Kristin Kreuk Talks Murder in a Small Town and Smallville Reboot Hopes
The actress discusses a mature relationship on Fox's Murder in a Small Town and the possibility of an animated Smallville revival.
Kristin Kreuk is promoting Season 2 of Murder in a Small Town, Fox’s mystery drama in which she plays Cassandra, a librarian who begins a romance with the town’s police chief, Karl Alberg, played by Rossif Sutherland. The show returns Sept. 23 at 8 p.m. on Fox. In an exclusive interview with The New York Post, Kreuk said the pairing offers a different kind of tension: “We have wonderful chemistry. It’s fun, it’s easy, he’s a pro. I think it’s really lovely that we get to play this relationship between these two characters as they are in mid-life, and really have a mature relationship.”
Kreuk described Cassandra as entering her first serious relationship since her 20s, a reality that allows the series to explore what it means to build a lasting partnership. “For Cassandra, it’s really her first serious relationship since she was in her 20s,” she said, adding that the show investigates the nuances of coupledom beyond the standard will-they-won’t-they dynamic. “We have wonderful chemistry. It’s fun, it’s easy, he’s a pro,” Kreuk said, highlighting the ease and drama that come with longevity in a romance. “There’s a real drama within that longevity.” The actress emphasized that the series prioritizes character depth over a perpetual romantic arc, noting, “I love that we’re looking at…what does it mean to build a relationship? And finding the tension, drama, and passion within that longevity.”
Kreuk rose to fame playing Lana Lang on Smallville, the long-running series that tracked the younger years of Clark Kent. The show aired for 10 seasons from 2001 to 2011, shaping the superhero landscape for a generation. With a new wave of Superman stories in theaters and on screens, The Post asked Kreuk whether a Smallville reboot could ever reemerge. She acknowledged the industry’s appetite for revivals but cautioned that a direct return “as it was” might not be feasible, given that all the principal players are older now. “It’s funny, Tom [Welling] and Michael [Rosenbaum] talked about a reboot of sorts for years, in an animated form – which feels like the way that you would do something like ‘Smallville,’ when all of us are old now. But since everyone has aged, I don’t know that it would be possible to revisit the story again ‘as it was.’ But, she added, “we’ll see what they end up doing with an animated idea.”
Kreuk noted that different Superman stories speak to different eras. Since Smallville, Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel arrived in theaters, followed by the most recent take on the character starring David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan. Kreuk argued that iconic stories endure even as formats or casts shift. “These are iconic stories that I think will go on forever,” she said. “They might go away for a while. But there’s truth within them that storytellers can come back to, always.”
The Smallville legacy is inseparable from the broader Superman conversation. Kreuk, who occasionally attends industry events, spoke to the enduring pull of the character and how audiences’ appetite for moral clarity evolves with time. It is a point of reflection on how a show about a young man who grows into a savior can resonate across generations and evolving cultural moments.
In reflecting on the broader cultural footprint of the show she helped launch, Kreuk also touched on the franchise’s more complicated chapters. Smallville’s legacy intersected with real-world controversies surrounding Allison Mack, who was later implicated in the NXIVM case. Mack was sentenced to three years in prison in 2021 for her role in the organization, and was released in July 2023. Kreuk has previously addressed NXIVM, saying in 2018 that she left the group five years earlier and was horrified by subsequent disclosures; when The Post revisited the topic, Kreuk declined to discuss it further. The conversations around Smallville’s legacy thus encompass both its cultural impact and its complicated history outside the show’s fiction.
As Kreuk continues to balance television projects with the weight of a storied career, she underscored the idea that stories about heroism, moral clarity, and human connection endure. Whether a revival of a beloved series materializes in animated form or not, Kreuk’s current work on Murder in a Small Town centers on mature storytelling and character-driven drama that invites audiences to consider what genuine partnership looks like in the modern era.
Season 2 of Murder in a Small Town debuts Sept. 23 at 8 p.m. on Fox, and Kreuk’s comments this week reflect a broader conversation about how legacy properties evolve and how today’s writers and actors navigate a landscape rich with reboots, renewals, and new takes on familiar stories. Whether audiences will see an animated Smallville revival remains to be seen, but Kreuk’s perspective offers a lens into how the actors who defined those characters view their continued relevance in a shifting entertainment ecosystem.
In the end, Kreuk’s remarks foreground a central truth of culture and entertainment: iconic narratives endure not because they stay exactly the same, but because they continue to resonate in new forms, with new audiences, as time moves forward.