Prior to being tapped as the co-showrunners on The CW’s new take on Beauty And The Beast, Brian Peterson and Kelly Souders had a bit of experience writing epic supernatural romance – they wrote and produced for The WB/CW series Smallville for nine of its ten seasons, running the show for three of them.
Peterson and Souders joined Beauty And The Beast as co-showrunners after the pilot, which was written by their fellow showrunners Jennifer Levin and Sherri Cooper. The project reunites them with Kristin Kreuk, who played Smallville’s Lana Lang and now is Catherine Chandler, the role made famous by Linda Hamilton in the late 1980’s TV show. We caught up with them at this year’s Comic-Con to hear more about what we have to expect from this new Beauty.
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“For us, I think it was a lot of the themes that it explores,” Kelly Souders says when asked what drew them to the project. “You could be beautiful out on the outside, and be beastly on the inside, and vice versa. One thing that we’ve been talking about with this show is that all of us have some sort of ‘beast’ inside of us that we try to hide from the rest of the world. Maybe it’s just me, I don’t know. I think that’s something that will be an ongoing theme in the show, peeling back the layers of people. As we get to know the characters a little bit more, we’ll actually understand the beastly and the beautiful side of all of them in ways that you’re hopefully not expecting.”
Being the producers who finally brought Clark Kent and Lois Lane together on Smallville, who also wrote Kreuk’s emotional farewell as Lana Lang, it is not surprised that the “romantic side” of this project was the sort of thing that Souders and Peterson were looking for. “As much as we want the gritty reality of television to mirror today’s world, you also want that heightened mystical romance. That is the fun part of what you’re tuning in for, and that’s the emotional side of it. That’s what appeals to me. I think we always start from what appeals to us personally, and then we see the fans, and hopefully the two are the same,” Kelly says.
“For anybody who has grown up and felt different, who feels like as good as you are, you’re only going to be a beast in x amount of peoples’ eyes no matter what you do, I think a lot of people – whether it’s nationality, whether it’s sexuality, gender, whatever it is – a lot of people have felt that at one point or another, and I think what’s really great about this show is that we really tap into the ‘inner beast’,” Brian adds. Interestingly, Souders and Peterson’s first Smallville script, “Nocturne,” explored similar themes… complete with a brooding loner who hid in the shadows and had a thing for a character played by Kristin Kreuk. “What’s funny is, there is a very similar gothic quality to that character in ‘Nocturne’,” Brian says. “I think that’s definitely part of what drew us to this project. Epic, tragic love.”
The “tragic love” between Catherine and Vincent (Jay Ryan) will have some interesting beginnings. “What’s kind of interesting, when you start with the pilot, is even though this is a romance between two people and they’re just getting to know each other, one of them has been voyeuristically been watching the other one for ten years. So, you start on a very different foot than you would in most situations,” Kelly says. “This is a guy who hasn’t had to interact or negotiate or compromise with anyone for years. He hasn’t even ordered a coffee in ten years. So the idea of having a relationship, just to even make moves that the other person is going to be okay with, and the very beginning relationship things, he might as well be like a 12 year old in some ways, because he hasn’t done it for a long time.”
As Peterson and Souders get started with Beauty And The Beast, they’ll be building on story elements set up by Sherri Cooper and Jennifer Levin in the series pilot. “I think the pilot leaves more than a couple things unanswered, and we’re going to start Episode 2 by giving a couple small clues as to the answers to some of the things set up in the pilot,” Brian says. After that, don’t expect any stalling as the show will move full speed ahead. “Our goal, the four of us, is that every episode moves them into a different place, so there are no stalls, especially for this first run in the Fall.”
Beauty And The Beast premieres Thursday, October 11 on The CW. Take a look at some video of the cast at Comic-Con below:
