Gough and Millar had five months for casting, but their primary focus was on finding an actor to play Clark Kent. They received Kristin Kreuk's audition tape for the role of Lana Lang and liked it so much that they immediately showed her to the network. Tom Welling, after twice turning down the producers' attempts to get him to audition for the role of Clark Kent, eventually accepted the opportunity to be part of the show. It was David Nutter who finally convinced Welling to read the script for the pilot, after finding Welling's picture in a photo album at the casting director's office. Welling's manager did not want him to take the role because it could hurt his feature film career, but Welling liked the script and agreed to come in for an audition. Welling's reason for turning down the role was because the producers were keeping quiet on what the show was really about, which left him with the impression the show was going to be "Superman in high school", something he did not want to do. Nutter promised to let Welling read the script "if" he came in and auditioned. After auditioning, Welling was given the script to read, which he thought was "amazing". For one of his auditions, he read the graveyard scene, from the pilot, with Kristin Kreuk; the network thought they had "great chemistry". No one could agree on which actors had the best audition for Lex Luthor. Michael Rosenbaum auditioned twice, and, believing he did not take his first audition seriously, outlined a two-and-a-half-page scene from the pilot. He indicated all the places to be funny, charismatic, or menacing, and performed so well that everyone agreed he was "the guy".