Who Is Sasha Calle? The DCEU’s New Supergirl Already has an Emmy Nomination
DC Comics fans received a surprise jolt of fun news on Friday, Feb. 19, when DC Films dropped a major casting announcement. Sasha Calle, a young actor unknown to many, was officially cast as Supergirl in the DC Extended Universe film series. She will make her debut opposite Ezra Miller in the upcoming Flash movie in 2022.
While she is almost certainly a new face to most of the audience for superhero movies, Calle has endeared herself to the fanbase almost instantly. This is largely thanks to an adorable video released by DC showing the video call where she was offered the role by director Andy Muschietti.
Sasha Calle previously had a main role on a major soap opera
Despite her limited filmography, Calle has made a considerable impact and received a major awards nod for her work. Aside from a handful of short film and web series roles listed on her IMDb page, Calle’s most significant work to date has been a main role on the iconic CBS soap opera, The Young and the Restless.
On the soap, Calle played Lola Rosales, later Lola Rosales-Abbott. She debuted in the role back in September 2018 and, as happens in the fast-paced, daily grind of soap opera production, has so far been credited with a whopping 243 episodes and counting.
Her work on the soap has been singled out for praise within the industry. In 2020, according to The Hollywood Reporter, she was nominated for Best Younger Performer in a Drama Series at the Daytime Emmy Awards. A counterpart to the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Daytime show honors the programming the fills the earlier timeslots, including soap operas, kids shows, courtroom shows, and morning news programs.
Calle lost the award to Olivia Rose Keegan of Days of Our Lives fame. After her recent good news, it’s hard to imagine that she’s still bent out of shape about it.
‘The Flash’ won’t be a typical speedster adventure
Called continues to appear on The Young and the Restless to this day, but that is likely to change with her newfound blockbuster gig. The Flash is scheduled to hit theaters on Nov. 4, 2022, with filming set to begin in a matter of months. As MovieWeb recently reported, work is already underway to prepare the film’s various sets and locations for the shoot.
The Flash movie is set to adapt the famed Flashpoint story from the comics. In it, Barry Allen, aka, The Flash, wakes up powerless in an alternate timeline created by the Reverse-Flash to prevent the Justice League from forming. The fallout from the story radically altered the DC Comics continuity through time travel shenanigans, and the film is expected to do much the same for the DCEU to help it course-correct after a rocky start.
The film version is also expected to involve traveling to parallel dimensions as opposed to time travel, as Michael Keaton is heavily rumored to be returning as his version of Batman from 1989-1992 in some capacity. With that in mind, it’s unclear if Calle’s Supergirl will be the traditional version of the character or one from a parallel reality. No matter how it turns out, the big to-do DC Films made about Calle’s casting likely means that she will stick around in future projects.
Born in Boston in 1995, Calle is of Colombian ancestry and will be the first Latina performer to portray Supergirl in live-action. The character was previously played by Helen Slater in a much-maligned 1984 solo film, by Laura Vandervoort on Smallville, and most recently by Melissa Benoist on the CW’s Supergirl, which will conclude with its upcoming sixth season. All three were portrayed as the original Kara Zor-El version of the character, being Superman’s lost cousin.
