In the new “Superman” movie, there’s a brief scene with a reporter who has just one line of dialogue.
The moment is fleeting but fitting: The reporter is played by Will Reeve, who is an ABC News correspondent.
He also happens to be the son of the late actor Christopher Reeve, who starred as Superman in the 1970s and ‘80s.
What Will Reeve has said about his ‘Superman’ cameo
Will Reeve has been fairly tightlipped regarding the details of his cameo — even as the film has hit theaters.
“I will not tell you what my line was,” he recently told the New York Post. “But I can tell you that I was playing a close approximation of myself.”
Reeve filmed his “Superman” cameo last year, and said “it was the right decision ... to honor my parents,” per Variety.
“I was honored to get the call from the wonderful filmmakers, and I jumped at the opportunity,” he told the New York Post.
“And it was a nice homage, I think, to my dad, who for millions of people has been Superman for generations, and for the filmmakers of this new version of Superman,” he continued. “To include me as a way to include him meant a lot.”
Although his dad is inseparable from the role of Superman, Reeve said there is room for other interpretations of the superhero.
“We’re not gatekeepers of Superman,” he told Variety. “Our dad played this role in an incredibly enduring and culturally meaningful way, and that has stuck with people to present day. But that doesn’t mean he’s the only person who can be Superman, right? We’re rooting for everybody to succeed, to soar, if you will.”
The influence of ‘Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story’
The new “Superman” movie comes about a year and a half after a documentary on Christopher Reeve premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
Will Reeve said the cast and crew of James Gunn’s “Superman” watched the Sundance doc, titled “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story," before shooting the film.
“Some of the actors have told me that watching that helped them contextualize and better understand how much it meant to get this movie right,” Reeve told the New York Post. “And to do right by not only the fans who love this character and this franchise, but also loved my dad, and knowing how much playing Superman meant to my dad as well.”
Reeve said he and his siblings “really were touched” that the documentary informed the new film, per the New York Post.
“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” draws from raw interviews with Reeve’s children, archives and home videos to show how the actor went from being a relative unknown to an on-screen superhero to a real-life hero as he became a public face for disability research and activism following a horse-riding accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down, the Deseret News previously reported.
Opening up for the film involved “reliving a lot of trauma and reliving a lot of happiness,” Will Reeve told the Deseret News ahead of the film’s premiere at Sundance.
“We wanted this project to be the definitive story of our dad’s life, and that requires an emotional ride,” he said. “And we were prepared for it, as much as one can be.”
The film also touches on Will Reeve’s mother, Dana Reeve, who died less than two years after her husband following an unexpected lung cancer diagnosis.
Will Reeve was just 13 when he lost both of his parents.
Following the Sundance screening, he became emotional as he shared that his adopted family — “the single greatest thing” his mother ever did for him — was in the audience. He said he was overwhelmed with love and gratitude for his adopted family and for the love both of his parents gave him.
Reeve stood with his siblings, Matt and Alexandra, visibly proud of his father’s warts-and-all story that had just unfolded on the big screen.
“We’re proud of all of it,” he told the audience at Sundance, per Deseret News. “We’re proud of all the complexities and nuances and not-so-great elements of the story, because that’s humanity, that’s what makes a human. And that’s what makes an ordinary individual into a hero, is all of the messiness and all of the striving to be better.”