Key Points
Auliʻi Cravalho of Moana fame will voice Jessica Cruz in My Adventures with Superman before starring in My Adventures with Green Lantern.
EW exclusively reveals a first look at the character, described as a shy and kind-hearted high school teen.
On casting Cravalho, showrunner Jake Wyatt says, “There was this complexity of emotion to her read — a natural, almost oblivious charm that she brought to Jess.”
Jessica Cruz has arrived!
Entertainment Weekly broke the news in April that the DC Comics character would first appear in My Adventures with Superman season 3 before going off to headline her own Green Lantern spinoff. Now we know who’s playing her.
Moana star Auliʻi Cravalho will make her debut as the voice of Jessica Cruz in episode 2 of this season’s Adult Swim animated series and then later star in My Adventures with Green Lantern, EW can exclusively confirm.
The character is notable in DC Comics as the first human female to serve in the Green Lantern Corps., but in the context of Superman season 3, she’s just a high school teen.
Jessica Cruz speaks to Supergirl on ‘My Adventures with Superman’ season 3
Credit: Adult Swim
“We’d already planned for the second episode to showcase how Supergirl [Kiana Madeira], in particular, was changing their world. We wanted to look at how different people had very different reactions to the same Kryptonian,” Jake Wyatt, a showrunner on both My Adventures with Superman and the forthcoming offshoot, tells EW over email. “So when word came down from the brass that Green Lantern was greenlit, we wanted our pre-Lantern Jessica Cruz to give us the girl-on-the-street view of Supergirl. How would a shy, relatively powerless teenager see this powerful, young super-woman out there changing the world? And what would it be like for Supergirl to see herself through Jess’s eyes?”
Cravalho, who notably played Janis ‘Imi’ike in the Mean Girls movie musical, has been working steadily in the voiceover world. On top of reprising her titular role in Disney’s Moana 2 and executive producing Disney’s live-action remake of the original movie, the actress also gave standout characters to The Mighty Nein, Zootopia 2, and Krapopolis.
“Casting brought us a lot of fantastic reads for Jessica. But when I heard Auli’i, there was this complexity of emotion to her read — a natural, almost oblivious charm that she brought to Jess — and I knew she was the one,” Wyatt writes. “But I hadn’t even looked at the name, I just ran out of my office like, ‘Have ya’ll heard this take??’ Then Stephanie [Gonzaga] and Karen [Graci] told me that it was Auli’i, that she was already a princess, how she’d done brilliant work with Karen on a previous show, and that was that.”
Gonzaga serves as co-executive producer alongside Wyatt on My Adventures with Green Lantern for Warner Bros. Animation and DC Studios, while Graci (also from Superman) serves as head writer. Sam Register, James Gunn, and Peter Safran are executive producers.
Jessica Cruz on ‘My Adventures with Superman’ season 3
Credit: Adult Swim
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My Adventures with Green Lantern will see what happens when a Power Ring falls from the sky and chooses the “shy and kind-hearted high school student Jessica Cruz” to be its new champion, according to an official plot description. “Things get even worse when more debris from the Lanterns’ ancient space war arrives — along with their alien foes. To protect the Earth, Jess will have to overcome her fears, anxieties, and your typical teenage drama to lead a new Lantern Corps. against a terrifying foe.”
Previously speaking with EW for My Adventures with Superman season 3, Wyatt confirmed Green Lantern is still in pre-production and awaiting an official series pickup. “We are just about to ship our first episode to Korea for animation, so it’s gonna be a minute,” he said in April.
While Superman was inspired by Dragon Ball Z, “Lantern is inspired by a very different part of the same Toonami block,” he teased. “It’ll be really clear once we start dropping promos what part of the Toonami block inspired our Green Lantern show. We’re not subtle, people.”
Cruz’s My Adventures with Superman episode, “Mobile Suit Toyman,” drops during Adult Swim’s Toonami on June 20 at midnight ET/PT.
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