Brandon Routh: True Hero!

A couple years ago, the producers of Legends Of Tomorrow made the bone-headed decision to summarily fire actors Brandon Routh (who played Atom) and his real-life wife Courtney Ford (who played Nora Darhk) from the show.

The two were fan-favorites, and their untimely and unjust departure dealt a serious blow to the show. My interest in the series dropped quite a bit after they were forcibly removed (in fact I recently stopped watching it altogether!).

The producers claimed they let the two actors go because "their characters' storylines had reached their conclusions, and there were no tales left to tell about them." Of course we all knew that was HollywoodSpeak® for, "Their salaries were costing us too much, so we dumped them in favor of some cheaper actors."

It was a stupid and shortsighted decision, one which I predicted would come back to bite the producers in their collective asses.

A couple weeks ago I reviewed the big Armageddon crossover event over on The Flash. I was surprised and delighted to see that Brandon Rough and Courtney Ford BOTH popped up in the crossover! They were the highlight of the event for me, and their brief appearances made me realize how much I missed them.

At the time I said I was honestly surprised that they'd agreed to return after their unjust dismissal. I pointed out that if I'd been in the same situation, I'd have probably told the producers to go f*ck themselves. That or demand they pay me an exorbitantly high salary to appear.

I said I admired their professionalism, as they took the high road and didn't let their feelings color their decision to return.

Welp, my respect for Routh & Ford just increased tenfold!

Routh recently appeared on an episode of Inside Of You, a podcast hosted by Michael Rosenbaum (who famously played Lex Luthor for several seasons over on Smallville). During the interview, Routh had this to say about his firing:

"You know, people make decisions, right? Sometimes people make good decisions and sometimes people make bad decisions, right? Bad decisions happen all the time. All the time. All the time. And sometimes they affect us negatively and we can choose to be upset with that for the rest of our lives or we can work to come to terms with it, I guess, and to find, as they say, make lemonade out of lemons. And that's what I've been working on doing, and I think I speak for Courtney in saying the same thing."

"And knowing, meanwhile, by fan reaction and all the love we've gotten over the last couple years, that even though one person made this decision, that it was a bad decision nobody supports. Nobody has supported that decision and so that's one reason why, one of the reasons why we said yes to coming back. Because we knew that the fans would appreciate it and also we made sure that in coming back that we were standing on our own worth and made our own requests to make sure that we felt like we were being respected, and that happened this time around."

So there you have it! The couple put aside their feelings for the idiot who made the decision to get rid of them, and returned for the sake of their fans! 

Now that's class!