Former House of the Dragon star Milly Alcock is the fourth actress to portray Kara Zor-El in live-action in Supergirl. But unlike the stars of the original 1984 Supergirl, Smallville, and The Flash, she’ll have a lucky charm in her film that the others didn’t have. While appearing on Raiders of the Lost Podcast (via Deadline), Alcock revealed that her Supergirl cape is actually partially made from a genuine piece of Hollywood history. The costume designers made it from the same fabric used to create Christopher Reeve’s cape in Richard Donner’s Superman. Here is what she had to say:
My cape in this film was remade using material from the original Superman cape. Yeah, I think that they found there was like 16 meters of that material, so yeah, that’s in the back of my cape now.
To millions of fans, the late Christopher Reeve will always be the quintessential Superman actor. To this day, he remains the default when people think of the character. So carrying a piece of his cinematic legacy around when portraying his cousin on screen has to be very cool. We’re not sure if any of the subsequent actors who played Superman had the same honor. But we think if they did, we would surely have heard about it by now.
In the pages of DC Comics and on screen, the character of Supergirl has had a metric ton of costumes. There are far more variations to her look than Superman, in fact. The one she wears in the film is very classic in its design. And it looks nearly identical to the one drawn by artist Bilquis Evely in the comic Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. Here’s hoping that Christopher Reeve’s old Superman cape transfers some of his on-screen charm and confidence to Milly Alcock when portraying Kara. Not that she needs it, but who can’t use some extra Christopher Reeve on-screen magic?
Supergirl, directed by Craig Gillespie, arrives in theaters everywhere on June 26.