The actor takes on the role in DC’s The Flash
How did Sasha Calle get her start?
Sasha Calle says that her biggest passion growing up was music—specifically, performing for her family. “I remember singing a lot of Christina Aguilera and Britney [Spears], like ‘Genie in a Bottle’ and all of those songs, when I was a kid,” she says. The Boston-born Calle split her childhood between the U.S. and Colombia, where she moved with her Colombian-born mother for two years at age 10. Ultimately, her love of music brought her to Los Angeles, where she enrolled in the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. There, she discovered a love for acting—and a future career.
Which projects has she worked on?
Calle first caught the public’s eye as Lola Rosales in The Young and the Restless, a role that earned her a Daytime Emmy nomination. What was her character’s soapiest storyline during her three-year run on the show? “I was in a coma with kidney and liver failure, and my archnemesis said she would donate a liver if my boyfriend married her. So when I woke up they were married,” she recalls with a laugh. Portraying a comatose hospital patient might sound easy, but Calle insists otherwise: “Lying down and not laughing while people are sobbing uncontrollably on top of you is the hardest job I ever had!”
How did she get the role of Supergirl in DC’s The Flash?
This month, Calle truly takes flight, making her film debut as Supergirl in DC’s The Flash. “I knew I was auditioning for a big character, but I didn’t know who,” she remembers, “so when [director Andy Muschietti] told me that I was Supergirl, I got really emotional.” Calle is the first Latina to take on the role, and the 27-year-old actress recognizes the impact of the moment. “I just got the Supergirl Barbie, and I don’t think I had a Barbie like that when I was a little girl,” she says. “I feel so proud, and I hope that every little human who feels any connection to me knows that they can be superheroes.”
What’s next?
The caped capers of the DC Universe aside, Calle has another buzzy film coming up: the historical drama On Swift Horses, which is based on the acclaimed Shannon Pufahl novel of the same name and features a cast of young stars including Daisy Edgar-Jones, Will Poulter, Jacob Elordi, and Diego Calva. “It’s a queer love story set in the ’50s, and I think that’s super-special,” says Calle, who was drawn to the project before she even saw the script. “I kept avoiding reading it because I knew I was gonna fall in love with it, but eventually I had to, and I knew then and there that it was the story I wanted to tell.”
