Two new Smallville Villains Cast

Reporting by Kate Blake, Admin OSCK

The HollywoodReporter has announced that two new villains have been cast for the final season of Smallville.

Cast to play the Doomsday character aka Davis Bloome is Sam Witwer best known as Crashdown on BSG. Crashdown you will recall died on Kobol in a spectacular melt-down when he was put in charge of securing his position and protecting Baltar, Callie and the Chief ( Aaron Douglas). I am pleased that the casting from the pools of BSG alum is continuing on Smallville. The show has managed to have a number of BSG cast make appearances on Smallville . Most recently we saw Aaron Douglas ( Chief Tyrol on BSG) make a second appearance on Smallville. He was in a season 2 episode ( Obscura) as a sheriff’s deputy, his encore was as the evil henchman Pierce paid by Lionel to trap Clark in the kryptonite cage in Traveler.

Initial reports had Doomsday cast as a bartender, new reports are that the character played by Witwer will be a paramedic facing a growing darkness inside of him. I like this news. Witwer can be menacing. I recall seeing him for the first time as the X5 blood source gone bad in a season 2 episode of Dark Angel. His character was charismatic, manipulative and scary beyond belief. Crashdown on BSG was a fairly one dimensional character, one of the pilots we saw a couple of times but never really had any strong emotional involvement with except in his part as plot device.

Witwer goes by his middle name Stewart or Stew, grew up in Chicago, attended Julliard ( the same school that Superman Christopher Reeve did) , was in the recent Stephen King movie The Mist , has a band called the Crashtones, and is a self-avowed Star Wars fan who recently wielded a light-saber in the upcoming Lucas Arts video game Force Unleashed. Check out the Sam Witwer Fan Site for more info on this up and coming actor.

The second addition to the cast playing Tess Mercer, acting CEO of Luthor Corp. is TV newcomer Cassidy Freeman. She was in the film Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee. She was also the star in the short film Razor Sharp. Razor Sharp was an award winner at last year’s Comic Con. The short comes out of the SIRE comics series so Cassidy is not unfamiliar with action and comics adaptations. She got dirty and did some serious action work in the film.

Michael Ausiello reported this about the character of Tess and her casting/character description:

“Tess: Drop-dead gorgeous.Roughly 28 years old.She’s determined, sexy, vengeful and has super-strength. “While Lex is away, she is in control of his estate and rules it with aggression. She’s had intellect and the confidence all her life, though it’s obvious she’s had some training from Lex as well. But as much as Lex has helped fortify her power, he is also her biggest weakness. She harbors an undying devotion to Lex, claiming he saved her life a few years ago. She carries out his wishes with coercion, force, seduction – anything to get what she wants. And no one can resist her beguiling ways. Even Clark Kent. She doesn’t remember anything before the day she met Lex. Once she realizes her previous life is buried below the surface, she’s desperate to dig it up.”

From the Razor Sharp website we have this background on the actress ” A Chicago native, and the only girl of three actor siblings, Cassidy has been performing in some way or another since the age of three. A Magna Cum Laude graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, she has lived and acted in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cochabamba, Bolivia, and now resides in Santa Monica, California. Since moving to Los Angeles, she has appeared in a variety of projects ranging from the action-adventure short Razor Sharp, to the feature films Breathe!, and the Justin Lin directed comedy Finishing The Game, which premiers at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.”

I was initially a bit concerned about Cassidy since her IMDB resume is so brief but the work on Razor Sharp and her training and experience though not on TV seems to be diverse and relevant. And she looks much more the part in the photos I have here from Razor Sharp than the obviously very old headshot published everywhere else. I have it posted here below along with a nice closeup of Cassidy.

I am very happy with this casting news- I am sure the Witwer will be able pull off his task of being a formidable and believable force for evil and I have hopes that the new showrunners have made a good choice with Freeman.
“We’re thrilled that Sam and Cassidy will be joining the cast, and we have some very exciting things in store for them, their characters and ‘Smallville’ fans for this season,” executive producers Kelly Souders, Brian Peterson, Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer said in a statement. “They are both incredibly talented performers, and we cannot wait to begin to work with them.”