Supergirl’s Jeremy Jordan on Toyman, A Musical Episode and Seeing the Costume For the First Time

A longtime Superman villain in the comics, CBS and Warner Bros. Television have reinvented Winslow “Toyman” Schott as a potential love interest for Kara Zor-El in the forthcoming Supergirl television series — and it’s not clear when or whether he’ll do his heel turn.

It’s not unprecedented territory; in The Flash, the character of Caitlin Snow is a villain in the comics, but so far as no powers or discernibly evil predispositions on TV. Schott is arguably a little stranger in part because he works for CatCo, the media conglomerate run by Cat Grant…whose son Schott murdered in the comics.

Jeremy Jordan, who plays Schott, joined ComicBook.com and a roundtable of reporters at Comic-Con International: San Diego back in July to discuss his future on the series, which debuts on October 26 on CBS.

In the comics, Winslow Schott has a very…we’ll say conflicted relationship with Cat Grant. Is it interesting for you having that in the back of your mind and playing this character?

Well, yeah. It’s not hard to have a conflicting relationship with Cat Grant. She’s a very difficult person to work with. But yeah, I think it’s cool to keep that in the back of our minds but at the same time we’re sort of reinventing all of these characters’ origin stories. You can see it by having a very different kind of Jimmy Olsen. We’re kind of working Kara’s whole story and Hank’s story and everybody’s kind of finding their own thing.

We don’t know a whole lot about Winn. He appears on and off in comics throughout the years, but I think we have a little more leverage to really create this character from scratch. I can’t imagine, having named him that, that he’s not going to get to a darker place eventually, but right now, he’s fun, excitable, youthful, really happy and sort of silly and quirky and young and in love with Kara even though she doesn’t like him like that (but it’s okay, they’re still friends).

So going from that energy to a place where you can become something like who Winslow Schott may become, which is a villain in the DC Universe, could be very fun to explore. Hopefully over the course of many seasons, becuase I don’t want to die halfway through the first season when Kara zaps me wit her heat vision. Damn, that would suck!

Kara is technically a single person regardless of what costume she’s in. I was wondering, for you, was there any mental trigger when she stepped out and you were doing a scene with her in the costume.

Well, the first time I saw her in the costume is the first time the audience sees her in the pilot, because my character sort of makes her clothes for her — he’s her personal superhero tailor. And so when she steps out, I think I kind of had a very similar reaction. I hadn’t seen any of the promo pics, I hadn’t seen any of that sort of stuff.

But at the same time, I had to remove myself because Melissa and I are two total goofball dorks. So the first time she stepped out in rehearsal, she’s like [making a funny voice] “Hey! Lookit this!” And we’re just laughing and being idiots. So we have to switch gears when they call action, because between takes we’re just acting stupid the whole time, which I think is great because so many times, I come from a theatre background and when you’re working with a new person for the first time, it’s sort of crash course, get-to-know-you, let’s be best friends. And you don’t see a lot of that in film and television because it’s so fleeting, you know? When you’re in theatre, you do the same thing every night. And Melissa and I sort of hit it off instantly, and I think that reflects onscreen and hopefully will continue to in the future.

Supergirl is a fun show and there’s a lot of musical talent on board. It’s kind of unlikely we’ll get a musical episode but do you think we might see the music incorporated somewhere, like on The Flash with Grant doing karaoke?

You know, that’s up to the producers. I think if that happens, wait a second, let us establish these new characters, because people see especially Melissa and I as singers, ahead of being just an actor. I think it would be cool to do that down the line, though; we can also do fun, promo-y things with it and keep it out of the actual show. I was saying that next year for Comic-Con, for our panel, we should do a big group number to introduce the show.

How is it for you to be playing in a lot of scenes, the audience surrogate?

It’s so much easier and more exciting. When I read the pilot, I was the audience member at that point and I was like, “Well, this is the character I relate to, because I feel like him. I feel like that’s me watching the show, experiencing these sort of fanboy moments for the first time.” And I’m really excited to be that character that people can sort of relate to, at least at first. I don’t ever get a chance to play that character. I’m usually the dark and brooding, young angry man. It’s the brows.