While The CW boasts the wide-reaching Arrow-verse and Fox is home to Gotham's proto-Batman, DC Comics' heroes are completely absent from the rest of the TV-sphere. Thankfully, DC's in-development streaming service will make up for that in a huge way, and no project has more eyes on it than the team-driven action drama Titans. We've already seen a slew of costumed characters get cast in the past few months, and two Doom Patrol characters have now joined the ensemble, with Drop Dead Diva's April Bowlby tapped to play Elasti-Girl, and up-and-coming actor Jake Michaels set for Robotman.
It wasn't long ago when DC icon Geoff Johns publicly announced that Titans would be welcoming the Doom Patrol, and it would appear the first incarnation of the World's Strangest Heroes will be the one to finally make it to live-action. (Though we'll have to see who gets cast next.) According to EW, April Bowlby will take on the role of Rita Farr, an actress whose career takes a hard left turn when she's exposed to a toxic gas that completely changes up her cellular structure. As the name Elasti-Girl suggests, those cell changes allow Rita to stretch and shrink her body, somewhat similar to Mr. Fantastic and Elongated Man, and she finds companionship with the Doom Patrol's other misfits. Hopefully the show's budget is big enough to tackle those effects with cinematic flair.
As Cliff Steele, Jake Michaels will play a former race car driver who got into a horrifying and life-changing accident that wrecked his body beyond repair. Luckily for him, the powerful Dr. Niles Caulder put Cliff's brain into the body of a robot, and a hero was born, as it were. Robotman has lots of tech-based abilities and gadgetry, but one important element of the character is his emotional brain-state, which gives human complexities to the manufactured form. Robotman is the only Doom Patrol hero to be included in each iteration of the super-group, so his inclusion on Titans was definitely expected. However, ComicBook.com reports Michaels has only signed on for a guest spot role, with the potential to recur later in the season.
Titans first teased its Doom Patrol team by casting Bruno Bichir as Niles "Chief" Caulder, and we're now expecting Negative Man to land an actor very soon. Whoever it is will be joining Brenton Thwaites' Dick Grayson, Anna Diop's Starfire, Teagan Crfot's Raven, Ryan Potter's Beast Boy, Alan Ritchson's Hawk, Minka Kelly's Dove and Lindsey Gort's Amy Rohrbach. And probably more.
After starring in a handful of How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men episodes, April Bowlby landed a more longterm gig as Drop Dead Diva's Stacy Barrett, a role she played for all six seasons. She's since popped up in a handful of projects like You're the Worst and The Big Bang Theory, but her role on Titans could be her biggest break yet. The same definitely goes for Jake Michaels, whose previous larger-scale roles were for the Canadian drama In the Rough and the Polish drama Na dobre i na zle, with some one-off appearances on shows like Designated Survivor and ?????Killjoys.
DC's streaming service still doesn't have a title or a release window just yet, but they're going to make that news as widespread as possible, so keep an eye out. In the meantime, stay tuned for more Titans casting news and head to our midseason premiere schedule to see all the new and returning shows on the way.
