Calista Flockhart has geared her screen career back in recent years, taking guest spots on TV series and eschewing the cinema since 2005. It appears she’s ready to dive back in to telly work, snagging a starring role in the new Supergirl show in development across the pond{
The series, which comes from some of the team behind successful superhero outings Arrow and The Flash, will once again be set in the DC Comics universe, and focuses on Kara Zor-El (Whiplash**’s Melissa Benoist), Supes’ cousin, who escaped Krypton as he did and ended up on Earth. Initially unwilling to acknowledge her powers, she starts to come into her own in her mid-twenties and accept her heroic destiny. It’s the brainchild of Greg Berlanti, who has worked on the aforementioned shows and Ali Adler, who wrote for Chuck and short-lived super-powered domestic drama No Ordinary Family.
Flockhart has signed onto play Cat Grant, a character in the comics who in the show will be a media magnate who started her career as a reporter and employs Kara as her assistant, little knowing of her minion’s powers – at least until the young woman starts to embrace them.
It’s perhaps not surprising that Flockhart chose to return to TV full time in a Berlanti show – she spent years on his family drama Brothers & Sisters. She’s part of a cast that now also includes Mehcad Brooks as Jimmy Olsen and Laura Benanti as Supergirl’s mother. US network CBS has already ordered an initial series of the show, and it’s expected to touch down in the autumn.