Tom Welling Talks ‘Mafia Wars’ & Says He’s Open to Playing Superman Again! (Exclusive)

He’s known for saving the world in the hit sensation “Smallville,” and now Tom Welling is tasked with a not so small gig in “Mafia Wars”: going undercover to bring down the mob syndicate in Italy.

Teaming up with co-star Cher Cosenza, they were living la dolce vita while filming in Rome, and described the process as a dream come true.

Tom said, “It was just incredibly beautiful.  And I think  it's  another  character  in  the  film,  in  a  way.  And  any  downtime  we  had,  even  in-between  takes,  you  just  kind  of  turn  around and you’re just like, ‘This is  fantastic.’”

Cher added, “Not to  mention  the  fact  that  our  crew  was  Italian… And  we  took  lots  of  separate  breaks  because  there  was  lots  of  cappuccinos  and  a  ton  of  pizza  being  served  in  between  every  time  [director Scott Windhauser] said  ‘Rolling.’” 

Playing paroled felon Terry Jacobs, Tom goes head-to-head with the most infamous mobster Griff, played by Cam Gigandet. In an effort to get his passport back and save his nieces’ life, Tom said of his character, “I kind of sum Terry up as  a  good  guy  doing  bad  things  for  good  reasons.”

He continued,  “But what  I  like  about  the  film  is  where  it  pace  is,  he  has  to  navigate  each  and  every  scene  without  really  knowing  the  outcome.  And  playing  against  Cam,  who,  from  a  scene  perspective,  we  never  knew  what he  was  gonna  do  from take to  take,  which  was  really  fun  and  very  fun  to  work  with,  because  he's  a socio-psychopath.  So,  we  really  enjoyed  ourselves.” 

Getting caught up and in the mix of this rivalry Cher says of her character Sphinx, “To me, Sphinx has all these dimensions and she is undercover which lets her have these layers that at the end really take you on a path with twists and turns and you really don't know what to expect next from her which I think is part of what I enjoyed about having this character because it allowed me to really grow with it and know that I could do anything I needed to do to get the message across and stay obviously in the role but have fun with it. The character is a chameleon and that allows me to have a lot of depth with it.” 

Speaking on the romantic tension between their characters both Cher and Tom tease that things may possibly get a little steamy.

Cosenza said, “You're going to  have  to  watch  the  whole  film  but  basically  it's  pretty  electric,  you  know,  I  think  that  we  definitely  don't  hate  each  other,  that's  for  sure.”  

Welling added, “Yeah,  even  in  reading  the  script,  your  character,  the  turn  that  does  happen,  you  really  never  see coming at all,  at  all.  That's  sort  of  great.” 

Praising director Windhauser, both stars said Scott brings a fresh take on the traditional mafia movie genre.

Cher explained, “I  think  this  gives  a  nice  new  twist  to  it  like  a  2024  twist  to  what's  happening  between  the  fentanyl  and  between  everything  that's  going  on  to  the  characters.  I  just  think  there's  a  life  here  that  just  expands  beyond  just  this  film  actually  because  it  just  keeps  going  with  this  mafia  tone.”  

Tom agreed, saying, “Yeah,  I  think  it's,  I  think  what  Scott  did  is  he  modernized  it  a  little  bit  because  a  lot  of  the  films  and  new  reference  are  all  about  the  old  school  trying  to  maintain  the  old  school  mentality,  where  this  is  a  version  of  a  new  school  type  of  gangster, mafia or what not They're  trying  to  modernize  and  I  think  Scott  was  a  big  good  job  putting  that  in  there.” 

Not to disappoint, Tom reveals there is a little “Smallville” Easter egg reference in the film, a line delivered by a character named Griff, that fans will surely enjoy and pick up on.

Tom said what he liked in the moment was that “Terry just sort of kept moving on from it because I think that's a fan moment it's not really a character moment, but I think it worked.” 

Speaking on the rumored “Smallville” animated series Tom confirmed a project is in the works.

“Yeah,  Michael [Rosenbaum] and I… we  have  all  the  cast  wanting to do the  voices. Writers  from  the  original  series  wanting  to  write  it.  You already  have  some  mockups  of  the  images… I  think  this  is  more  of  a  fan  labor  of  love  than  it  is,  maybe  a  blockbuster.”

When asked if he would ever don the Superman suit again, Welling said he’s open to it but in the eyes of his two sons he’s already The Man of Steel.

“I will  say  years  ago  the  answer  would  have  been  easily  no  but  now  that  my  my  two  boys  are  5  and  3  I’m  a  little  more  open  to  it.”

Do they know their dad was Superman?

He shared, “Yeah, my  sons  love…  it's  like  Halloween  at  my  house  all  year  they have  all  these  different  outfits  for  all  these  different  characters  and  it  was  about  I  don't  know  six  months  ago  I  realized  they  didn't  have  a  Superman  costume.  I  asked  my  5-year-old, ‘How  come  you  guys  don't  have  a  Superman  costume?’  and he  said, ‘Because  he's  taken,’  and  I  said, ‘What  do  you  mean?’  He said, ‘Because  you're  Superman.’  And  I  was  like,  ‘Oh,’  it  was  very  sweet.”