‘My Adventures with Superman’ Stars Promise the Adult Swim Show is for All Ages: ‘Let Everyone Watch’ (Exclusive)

The highly anticipated animated series My Adventures with Superman premieres in just over a week now on Friday, July 7, and the cast is hoping everyone will tune in. In an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, stars Alice Lee and Ishmel Sahid said that the series’ home on Adult Swim should not turn away fans of any age. They encourage fans to share it with kids, teens and adults when it premieres.

“It’s not just for kids, adults can enjoy it as well,” Lee said. “I feel like they were like ‘oh yeah, let’s just let everyone watch,’ which I agree with.” Lee also said that this show will have a different tone from other DC Comics adaptations on the screen, which she believes will resonate with audiences. She said: “Everyone just feels brighter, and it’s more enthusiastic as opposed to – I feel like a lot more serious other Superman [adaptations] that we’ve seen. I think that’s fresh and exciting.”

Lee plays Lois Lane and Sahid plays Jimmy Olsen in My Adventures with Superman – an animated series about a young Clark Kent figuring out his place in Metropolis – and the world – as a hero and a news reporter. The initial announcement back in 2021 said that the show would premiere on Cartoon Network and Max, but earlier this year, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it would air on Adult Swim and Max instead. It sounds like this has little to do with the content of the show, if that’s a reason at all.

Producer Josie Campbell said that the show takes a lot of influence from the 1978 Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve in that it aims to be universally relatable while still being modern. The premise itself expresses this as Jimmy and Clark are introduced to Lois as interns, while she hopes that together they can make a name for themselves and become “real reporters.” Sahid told me that the key to this modernized take on characters nearly a century old is authenticity.

“I literally just went in into it being like, ‘okay, how can I bring myself into this character and just make him relatable and make him cool and make him funny, and just have him encompass, you know, all the emotions that an early me would have,’” he said. “I think for me, just bringing in that fun to the character is what I was trying to do. Hopefully, I executed it. I think everybody can kind of relate to that aspect of just being a young 20-something with a friend who just so happens to be an alien,” he concluded with a laugh.

Lee and Sahid both laughed off the limited complaints on social media about their characters being non-white, saying that so far that commentary has been limited and it hasn’t really bothered them. Sahid even noted that he wasn’t the first Black actor to play Jimmy Olsen, and said: “We’re talking about fake characters, you know? As long as you bring that essence to the character, I think that’s all that matters… It really doesn’t bother me at all. I just find it funny that people are so angry about it.”

“I agree with Ishmel,” Lee added. “They’re amazing characters. I think people just hae one thought about what it should be, but it’s 2023! I love that Lois Lane is Asian, I love that Jimmy’s Black, so yeah.”

My Adventures with Superman premieres on Friday, July 7 at 12 a.m. ET on Adult Swim with two episodes to start, then an episode per week every Friday after that. New episodes will be available to stream on Max the day after they premiere on cable.