Stephen Amell at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con (Photo by Richard Chavez/Showbiz Junkies)
Stephen Amell didn’t have much time to relax at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con. Not only was the Arrow star busy promoting his own series, Amell also was the master of ceremonies at Warner Bros. Television Presents A Night of DC Entertainment and introduced the Comic-Con audience to new DC shows that will premiere this fall. But despite his busy Comic-Con schedule, Amell did have time to sit down and talk about the upcoming third season of the popular The CW series, providing the scoop on what’s in store for fans of the show.
Because of the success of Arrow, there are now five shows based on DC Comics included in the primetime lineup. Amell’s proud of that and he’s happy to now be completely comfortable in Oliver Queen’s skin after playing the character for two seasons.
“Very much so. Yeah,” said Amell. “I mean, Green Arrow’s been around since 1941 and a lot of people have had a much longer relationship with that character than I have. But for me, whatever representation of Green Arrow I want to be involved in. I feel as though that whole universe, the whole Green Arrow universe, that we’ve really taken ownership of it and that’s important to me.”
Amell also said that at the beginning of season three, we’ll find Team Arrow in a very good place, working together as a cohesive unit. However, Amell cautioned not to get used to that. “As we know on the show when things are good, that means they’re going to get really bad really fast,” said Amell. “It’s an interesting thing for Oliver. The dynamic that’s different is that Diggle has a kid…or is about to have a kid. Oliver goes through a few things… In the pilot Oliver sees a version of himself that he doesn’t like, literally, and that changes his opinion on what he’s willing to risk.”
Check out the rest of our interview with Stephen Amell conducted at Comic-Con:
If you read that headline and responded with either “Of course it did” or “Duh,” then you’re obviously a fan of Diana Gabaldon’s books. Or, you’re just really into Scottish accents. Either way, Starz has every right to be happy about the number of people who’ve checked out the special early premiere of Outlander that was made available before its official premiere date of August 9, 2014 at 9pm ET/PT.
Starz released the first full episode via numerous TV and online platforms on August 2, 2014 and today the network says that early preview has been watched nearly one million times (897,372 times by 606,557 unique viewers). The special early sneak peek at episode one, “Sassenach,” has earned positive reviews from fans of the book series, with Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan’s performances as Claire Randall and Jamie Fraser exceeding expectations.
The Plot of Season 1 Episode 1:
Airdate: Saturday, August 9th – While on her honeymoon, WWII combat nurse Claire Randall is mysteriously transported back to 1743 Scotland, where she is kidnapped by a group of Highlanders – and meets an injured young man named Jamie.
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ended season one on a bang, leaving things wide open for a rebuilding of the series as S.H.I.E.L.D. will be in a stage of flux. At the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, Clark Gregg was excited about the prospects for season two and about the introduction of new characters on the show.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns to kick off season two on September 23, 2014 on ABC.
Clark Gregg Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Interview
This season you’ll be moving forward with a whole different version of S.H.I.E.L.D., based on the first season’s finale. How is that to play?
Clark Gregg: “I’m pretty stoked. I’ve had a series of moments you’ve probably heard me say with this thing where it went from my neighbor calling me up and asking me to do a couple of lines in Iron Man to the immensely talented Sam Jackson handing me a little black cube and making me director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and maybe an Avenger. But, I think I may be most excited about the concept of a post-Hydra reveal S.H.I.E.L.D. where S.H.I.E.L.D.’s outlawed and Nick Fury’s gone underground, there are no resources, and Coulson’s had to lose Agent Ward to Hydra.
To rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. from that point of view, kind of brace knuckles, back alley low-fi espionage is very exciting to me. And though we just started shooting yesterday, they kind of already out of the gate suddenly find the tremendously badass and really impressive Lucy Lawless at my side along with a much more ninja version of Skye. Agent May, who I now kind of trust again, and Fitz Simmons – we don’t know what kind of shape Fitz is in – to go forward with that team and probably, as far as I can tell, having to form some other teams and to be almost like a bunch of cells moving forward is a really exciting way to go and it really works well for television. It puts so much more of what they do on their wits and their knuckles.”
Do you think the Avengers will ever find out that you’re alive again now that you have to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D.? That’s going to be hard to keep under wraps for long.
Clark Gregg: “It seems trickier as Director Coulson. You’d think someone’s going to hear them say Director Coulson and someone’s going to ask. It’s the scene people want to see – I’m one of those people. The kind of day of reckoning where it gets explained to them. I really have a lot of fantasies about literally bumping into Steve Rogers in the laundromat. Like, how could those exchanges get any more awkward?
I don’t get to decide where it will happen. The really fun thing about Marvel is for all I know it’ll be in The Avengers 3 or it’ll be on this season of our show, or it’ll be in a run of the comics. It could be in a video game for all I know. Wherever it happens, I’m there for it.”
Are there any Marvel characters you’ve been hoping to see?
Clark Gregg: “Very interested in seeing Carol Danvers. I’m very interested in learning who Skye’s dad is, as a fan because I have a feeling I’m going to be getting increasing levels of support from her. And as someone who, apparently, I’m told is up in the middle of the night writing in an alien language derived from perhaps a similar creature, it’s very interesting to see where that’s going to go to me. I did hear Bobby Morse today. That blew me away; that’s very exciting. As I said, we’ve got Lucy Lawless.
The idea of rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D. means that we’re going to have to kind of go seek out some old friends and find out if they ever really were friends or if they were Hydra. Some of them will probably be Hydra. Some of them will be super-villains. There will be new supervillains, there will be new villains, there will be new friends. Hopefully, some of them will be a little ‘super,’ too.”
John Wesley Shipp from ‘The Flash’ at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con (Photo by Richard Chavez/Showbiz Junkies)
John Wesley Shipp starred in the short-lived series The Flash back in 1990 and 1991, and while the series only aired for one season, Shipp’s fans will never forget his take on Barry Allen/The Flash. Now Shipp’s returning to that world with a role in The CW’s The Flash debuting this fall.
Shipp is playing Barry’s imprisoned father, Henry, and at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, he talked about once again being able to be a part of this world.
“Very rarely, I think in any walk of life but particularly in my profession, do you get an opportunity to return – if I may use the metaphor – to return to the scene of the crime and be gifted with a chance for healing,” said Shipp.
Shipp says no one wants to hear an actor whine about playing a superhero, but his time spent in the suit – limited though it was – was the hardest thing he’s ever done. Fortunately for Grant Gustin, the new Flash suit doesn’t resemble what Shipp wore, nor does it involve gluing on parts and having to act in a heavy costume.
Check out the rest of our interview with John Wesley Shipp on how he feels about getting the role, his memories of the old TV series, and what he thinks audiences will get out of the new 2014 version:
Of all the characters on The CW’s The Originals, none more so than Phoebe Tonkin’s Hayley went through an incredible arc over the course of the show’s first season. So what’s in store for season two? “We start the second season three months after the finale. Everyone is still dealing with the grief of having to give baby Hope away, and we kind of find Hayley and she’s a bit of a mess. She’s kind of lost and she’s very angry, and she’s probably looking to Klaus a little too much for guidance.
I don’t think Klaus is probably the best therapist in the world. I think her priority at the moment is to seek revenge on the person who tried to kill her child,” explained Tonkin at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con.
She’s lost, but will Hayley get stronger in season two? “Yes and no. I think physically stronger now that she’s a hybrid but she’s emotionally kind of very lost and very broken. She’s trying to work out who she is. She had tried to find out who her family was, and when she finally found out that she was part of a very strong and respected family in the werewolf community – she was part of the royal family of werewolves – and then to have that taken away from her because now she’s a hybrid, she just doesn’t know what she wants or what she’s fighting for anymore. And that’s going to be interesting to kind of start at the bottom and spend the season building her back up again,” said Tonkin.
Check out the rest of our interview with the lovely Phoebe Tonkin at Comic-Con:
Charlie Tahan describes his character ‘Ben Burke’ in Fox’s event series Wayward Pines as a pretty normal kid who’s not the most sociable and who gets annoyed with his parents. “He’s just a normal 15, 16 kid who’s put in a pretty weird situation,” explained Tahan during the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con press interviews for the much-anticipated Fox series.
Tahan said he loved switching up directors on the series and that it didn’t get stale on the set. He also liked not really knowing what was going on with his character in advance and instead learning as filming went on. “I think that was the most fun part about filming this I think was that most of us didn’t know. We didn’t have all the scripts; they came out a couple days before we would start shooting. I think every Friday we would get the next episode and then start filming on Monday. It was almost like we were all fans of our own show,” explained Tahan.
Tahan also talked about his character’s family dynamic, life on the set, and what audiences can expect when they tune in in 2015 to this Fox series produced by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Matt Dillon, Carla Gugino, Melissa Leo, Toby Jones, Shannyn Sossamon, and Tim Griffin:
The Plot:
Imagine the perfect American town… beautiful homes, manicured lawns, children playing safely in the streets. Now imagine never being able to leave. You have no communication with the outside world. You think you’re going insane. You must be in Wayward Pines. Based on the best-selling novel Pines by Blake Crouch and brought to life by suspenseful storyteller M. Night Shyamalan, Wayward Pines is the intense new mind-bending 10-episode event thriller evocative of the classic hit Twin Peaks.
Secret Service Agent ETHAN BURKE (Academy Award nominee Matt Dillon) drives to the bucolic town of Wayward Pines, ID, searching for two missing federal agents. One of the best Secret Service agents in the Seattle office, he’s the man who knew missing agent KATE HEWSON (Carla Gugino) better than anyone. They were more than partners; their relationship nearly destroyed Ethan’s marriage. Everything changes when a truck slams into his car…and he wakes up in the Wayward Pines Hospital, with the intense and unpredictable NURSE PAM (Academy Award and Emmy Award winner Melissa Leo) at his bedside.
It soon appears that Pam is more interested in harming than healing. She and Ethan grow into deadly rivals, and her role in the town proves much deeper than anyone realizes. As the mysteries within the town pile up, Ethan starts to question his own sanity. He is confronted by the mysterious and charismatic DR. JENKINS (Emmy Award nominee Toby Jones), the psychiatrist who treats him at Wayward Pines Hospital. As he begins to meet some of the local residents, including toymaker HAROLD BALLINGER (Reed Diamond), Ethan forms a bond with BEVERLY (Academy Award and Emmy Award nominee Juliette Lewis), a bartender who is as wary of Wayward Pines as he is.
Back home in Seattle, Ethan’s wife, THERESA BURKE (Shannyn Sossamon), a former Secret Service Agent trainee, is informed by Ethan’s boss, ADAM HASSLER (Tim Griffin), that early testing shows Ethan was never in the car which was recovered on the side of the road outside of Wayward Pines. They’re still investigating. But this isn’t enough for Theresa. So she sets out on her own search for her husband, along with their teenage son, BEN (Charlie Tahan). Meanwhile, Ethan is challenged at every turn by the town’s die-hard residents, especially SHERIFF ARNOLD POPE (Academy Award nominee Terrence Howard), who takes offense at a Secret Service agent showing up on his turf.
Ethan’s continuing investigation only turns up more and more questions, and each one leads him to the most important question of all: What’s wrong with Wayward Pines?
Alaric is back on The Vampire Diaries and Matthew Davis was ready and willing to talk about his return during the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con. “It’s very interesting. I feel like when you’re with a character for so long, it begins to parallel sort of synchronistic events in your own personal life. And so for me, the last two years I’ve definitely felt out of sync and in limbo, and I think having Alaric come back it feels…not only have I grown but I know that he has grown,” explained Davis when asked about Alaric’s return to The CW series. “Now that we’re starting the season a bit in the future, it’s really interesting to see how they’re beginning to set up season six, which I think will be probably my favorite season, based on what I’ve been told, since season one.”
Fans will have to wait until October for the kick-off of season six, but Davis explained why he believes it will be one of the best. “I think we’re coming back into alignment. I think the character development is going to be unlike it’s been before, which I’m really excited about. I think it’s going to be a really great progression,” said Davis.
Check out the rest of our interview with Matthew Davis at Comic-Con:
The CBS series Scorpion is based on the incredible true story of Walter O’Brien’s team of geniuses who work with Homeland Security to keep the world safe from high-tech threats. Some of O’Brien’s work is still top secret and won’t be included in the series, but much of what viewers will see in Scorpion is based on actual cases O’Brien’s team has worked on.
At the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, O’Brien talked about his work and why it’s important to expose what he does to a wider audience at this particular time.
Why is now the perfect time to bring your story to the small screen?
