Cousins Stephen & Robbie Amell are ready for a takeover!
The duo topline the CW shows “Arrow” and “The Tomorrow People,” respectively, and recently sat down with Entertainment Weekly to chat about their shows and growing up together. Check out some highlights:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What’s the most heroic thing you’ve seen each other do in real life?
Robbie (star of The Tomorrow People): I didn’t see him do it, but [in early 2005] Stephen tried to stop a fight on the street in Toronto and ended getting a bottle smashed over his head. He stopped the fight from happening with his skull. I think that’s a pretty badass, heroic thing to do.
Stephen (star of Arrow): I was successful, retrospectively, but at the time it didn’t feel that way. I had some staples in the back of my head. … I think we’ve teamed up for some pretty heroic beer-pong runs.
Robbie: Oh my goodness, Stephen and I are, for lack of a better word, phenomenal at beer pong.
You both grew up in Toronto. What did you do together as children?
Robbie: I was so young. I remember pool parties. His family’s house had a pool, so my family would go over and swim. And video games, for sure. This was so long ago, it was Super Nintendo. Stephen even had the Super Scope — the big huge rocket-launcher-looking gun that comes with Super Nintendo. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. That’s probably the main reason why I hung out with him.
Stephen: We were able to have that relationship for a couple of years, because with the age gap, there’s that sort of spot where you’re a little paternal almost, and then you get to the spot where that would be weird [Robbie laughs], and then you circle back to where you can become friends again, and that’s where we are now.
Robbie, what kind of advice has Stephen given you?
Robbie: I kinda got to sit shotgun while he went through being number one on a massive TV show with huge stunts and a lot of action, and pretty much as heavy a workload as you can get in this industry. He would talk to me about things, so I found myself adequately prepared for this year. When he did give me advice, it was just to make sure that I do my work, and I get my sleep, because it’s the best job in the world, but it’s a lot of work.
Stephen: It’s a long, long process shooting the first season. Robbie has done a couple of series before, but just getting in to 22/23 episodes nonstop, it’s just different. And you really need to prepare yourself for the grind of it all. One of the nice things has been a lot of the directors that we had on Arrow have gone over to Tomorrow People, and I know that we share the stunt departments on the shows, so a lot of the things that we had to work out last year and didn’t really get operating smoothly until maybe episode 11, 12, 13 have hopefully slid over to Robbie’s set, and I hope you guys are having a smoother ride. Not that ours was troublesome, but I think it’s been helpful.
Robbie: Like Stephen said, you learn so much in 22 episodes. They’ve come over to our show, and it doesn’t feel like we’re shooting a first season, because the people that we’re working with are so good at what they do.
Greg Berlanti, who exec-produces both of your shows, told us a quality he sometimes wishes you didn’t have in common was liking to do your own stunts: “Something happens to them, and you’re done.”
Stephen: In the third episode this year, I’m running through a field and explosions are going off, and when I got up from one take, everyone had come up from behind the monitors and was staring and legitimately thought that I had been blown up and the show was over. I was perfectly fine.
Robbie: I haven’t gotten blown up yet, but I’m hoping for something like that. That sounds awesome.
To read more of the Q&A, go here. We also got our hands on photos from the season 2 premiere of “Arrow” and the series premiere of “The Tomorrow People.” Check them out below as well as loglines for each episode.
ARROW
“City of Heroes” — Wednesday, October 9 (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (TV-14, V) (HDTV)
FROM VIGILANTE TO HERO — Diggle (David Ramsey) and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) travel to Lian Yu in search of Oliver (Stephen Amell) who left Starling City after The Undertaking. Convinced to return home, Oliver finds that things are in worse shape than he thought – Isabel Rochev (guest star Summer Glau) is preparing a hostile takeover of Queen Consolidated, Thea (Willa Holland) refuses to visit Moira (Susanna Thompson) in jail, Roy (Colton Haynes) is trying to fill the void left by the Arrow’s absence, and Laurel (Katie Cassidy) is working with the District Attorney’s office to take down the vigilante. Meanwhile, flashbacks to the island show Slade (Manu Bennett), Shado (guest star Celina Jade) and Oliver in a desperate situation. John Behring directed the episode with story by Greg Berlanti and teleplay by Andrew Kreisberg & Marc Guggenheim (#201).
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THE TOMORROW PEOPLE
“Pilot” — Wednesday, October 9 (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET)
THE UNKNOWN — When Stephen Jameson (Robbie Amell) begins hearing voices and waking up in strange places, he starts to question his sanity. In desperation, Stephen decides to listen to one of the voices in his head, and it leads him to his first encounter with the Tomorrow People — John (Luke Mitchell), Cara (Peyton List) and Russell (Aaron Yoo) — a genetically advanced race with the abilities of telekinesis, teleportation and telepathic communication. The Tomorrow People inform him that they are being hunted down by a paramilitary group of scientists known as Ultra, led by Dr. Jedikiah Price (Mark Pellegrino). Meanwhile, Stephen gets another surprise that leads him down his own path, which he hopes will help him uncover the truth about his father’s (guest star Jeffrey Pierce, “Alcatraz”) mysterious disappearance. Madeleine Mantock also stars. Danny Cannon directed the episode with story by Greg Berlanti, Julie Plec and Phil Klemmer and teleplay by Phil Klemmer (#101).
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