Emerald City Comic Con 2014 – Arrow – Stephen Amell Panel

By Anna
I attended Emerald City Comic Con on March 29, 2014 where Stephen Amell was one of the guests appearing at the con and attended his panel. To Stephen’s credit he filmed all night in Vancouver to 6am and came straight to Seattle to the convention where he did photo ops and autographs all day.
Stephen loves to come to conventions and interact to meet with his fans. Once he knows his lines for a script for each episode he likes to interact on Facebook and Twitter and it is a way to relax.
One of his favourite episodes was episode 2.9 and 2.10 when Barry Allen appears.
He loves working with the director David Nutter who shot the pilot back in season 1. David Nutter is doing the pilot for Flash.
Stephen feels the last 3 episodes for season 2 is like one big episode.
Stephen’s physique was a topic with him working out on the salmon ladder and how he keeps up his level of fitness. He said he is shirtless a lot of the time on the episodes which millions of viewers will see. To him it is a paralysing type of fear so he has training sessions to work up his metabolism. He also has an infant to carry around which helps for his arms, does power yoga and doing physical fight scenes now works with a physical trainer to look good. In the pilot he worked hard to have the physique he has and now he has to keep it up.
The workout montage is all Stephen when he doesn’t wear a shirt. They couldn’t have a body double but they can have a stunt double.
Stephen had no training skills in archery before he joined Arrow. His form is very high now. They are not allow to shoot arrows on the set and it is all added later through CGI. He has an archery trainer who made him watch videos on how not to do archery.
His eye makeup takes just as long to take off even though he has the mask now as he wears some makeup underneath.
He did stage work in school and would like to do more stage work one day. He is doing a movie in his hiatus but couldn’t tell us anything about it.
In the beginning of Arrow he sat down with the producers of the show who said they were having a no power rule but they are not sticking to it now.
Stephen likes that Oliver does not have a superpower as he loves getting his ass kicked with a source of danger.
Barry Allen was supposed to come back in episode 20 but now has their own pilot. He hopes that Barry Allen would come back to his universe.
In the episode Suicide Squad he had no idea that Harley Quinn was making an appearance. Fans told him about it and he had to phone the producers to clarify. So he is hoping she makes an appearance in future episodes.
He misses Arrow not saying “You have failed this city” and hopes it can be worked back into the next season.
Stephen says that the crew who work on Arrow are mainly from Smallville. He says Vancouver has awful weather but that it is wonderful to see on screen. The rain is dreary, cloudy and sucks to film in.
Stephen’s favourite actor is Tom Cruise.
After the pilot he read a lot on Green Arrow to familiarise himself for his character.
As to the Felicity and Oliver relationship. Emily was only to come on the show as a guest for one episode and everyone took to her. Oliver will always have a special place in his heart for her and hopes the set up on the show pays off for both of them.
If Stephen was to be a superhero it would be Lobo as growing up he was not older enough to read the comic and villain would be Riddler.

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