Melissa Benoist Welcomes Milly Alcock Into the Supergirl Pantheon
Benoist, soon to star in Max’s 'The Girls on the Bus', played Supergirl in her own Arrowverse series from 2015 to 2021
Melissa Benoist, who played Supergirl Kara Danvers for the Arrowverse across six seasons on CBS and The CW from 2015 to 2021, has chimed in on the casting of House of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock for the new DC Universe’s iteration of the character. With the DC Universe poised to be uniform across movies and television, Alcock is set to be Benoist’s direct successor as the Girl of Steel, though when she’ll debut is unclear.
Benoist, who will be coming to Max herself starring in the series The Girls on the Bus premiering March 14, said, “I think any and all takes on the character are valuable because of what she stands for. Supergirl as an entity is iconic for a reason and has been since the ’50s. I personally think that every iteration of her is valuable for young women to see, and hopefully [with] every take on her, someone will see themselves in it.”
In The Girls on the Bus, according to the official logline, Benoist plays Sadie McCarthy, “a journalist who romanticizes the original ‘Boys on the Bus’ and who scrapped her whole life for her own shot at covering a presidential campaign for the paper of record. Sadie hits the trail and eventually bonds with three female competitors. Despite their differences, these women become a found family with a front-row seat to the greatest soap opera in town: the battle for the White House.” The March 14 premiere will be for its first two episodes, rolling out singles weekly thereafter until May 9, with ten episodes total. The political drama is inspired by a chapter in Amy Chozick’s 2018 novel Chasing Hillary, inspired by Chozick’s time experiences as a political reporter on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. The series also stars Spy Kids and Lisa Frankenstein’s Carla Gugino, Natasha Behnam, Christina Elmore, and Brandon Scott. Series recurrers include Scott Foley, Griffin Dunne, and Legends of Tomorrow’s Zari (and Zari) Tala Ashe. The Girls on the Bus was first developed in 2019, ordered by Netflix in 2019, before being picked up by The CW when progress stalled. Max picked it up with a straight-to-series order in February 2022, predating the Discovery takeover.
As for Alcock, she was primarily doing Australian movies and series before being cast as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen on HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel, giving her exposure to American audiences. She played the princess in the first five episodes, before a 10-year time jump put Emma D’Arcy in the role. She’s set to headline Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, but is also reported to be making some sort of appearance prior, with all signs pointing to James Gunn’s Superman, starring David Corenswet as her cousin Clark Kent aka Superman. Gunn hasn’t explicitly denied the casting either, but he’s also mentioned that the chapter both projects are contained in aren’t necessarily in the same spot they were when originally announced.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said recently that Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is in the midst of more casting, so the hiring of a director, and the announcing of the casting should be happening pretty soon.
Sources: ScreenRant, TVLine