Nicole Maines, who plays the character of Nia Nal on Supergirl, says that she has already seen Nia’s superhero costume, and that it is gorgeous, and the show’s best.
Videos by ComicBook.com
The season will see Nia become Dreamer, the first transgender superhero on television. The character is based on Nura Nal, the Legion of Super-Heroes member initially known as Dream Girl in comics. Created by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte in 1964, Dream Girl was an alien with precognitive abilities. The Dreamer identity debuted in 1996 in a story by Tom Peyer, Tom McGraw, and Lee Moder.
“I’m so excited. I’m trying to conduct myself on set in a professional manner, and be like ‘I’m not completely obsessed with the super-suit,’ but it’s all I think about,” Maines told reporters during a visit to the Supergirl set yesterday. “Every morning I wake up, ‘I’m getting a supersuit!’ I’m going to sleep, ‘I’m getting a super-suit!’ I’m really, really excited. It’s gonna be gorgeous! I have the best super-suit. I do.”
Even with all of that excitement, Maines’s first experience with the suit sounds like it may have been a little bit comical and less than fully inspiring.
“Constricting. Tight,” she said when asked what it was like wearing Dreamer’s costume at first. “For the first time it was for a fitting, so they have the model and they have your sizes, but when you first put it on in person, they kind of realize, ‘Okay, this needs to go up more, this needs to be hemmed,’ or ‘wow, you can’t get your arm through this.’ So, constricting.”
Given that the comics-version of Dreamer is an alien, it’s entirely possible that we’ll see that come into play on Supergirl this season. Supergirl may be at her peak as a hero currently, but all is not well in National City or in the United States. There’s a serious anti-alien sentiment that is growing rapidly. As things continue to develop, if Nia is of alien origin standing up for others may well be what propels her into heroics.
Supergirl airs on Sunday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT, before episodes of Charmed on The CW.
