Chromatic Casting: David E. Kelley’s Wonder Woman
And as maligned as Ramírez’s efforts on Heroes were, she does have some experience in comic-book land, and as a speedster, to boot: her version of Callisto in the equally-maligned X-Men 3: The Last Stand was one of the few highlights of the film.
Artemis: Kelly Hu
Yeah, I know Hu is on The Vampire Diaries, but if Kelley ever decides to recreate the arc where the character, Diana’s fiercest friend/rival from Paradise Island, actually takes over as WW, forcing a humbled Diana must win back her title by trial of combat, you need a solid action heroine to believably stand up to Torres, and Hu has plenty of experience on that front.
Circe: Laila Rouass One of Diana’s most well-established rivals. Aristocratic, sensual, and a schemer – in other words, the kind of character Rouass played to perfection on Footballers Wives a few years back.
Hippolyta: Angela Bassett
THE guest-star, and in a weird way, it would work in the confines of the Kelleyverse. Because if Diana’s ex-boyfriend causes her this much grief, how intimidating would it be to face the prospect of her “mother” visiting? How could Bassett play Torres’ mother, you ask? Simple – Diana, let’s not forget, was molded from clay. (It’s comic-books.)
Ares: Henry Lennix
You could get really cute and cast Torres’ husband, Laurence Fishburne, as the God of War here. But Lennix played a warrior in his own right in The Matrix Revolutions opposite Fishburne, and has the gravitas to elevate even the goofiest sci-fi writing. Remember, on Dollhouse he played an Evil Genius who pretended to go to work for his own company in order to observe and then experiment on a woman his company captured while she was trying to destroy it. And all this before his character’s mind was wiped and killed off. So anything Kelley comes up with here can’t be that strange by comparison.
Early reviews of the pilot script indicate that Kelley is on the right path, which is encouraging – it’s way past time Wonder Woman returned to a national spotlight, since DC Comics has long promoted her as being on par with Superman and Batman as a cornerstone of its’ universe. But this new show is fighting not just the hopes and expectations of Diana’s fans, but Kelley’s own history of placing “quirks” above strengths, and NBC’s track-record with this kind of show, as demonstrated by Heroes, and now, The Cape, a 1990s-tastic slice of awful that, hopefully, is not long for this world. That said, though, the program might be better off at NBC than at The CW, the longtime home of Clark Kent on Smallville, because it spares us the chance of this scene from Superman #708 playing out:
Bottom line: Diana is nobody’s fangirl – she’s an inspiration in her own right. Let’s hope Kelley gets that.
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