Walter O’Brien: “Well, in the company we’ve been gathering geniuses for a while and we’ve gotten to about 2,600 of them. We use school reports from high schools that have As and Fs in them, so it’s kids that are turning on and off their intelligence depending on the teachers or the students. And then once we find the one, we genealogically map their family tree because IQ’s hereditary, to find their cousins, their brothers, etc. The trouble is we’re running out of the geniuses who know they’re geniuses or have tested themselves. Now we need to find people who don’t know they’re geniuses and just know they don’t fit in. Maybe when they watch the show, they’ll realize, ‘Wait a minute, that’s me. That’s how I behave.’
That’s part of the reason why now. The other part is we realize how much good we’ve done, how many lives we’ve saved, which logically would mean just as many people have died because they didn’t know we existed and didn’t know they could call us. So this solves that problem.”
How close is the series to what you’ve actually gone through?
Walter O’Brien: “In the pilot, the percentage I’ll give you is about 70% of the pilot is true. A lot of my life, the truth is stranger than fiction. The bits that aren’t true aren’t the things you think weren’t true, it’s things like the emotions and some of the relationships and how upset or how angry someone gets. Those are the parts that are less true than some of the action and some of the risks and dangers that happened. The first six episodes are all based on real things that happened.”
Are you okay with altering the emotional responses and relationships in the series?
Walter O’Brien: “Absolutely. Again, in the show we talk about the greater good so there’s examples of that. I’m sacrificing a certain amount of privacy to do this because I’m not benefiting in terms of wanting to be on screen or be a Hollywood character, but if that saves a lot of lives, sacrificing privacy is a small price to pay. It’s the same with switching it up in the show. If there’s more humor and more emotion in the show, that makes it more watchable. And if the show lasts longer and more people enjoy it, it’s again achieving the greater good purpose. Having a technically correct show that doesn’t last more than two episodes isn’t any good to anyone.”
What changes on the producer’s side when the real person is part of the equation?
Executive Producer Nick Santora: “I’ve done a bunch of movies that were based on real characters but in those scenarios, you get the rights and kind of go away and just write it and hope they like it. With Walter, from the beginning, from the first day I sat down with him, it’s been very much a give and take. I need certain information. I needed Walter to really open up personally. The nice thing about Walter is everything is kind of just, ‘These are the facts,’ and Walter will present that information.
There is a responsibility to not make someone look like a fool when they’re trusting you in the way Walter trusted me at the beginning of this, and now trusts every writer and every person involved in the show to not make him or his team look foolish. This team is Walter’s life, intellect, and using his intellect in the right away is Walter’s life. Also, listen, Walter is a really, really smart guy and if I mess up, he’ll erase my identity.”
How do you decide what information to share with the producers?
Walter O’Brien: “They’re pretty black and white. A lot of the missions that we’ve done have been funded by my company that I privately hold, so as the CEO I can make the call on whether we want to disclose the data or not. For military work that I’ve done, only if it’s been leaked into the public domain, Wikileaks or other areas where it ended up on the evening news do I feel comfortable talking about it. There are many things that haven’t yet and I can’t talk about them. So in my mind it’s very clear, very black and white what the rules are of what I can and can’t talk about.”
Has there been a shift with sensitive clients like the military when they know you have a TV show?
Walter O’Brien: “Well, for better or worse, we set the tone with our government clients years ago where they understand they’re not in charge. They can’t tell us what to do. We’re not ITAR restricted. We’re not restricted on which country we work on. We’re unaffected by religion, morals, traditions. We make our own judgment of what the greater good is and we follow through on that. Because of that, regardless of how they feel, they’re crystal clear on how we feel, on how much we can or can’t be coerced.”
How has social media changed what you do?
Walter O’Brien: “Very little. Actually, social media will probably have a bigger impact on this show than it’ll have on any of the things I work on. The things I work on are massive systems that are behind the scenes that control our power grid or control our medical systems or banking systems or Wall Street. That stuff is not really affected by social media. While we protect the general public, we don’t need them to be a fan to do so. Whereas the show makes an interesting exception to that in that the more popular the show, the more people hear about us. The more people that join us, now those people will work on the next crisis this country has. So indirectly we’ll do good.”
The characters in the pilot are like the characters in Big Bang Theory. Is there a universality to the people involved?
Nick Santora: “If you’re asking if we’d like this show to trend like The Big Bang Theory, absolutely. We would love their ratings and we would love their fan base, so yes.”
