Melissa Benoist rejects Supergirl / SNL comparison

As funny as SNL's Black Widow skit was on its own merits, it became doubly amusing when Supergirl went live with its first official trailer, which seemed to bear more than a passing resemblance to the horrendously cutesy rom-com spoof featuring Scarlett Johansson's character. However, leading lady Melissa Benoist thinks any such comparisons are way wide of the mark…

"We don’t really take ourselves too seriously in that respect," Benoist told EW. "The camp is going to be there. It’s a superhero show. But I don’t think that takes away from the female empowerment. Obviously you see Kara in her work atmosphere, it resembles the Black Widow parody, but what you don’t see is Kara kicking butt."

"There’s so much more in the pilot that I think people are really going to be surprised by. Also, it’s a girl. Supergirl, that whole discussion, it’s a girl figuring out how to become a woman. [The SNL spoof] came out and all of us thought it was so hilarious. I don’t think any of us expected people to compare them or put them side-by-side."

"I want to do right," she continues. "Of course this is a broad statement, but I want to do right by women. I want to portray someone they can relate to and look up to that’s not a trite or a shallow depiction. I want her to be complicated and flawed. I guess I just want all women to feel like they could be Kara and Superwoman as well."

"I don’t want it to be campy. I want it to be grounded and human. That goes for anybody. It doesn’t matter what sex. It doesn’t matter if it’s women or men I inspire, I just want to inspire people in general to realise their strengths and their potential, and that you can do the things that you feel like are impossible to accomplish." We'll see how successful she's been when the show makes its bow on 26 October 2015.

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