Superman: Metamorpho Actor Anthony Carrigan Explains Why James Gunn Hired Him for DCU

Superman has all the elements needed to be a blockbuster hit. The DC Studios movie has the superstar writer-director of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, The Suicide Squad, and Peacemaker (James Gunn), a furry friend (Krypto the Superdog), a classic enemy (Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor), toyetic big bads (Ultraman and the Hammer of Boravia), a starry cast (including The Last of Us breakout Isabela Merced), and a fresh-faced Man of Steel (David Corenswet).

But there’s also the super friends making their live-action debuts on the big screen this summer: Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Guy Gardner’s Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), the winged Hawkgirl (Merced), and Metamorpho, the Element Man (Anthony Carrigan), who has only been glimpsed so far in promotional materials.

“It’s incredible. I mean, just to know they’re getting little glimpses, I love that,” Carrigan said on the latest episode of the DC Studios Showcase Official Podcast. The Barry actor added, “It’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much more that I get to do in this movie, and it’s such fun stuff. Just to tease it out little by little is my favorite.”

Asked to reveal which comics he read for inspiration, Carrigan said, “Basically, whatever I could get my hands on.”

“It was really important to me — and I think it was also one of the reasons James hired me — is because this character in particular has this real kind of pathos to him,” he added. “And unlike a lot of superheroes, he’s not crazy about the fact that he’s a superhero. He feels cursed by what he has. And so I really kind of bring something to that, and it really lit a fire.”

Metamorpho is an element-powered shape-shifter. Before he was the purple and orange-clad Metamorpho, he was Rex Mason, soldier of fortune. Exposed to a radioactive meteor that essentially scrambled the chemicals and elements in his body, the transformed Rex found he had the ability to rearrange his molecules into any combination of the chemical elements and could then shape them into any form he could conceive.

Bringing Metamorpho’s powers to screen was “a wonderful collaboration between getting everything ready in terms of what I’m supposed to do and what’s on the page, but then working with James specifically on the day and finding these fun things to do,” Carrigan said. “And James is so game to make something fun. So if you have an idea about something, he’ll be like, ‘Do it. Let’s try it. Let’s go.’ And so I think a lot was born of that in terms of, ‘He’s the Element Man, so what if we do this?’ And James would always be like, ‘Let’s try it.’ And to be in that kind of environment was outstanding.”

DC Studios’ Superman flies into theaters July 11.