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'White Collar' star Matt Bomer thought he was "the director's choice" for Superman in the 2000s, but believes he was passed over because of his sexual orientation.
Matt Bomer didn't come out publicly as gay until 2012, but he believes his sexuality nevertheless kept him from securing one of the most coveted roles in Hollywood for any chisel-jawed actor, Superman, back in the 2000s.
The White Collar alum said that it was a project written by J.J. Abrams tentatively called Superman: Flyby, "and it never came to light." He said confidence was so high, his Guiding Light producers wrote off his character believing he had the chance to portray Clark Kent on the big screen. He was part of that soap opera from 2000 to 2003.
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View Story"It looked like I was the director’s choice for the role," Bomer told The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast. "I signed a three-picture deal at Warner Bros."
According to Entertainment Weekly, that film was ultimately renamed Superman: Man of Steel before getting scrapped. Brett Ratner (who faced multiple MeToo allegations in 2017) was originally attached to it, but left in March 2003.
Ratner cited "the difficulty of casting the role of Superman," as contributing to his decision. Variety reported at the time that Ratner left because studio executives would not cast Bomer, wanting Brendan Fraser instead.
In the end, that project never came to fruition at all. When asked if he thought his sexual orientation had anything to do with him not getting cast for the role, Bomer replied, "Yeah, that's my understanding.
Even though the Fellow Travelers star wasn't publicly out yet, Bomer explained, "That was a time in the industry when something like that could still really be weaponized against you."
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View Story"How, and why, and who, I don’t know," he continued, "but yeah, that’s my understanding."
Author Jackie Collins told Gaydar Radio in October of that year, per The Daily Mail, that his sexuality was definitely the reason Bomer lost the role.
"He had not come out of the closet, but people in the know knew he was gay," she said of Bomer. "His audition tape went in and he called up the agent and somebody didn't like him and told [the producers] he was gay. They said, 'No, no, we can't cast you.' The reason he didn't get cast was because he was gay."
The next Superman film to come out starred Brandon Routh in the role, with Bryan Singer having taken over for McG's own aborted attempts to continue the franchise. 2006's Superman Returns tied very closely to the original Christopher Reeve films in spirit and continuity (at least with the first two of Reeve's films), and was well-received. But it also closed the chapter on that era of DC superhero films.
Bomer has had a chance to flex his own superhero muscles, in live-action and in animated form. He lent his voice to Superman in the 2013 film Superman: Unbound, and Barry Allen's The Flash in several DC animated films, including the ongoing Crisis on Infinite Earths trilogy. He also starred as Negative Man in both Titans and Doom Patrol.
The actor came out as gay publicly while on stage at the Steve Chase Humanitarian Awards in 2012, thanking his husband Simon Halls and their three children.
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