Titans showrunner previews Titus Welliver's arrival as Lex Luthor
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Casting Titus Welliver in Titans was not a hard sell. Though best-known for playing the hard-nosed titular detective on Bosch, Welliver is actually a big comics fan — as Titans showrunner Greg Walker discovered when he called the actor to pitch him on playing Lex Luthor.
"You usually have to do this whole dog-and-pony show to get an actor to do the show," Walker tells EW over Zoom. "But when I called to kind of lure him in, I could barely get a word in. We were talking on the phone and he was just walking through his library, telling me about all his Wolfman/Perez Titans editions. He's a giant, giant fan. He'd watched every episode of the show, and could tell me about certain stories, certain shots. It was the most unexpected call I've ever had."
Warner Bros. Lex Luthor (Titus Welliver) talks to Starfire (Anna Diop) on 'Titans' season 4.
Welliver's Luthor, who you can see in a first-look photo above, poses an interesting challenge for the Titans. Despite being one of the most infamous supervillains in the DC canon, he's still just human. His threat is intellectual and psychological.
"He has a very sensitive, thoughtful approach to evil and power. You know what he's done, what he's capable of doing, except like many of those people, he's personable. He doesn't have a cat on his lap. Yeah. He's curious, which I think is very interesting about his character. He wants to know about people and what makes them tick, and how they're different from him. He sees the world through the lens both of his own power and his own inadequacy, and tries to compensate for both."
Luthor is particularly threatening for Superboy. Conner (Joshua Orpin) was created from a combination of Superman's DNA with Luthor's. This season, Conner will finally have to reckon with what that means.
"We're really going deeper in all these characters and shaking them up," Walker says. "What shakes Conner up is an identity story. He's explored his Superman self, but he has not really explored his Lex self. What does that mean when you do? What happens when you give that self the keys to the car? Does it start driving the wrong way at rush hour 100 miles an hour?"
Check out the first look photo above. Titans season 4 premieres on HBO Max this November.
Make sure to check out EW's Fall TV Preview cover story — as well as all of our 2022 Fall TV Preview content, releasing over 22 days through Sept. 29.
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