David Corenswet Got “Claustrophobic” in His SUPERMAN Suit, Says it was an “Intense Experience”

Getting in Superman’s costume is apparently no small task, just ask David Corenswet, who’s leading James Gunn’s Superman reboot. Turns out, the suit isn’t all smooth flying.

In a recent interview with People, Corenswet opened up about what it really felt like to wear the iconic blue and red outfit for the first time, and it was a lot.

“It was quite snug because they had made it to my proportions when I screen-tested where I weighed about 195 pounds, and when I walked in for my first costume fitting, I weighed about a 235, 240 pounds.”

That shift in muscle mass came with a tight price.

“You hear actors who play superheroes talking about squeezing into the suits. I got kind of claustrophobic in the suit the first time just being constricted in all those places at the same time.”

Then there’s the practical side of superheroing. While the suit is loaded with “lots of zippers,” Corenswet pointed out, there’s “no single zipper” for bathroom breaks. Surprisingly, though, that didn’t pose much of a problem. “Not at all,” he said. “I never had an issue with that.”

Thankfully, he wasn’t going it alone. Corenswet gave a big shoutout to Scott R. Hankins, the costumer who became something of a behind-the-scenes hero. “The most amazing dresser you could ask for,” he said, likening Hankins to a “mob fixer.”

“He was always in my ear going, ‘Do you need a break? Do you need a break? Tell ’em you need a break and we can step you out. I’ll tell him it’s me. He would make excuses for me if I needed.

“And we got very good together at getting in and out of the suit, so he would do it quite quickly, and I could take breaks if I needed to over the course of a day.”

So while we’ll see Corenswet flying high as Superman this summer, behind the cape was an actor learning how to live and work inside a costume that was quite uncomfortable for him.