story about how Lionel gets to be the top dog in prison," he says. "That doesn't just happen. There's some hot stuff coming up in prison. In Transference, somehow Clark is in my body and I'm in his. Martha is with me in prison and thinks she's visiting Lionel, but it's Lionel's body with Clark inside, and then she's at the farmhouse with Clark, and that's Lionel in Clark's body. Since they told me about it, I've been trying to see how I'll do this."

Glover has enjoyed his brief scenes with Lois Lane actress Erica Durance. "She's terrific," he says. "She's a wonderful actress, a lot of fun, and aching to learn -- and wide open about it."

He doesn't know whether Lionel was responsible for the attempts on Chloe and Lex. "I can't wait to find out," he laughs. "Maybe it's Morgan Edge. I saw the first two episodes of last season recently, and there was Rutger [Hauer]. I had such a good time working with him, and I so missed him. We had a great time together. He even gave me a chair for my birthday. I don't like the high directors' chairs, because to sit in them for any long time is uncomfortable, all you have for your feet is that little ledge. I find it much more comfortable to put my feet on the floor. I'd been asking for a low chair, and when I got back to the set on the Monday after my birthday, which was our last day together, there was a package from Rutger with a low chair he had gone and bought me!"

Although Hauer's return is unlikely, Glover is looking forward to more scenes with Allison Mack and Annette O'Toole. "I hope they put Allison and me back together again, because we were just teasing on what we wanted to get at, but she's still in high school," he hints. "I'd like to work on the emotional stuff between Allison and me. That was left up in the air, so we could go there some time. I'd like to play with Martha some more as well, and I heard rumors that that might happen. I'm interested to see where Lex and I are going to go together."

He laughs again. "I just trust that the writers will come up with some really interesting ways to deal with it all, as they have with the other stuff that I've been involved with!"

*

Lionelville

From time to time, the unforgiving nature of television means that certain scenes have to be lost because there simply isn't time to fit everything into the episode. John Glover recalls a few from the third season:

"Sometimes I wish the show was called Lionel, and there were a couple more scene with me in," he says. "They [often] run short of time, and they have to cut stuff out of a scene. There's been several episodes - in Shattered, where Lex is missing and Chloe and Clark are hiding him in the loft, there was a wonderful scene between Allison and me up in the loft where I'm up there waiting and she comes in, that we didn't have time to shoot and so that got cut. Then in Talisman, the episode with the Native American, the last scene between Lex and me back at the mansion ended up being cut because there wasn't enough time for it. They're the things that really wrap things up, and also leave parts of our relationship hanging 'til next time. You don't know why, but there's a little bit of incompleteness when they're putting it all together. But it happens all the time.


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