A new episode of Lucifer titled “The Sinnerman” airs tonight (December 4) on FOX, and what the audience will find within may be some answers… and many more questions. It’s a fast-paced hour that will leave viewers wanting more, and despite being part of an overarching mystery, it’s a decent jumping on point for the series.
Several weeks ago, series stars Tom Ellis and Tom Welling participated in “A Night of Two Toms” press event where they screened the episode and did interviews about the current happenings in the show. The previously press-elusive Welling, who starred as Clark Kent in ten seasons of The CW’s Smallville, was jovial, animated, and seems quite happy with this role that brought him back to television, while he plays Lt. Marcus Pierce. Of course, Smallville continues to be something that Tom’s many fans have always held on to, including Lucifer Executive Producer and co-showrunner Joe Henderson.
“Joe has seen every episode of Smallville,” Welling told a group of journalists at the event. “He also, years ago as a writer, had a spec script that the Smallville production kept thinking about doing for like five years, so was Joe was always keeping track of Smallville as a fan of the genre and a fan of the show.”
“That first call that I had with Joe, he was talking about Smallville and I’m like ‘what are you talking about?’ He was naming things… ‘you don’t remember? That season?’ I was like ‘Dude. I was in a constant state of exhaustion and jet lag on that show.’ I can turn on a Smallville episode and be like ‘what’s gonna happen? Let’s see!” And then it kind of comes back,” Tom recalled.
Henderson’s familiarity with Smallville is part of why he thought Welling would be perfect for Marcus Pierce.
“Joe has seen every episode, and he proved it, and he goes ‘the reason I say that is because I’ve seen what you’ve been doing, and I can see that this is different, and I can see that we can use what your profile is and what you’ve done before, but you can stretch your legs a little bit differently,’ and I think we’re doing that, and I’m enjoying that,” Tom related.
It also helped for Tom that Lt. Pierce was very different from Clark Kent, which also means it’s a different feeling on set.
“What you don’t see is that when someone says cut, we all break into laughter on every take. All of us. Tom [Ellis] is so charming, and it’s infectious,” Tom said before talking about what makes these characters different.
“On Smallville, my character was always asking ‘why?’ Like ‘what’s going on?’ Michael Rosenbaum and I talked about it [recently]. Clark was always like ‘what’ and Lex was always like ‘why?’ And what you’ll find from this [series] is that you’ll find that Pierce is more ahead of the game than you think,” Welling teased.
“One of the challenges about his character in the first episode was that Pierce doesn’t say anything. Everybody else talks about him. So you’re playing a character that doesn’t say anything, and the challenge for me was being able to sit there a little bit, kind of being a little bit of a jerk, kind of being stern, and hopefully go ‘why is he here’?” Welling hoped. “Like, ‘why is Tom Welling here? He’s got to be here for a reason! Tom Welling came back to play a guy that just stands there? What?'”
And, yes, beyond having him constantly interact with a character named Chloe, there are some Super-references on the show… including in the December 4 episode. That’s not all that’s coming, though.
“In a few episodes, there’s a joke that Lucifer says directly to Pierce. It’s for the audience; it’s not for the characters,” Tom said. “Obviously, I think it’s funny. I can’t play it as that character for sure, but I see what they’re doing. I’m on to them!”
Lucifer airs Monday nights on FOX. See a trailer for tonight’s episode “The Sinnerman” below!
