Smallville star addresses Michael Rosenbaum, Kristin Kreuk exits

Smallville's Tom Welling has said that Michael Rosenbaum and Kristin Kreuk's exits from the show weren't at all dramatic, despite what fans have suggested in the years since it's been off air.

To coincide with the Superman series' 20th anniversary, the Clark Kent actor was asked to look back on the "wildest rumours" about the spin-off he's heard throughout the years, to which he admitted that the only ones that have stuck with him are the ones that claimed the cast didn't all get along.

"I think one of the things that I've been hearing more recently, now that we're doing all these interviews, is people who talk about how Michael Rosenbaum 'left' the show, or how Kristin Kreuk 'left' the show…. It was never like that. Like, nobody ever quit," Welling told TV Line.

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"People were written off because their storylines reached a point where they needed to go away, but nobody wanted to leave the show. Some of the rumours I hear about people wanting to 'quit'... those bother me a bit, only because I feel like there's a family element to what we had."

Smallville ran on The WB, now known as The CW, between 2001 and 2011. Welling, of course, played a young version of the Man of Steel, while Kreuk portrayed Lana Lang and Rosenbaum brought Lex Luthor to life.

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Both Rosenbaum and Kreuk left during the show's seventh season, but the latter returned as a special guest star in five episodes of season eight. The former reprised his role, too, but only for the series finale.

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During the recent interview, Welling also opened up about the animated outing he's currently working on with Rosenbaum, which is set after the events of Smallville.

"We're going to try to get all the actors to voice their characters, as much as we can — the John Glovers, the Annette O'Tooles and everybody else, and we're working with [Smallville creators] Al [Gough] and Miles [Millar]. We already have an artist mocking up animation for what it's going to look like," he explained.

"Also, Rosenbaum wrote a series about two actors who used to be on a TV show together – it's more of a comedy – and it would be the two of us."