Credit: DC StudiosThe Flash and Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) star Kiersey Clemons has made it official: she is done portraying Iris West for DC Studios and finished with superhero movies in general.
Actress Kiersey Clemons first portrayed Iris West, journalist and love interest of Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), in scenes that were cut from the Joss Whedon version of Justice League (2017) and restored in Zack Snyder’s expanded version of the film. However, the actress revealed in a recent interview with The Direct that she would no longer appear as the character.
Not only that, but she was eager to be done with the superhero genre entirely, saying, “I feel like I am so happy that I can move on from it and not answer questions about it anymore. That was years of my life. And that season is over. You know what I mean? And I’m also part of another universe now. And I like it a lot over here.”
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Kiersey Clemons continued, saying, “I love being Iris West. I wish that I could have done more being Iris West. There’s no part of me that does not appreciate that I got the honor of being cast as Iris, but now I’m May. And there are no superheroes. There’s monsters now.”
The former Flash star is referring to her new role in the new Apple TV+ series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, in which Kiersey Clemons portrays a computer hacker named May who discovers that the world is secretly full of cryptids like Big Foot. The series is part of the ongoing MonsterVerse, a shared universe franchise that initially began as a Godzilla reboot.
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James Gunn is currently in the process of rebooting the former DC Extended Universe as the new DC Universe, which will be launched with his film Superman: Legacy in 2025. Gunn has been clear that very few actors from the DCEU will be ported over to his new continuity (Viola Davis and John Cena being major exceptions), and as such, it is not terribly surprising that Kiersey Clemons as Iris West would not be included.
However, it does seem that the experience of the DCEU has pushed the actress out of an entire genre. After she was cut entirely from Justice League and heavily minimized in the Andy Muschietti-directed The Flash (which ended up being a historically huge box office flop), it’s difficult to blame her.
ITM reached out to DC Studios for comment, but has not heard back by the time of publishing.
Who should be cast as the new Iris West of the DCU? Let’s hear your guesses in the comments below!