How Bradley Cooper’s Surprise Role in “Superman” Came to Be

NEED TO KNOW

• Superman, now in theaters, includes several surprise cameos

• Writer-director James Gunn invited Bradley Cooper and Angela Sarafyan to play Superman’s biological parents, relaying a message from his native Krypton

• Cooper, who previously worked with Gunn on the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, was “just doing me a favor,” the filmmaker said

For his Superman reboot, writer-director James Gunn recruited a Guardian of the Galaxy.

Spoiler alert: Bradley Cooper appears in the new DC Studios reboot as Jor-El, the biological father of David Corenswet’s Kryptonian Kal-El a.k.a. Superman/Clark Kent. Cooper, 50, voiced Rocket Raccoon in all three of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

The Oscar nominee’s cameo occurs only minutes into the new Superman, as the titular hero is taken into the Fortress of Solitude in Antarctica. Alongside him as Superman’s mother Lara Lor-Van is Westworld actress Angela Sarafyan. The two are glimpsed in hologram form, relaying an inspiring message in Kryptonian they sent along with Superman when he was an infant sent to Earth from their doomed planet Krypton.

“Really, Bradley’s just doing me a favor,” Gunn, 58, explained in a June 30 interview with Jake’s Takes. “He’s a friend. We’ve stayed in close contact since the Guardians movies, and I admire him greatly as an actor and as a director.”

Gunn has made hiring previous collaborators and friends a habit. In the same early Superman scene introducing Cooper’s character, fellow Guardians of the Galaxy cast members Pom Klementieff and Michael Rooker voice robotic figures aiding the Man of Steel. Gunn’s younger brother, Sean Gunn (another Guardians alum), appears briefly in the film as DC Comics character Maxwell Lord.

Inviting Cooper to join Superman was apparently a low-key affair, as Gunn recalled on Jake’s Takes. “I just said, ‘Hey, will you do me a favor? Come down, go to England, we’re going to shoot you in a 3D environment, make a hologram of you, and you can play Jor-El.’ He was like, ‘OK.’”

Actors including Marlon Brando, Russell Crowe and Angus Macfadyen have played Jor-El in the past. Asked about future appearances from Cooper as the character in DC Universe projects, Gunn teased, “You never know. It’s possible.”

Cooper and Sarafyan’s delivery of the holographic message that has inspired Superman his whole life ends up being a key plot point in the new movie. After Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) and his cronies break into the Fortress of Solitude, they patch together the previously missing part of the hologram message, in which Jor-El and Lara urge Superman to develop a harem to spread his genes throughout Earth and subjugate humans.

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Superman, also costarring Rachel Brosnahan, Edi Gathegi, Anthony Carrigan, Nathan Fillion and Isabela Merced, is in theaters July 11.

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