While there’s no doubt that Jack Quaid’s most well-known superhero media-related credit is playing Hughie Campbell in the Amazon Prime Video subscription-exclusive series The Boys, he’s also left his mark on this genre through animation. Along with voicing Alberto Falcone in Batman: The Long Halloween and Earth-65’s Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, he can currently be heard as Kal-El/Clark Kent in Adult Swim’s My Adventures with Superman. As it turns out, Quaid also auditioned to play the Man of Steel in James Gunn’s Superman, and while that didn’t end up working out, he gave an explanation for why David Corenswet was the best choice to suit up as the character.
Quaid touched on his short-lived attempt to star in the upcoming DC movie while speaking with reporter Josh Horowitz. Here’s what he had to say about why Corenswet playing the new Superman was the right call and how he understands why he wasn’t selected for the role:
I didn't get very far at all. I put myself on tape, and it went nowhere, and that's fine. Like, that's totally cool, specifically because, I actually know David Corenswet a little bit. We did a pilot years ago that never went anywhere. But he's one of those people you meet and you go 'Oh, yeah! Whenever they need another one, it's probably gonna be you.' That guy is Superman. I know I don't, I remember getting that audition, and being like, 'Yeah, sure I'm the voice of Superman in a cartoon, but I don't really fit the bill physically at all.' And that's fine, that's totally cool. But it was cool to audition for something like that.
Sometimes an actor isn’t chosen to play a character not because the performance they gave in the audition is bad, but they’re just not physically right for the part. That’s what Jack Quaid attributes to him not being cast as Superman, and he’s ok with that. More importantly, having worked with David Corenswet in the past, he knew that the actor from The Politician, Lady of the Lake, Pearl and Twisters was a dead ringer for the Kryptonian superhero. Funny enough, back in 2019, Corenswet said that his “pie-in-the-sky ambition” was to play Superman.
Now we’re a year off from seeing how he does succeeding Henry Cavill as the next live-action Superman, and James Gunn shared that filming is nearly done on the first DC Universe movie. Meanwhile, My Adventures with Superman, which can be streamed with a Max subscription, is just days away from airing its Season 2 finale. The good news for fans of the show is that Season 3 has been officially confirmed, so they’ll get to keep hearing Jack Quaid as Clark Kent alongside Alice Lee’s Lois Lane and Ishmel Sahid’s Jimmy Olsen, among others.
Superman hits theaters on July 11, 2025. It will be the second DC Universe project to be released, as the animated Creature Commandos series drops on Max in December.
