On Friday, it was announced that NBC had decided to axe its female lead in the upcoming DC series Constantine, with Lucy Griffths’ (True Blood) original character Liv axed after just one episode in order to facilitate the introduction of Hellblazer regular Zed. Well, producers Daniel Cerone and David S. Goyer have wasted little time in securing an actress, with news breaking during the Television Critics Assocation summer press tour that Angelica Celaya (Dallas, Burn Notice) has been cast as Zed, who is described as “having a dark past”. Meanwhile, speaking to IGN, Cerone has teased the expansion of the occult side of the DC universe, including the introduction of another familiar face in Jim Corrigan – a.k.a. The Spectre:
“The intention is that we have DC’s occult universe open to us and the fact that we had Doctor Fate’s helmet in the pilot is an indication that we’re going to be doing that. We’re introducing another character from the DC universe within the first eight or nine episodes as well… I’m just bringing you in on the early creative discussions. It might happen, it might not. It’s just the point you’re catching us at. Right now, episode five is off on outline. Within the context of episode five, we had a need for a police officer who sees that supernatural evils exist. Right there, okay, that’s an opportunity to introduce a DC character. So we talked to our DC representatives and we’re like what if we make this character Jim Corrigan, who goes on the become The Spectre. For those who don’t know, Jim Corrigan is a police officer who kind of takes the law into his own hands… he ends up dying and is reincarnated as The Spectre. So it’s a perfect opportunity for us, because we can name this character Jim Corrigan and within our story, for the general viewer, that works, because now Constantine has a friend on the force. For the comic book fan, ‘My god, that’s Jim Corrigan!’ And we can get back to that character and can slowly develop that character and who knows, maybe there’s an opportunity in the future to even see the origin story unfold within the framework of our TV series. It creates opportunities and creatively you just have to go in and lay that groundwork in and try and let it unfold naturally. So we’re in the midst of approvals on that, but that’s one idea we’re exploring right now.”
Would you like to see The Spectre joining Constantine, and which other characters from the occult side of the DC universe should they introduce? Let us know your thoughts below…
Constantine will premiere on NBC on October 24th, with a cast that includes Matt Ryan (Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior) as John Constantine alongside Harold Perrineau (Lost) and Charles Halford (True Detective).
Originally published July 14, 2014. Updated April 15, 2018.
