Actor Matt Bomer said he was slated to play Clark Kent/Superman on the big screen, but that opportunity was taken away after he was outed as being gay.
Bomer revealed this while appearing on “The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatters” podcast on June 10.
“I went in on a cattle call for Superman, and then it turned into a one-month audition experience where I was auditioning again and again and again,” he said. “It looked like I was the director’s choice for the role. This is a very early iteration of Superman written by J.J. Abrams, called ‘Superman: Flyby,’ I think is what it was called, and it never came to light.”
He explained that this was all set to happen in the mid-2000s when he was on the soap opera “Guiding Light.” He even revealed that the soap had written off his character because it was expected he was going to land the role of the Man of Steel.
“It looked like I was the director’s choice for the role,” Bomer said. “I signed a three-picture deal at Warner Bros.”
When the “Fellow Travelers” star was asked if his sexual orientation had something to do with the plan falling through, he replied with “Yeah, that’s my understanding.”
“That was a time in the industry when something like that could still really be weaponized against you,” he continued. “How, and why, and who, I don’t know, but yeah, that’s my understanding.”
Bomer is also not the only one who remembers it that way. According to Advocate, author Jackie Collins addressed the scrapped “Superman” deal during a 2012 interview with Gaydar Radio.
She revealed that the “White Collar” actor “had not come out of the closet, but people in the know knew he was gay,” she said. “His audition tape went in and he called up the agent. Someone didn’t like him and told [the producers] he was gay. They said, ‘No, no, we can’t cast you.’ The reason he didn’t get cast was because he was gay.”
Bomer did not publicly come out as gay until 2012.
A representative for Warner Bros. did not immediately respond to KTLA 5’s request for comment.