Walter O’Brien: “But in reality, each of the characters of the show are inspired by real folks that I work with and real superpowers that they have. It didn’t strike me until a panel recently. We knew the Big Bang Theory comparison because they go on before us [and it was pointed out] that they have Penny the waitress and we have Katherine McPhee who happens to be a waitress. I actually hadn’t connected the dots on that. It certainly wasn’t done deliberately. It was just that’s the way it worked out for the show. But the characters in the show, I think if you study each one, their abilities are very different from what the abilities are in The Big Bang Theory.
How surreal is it to see your story on screen?
Walter O’Brien: “It’s very strange to see myself at 11 years old with the NSA coming to get me; it’s a chilling flashback. I don’t know if I was very smart or very stupid in what I did at that point. Seeing the show portrayed that way and seeing how friends who really know me well feel that after about 15, 20 minutes of watching the show, they just accept Elyes [Gabel] as me in how he’s acting and what he’s doing, is a really cool thing to happen. It’s interesting to be cloned.”
Reign executive producer Laurie McCarthy joined The CW show’s cast at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con in support of the upcoming second season of the popular (and addictive) series. In addition to the panel with fans held at the San Diego Convention Center, McCarthy sat down in a slightly quieter environment to talk about what fans of the series can look forward to in season two, creating storylines around historical events, and why American teenagers have latched onto the series.
The Reign Plot:
Over the course of the stormy first season, Mary Queen of Scots struggled to balance her many roles — as Queen of Scotland, as royal fiancée, and later as young wife to the future King of France, and as faithful friend to her ladies in waiting.
Challenges came in every form: the reigning queen consort of France, Francis’ mother, Catherine de Medici, did everything she could to destroy the union of Mary and Francis, even if that meant taking Mary’s life. Francis and Mary were both torn by their duties to their nations, paving the way for Mary to form a close bond with Bash, Francis’s illegitimate brother, who could offer Mary a level of devotion the future king could not.
King Henry descended into madness. And a bloodthirsty menace in the woods was annihilated, but not before taking dozens of lives and heralding the coming of a plague. By the end of the season, the shocking death of King Henry made Francis and Mary the new King and Queen of France. But before their new crowns could be placed on their heads, Francis had placed himself on the wrong side of the quarantined castle’s gates, rushing to help Lola give birth to his first and possibly only child.
The second season begins with Mary and Francis on the throne of a nation burning. France is rocked by the aftereffects of the plague — a disease that creeps inside the castle walls, taking thousands upon thousands of lives across the land, and ravages the stability of a nation. From the ashes, powerful lords will rise, carrying out personal, religious and political vendettas, taking lives, and tearing at Mary and Francis’s commitment to each other, and their people. Friendships will be tested, loved ones murdered and betrayed.
Meanwhile, a mysterious and deadly threat snatches victims from village streets and castle corridors; leaving evidence of savagery that looks like the work of monsters; mythical creatures who are the subject of nightmares, but who walk among us, doing the Devil’s bidding.
The CW’s The Originals was well represented at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, with Joseph Morgan, Charles Michael Davis, Daniel Gillies, Phoebe Tonkin, Leah Pipes, and Danielle Campbell all taking part in a Q&A with fans of the series as well as roundtables interviews with the press.
Sitting down with Joseph Morgan (‘Klaus’) to discuss the events of season one and to get some insight into season two, Morgan joked that he couldn’t really say anything about the upcoming season because he’d shot three episodes, had a long break, and now can’t remember a thing.
“We saw in the finale that my father and my mother are back, and so we’re going to explore the family’s relationship, the family dynamics, how Klaus became the person that he is because of his parents,” explained Morgan.
This introduction of his parents will change Klaus, and it will allow the show to delve even further into the character’s backstory. “You know, I think that’s what’s interesting about playing this character, even after this amount of time. The introduction of new characters to surround the family forces new interactions, and then they have new dynamics with them. So like, when we started the series after coming off The Vampire Diaries to interact with a character like Marcel, who was like Klaus’ adopted son – Klaus certainly had love and compassion for this character which was interesting, but respect also for this character because he built this empire, this thing that Klaus really wanted.
So after two years of playing Klaus, I suddenly got to explore this new dynamic with this new character. So that’s always what’s exciting to me, and what will continue to be exciting is the introduction of new characters with which I can have new relationships,” said Morgan.
Morgan also talked about Klaus’ journey and what he ultimately hopes will happen to the character in our interview during Comic-Con:
