Candice Patton knows that fans of The Flash comics may have been a bit surprised when they learned she’d been cast as ‘Iris West’ but, as she explained at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, Iris is not about her ethnicity. “She’s not. I know comic book fans have an attachment to these characters, and I get it. When you love something so much, you kind of want it to be the way you imagined it. But, what I love about Iris is…what drew me to her is not her skin color. It’s her heart and her lightness, and she’s the girl next door, and she’s fun-loving. I think everyone wants that in their life,” explained Patton.
“She’s Barry’s light at the end of the tunnel,” said Patton. “He’s going through all of these changes and he’s dealing with all of these villains and rogues, and it’s nice to come home, and then there’s Iris. The light in his life. It’s fun playing that.”
As for how much research she did before taking on the character, Patton said, “I did some research. I went to my local comic book store because I felt like that was a good place to start. I had to Google comic book stores because I had no idea where they even were. And I went in, and I was kind of like, ‘Guys, help me. I’m doing a show called The Flash and I’m playing Iris West.’ And they looked at me like, ‘You’re playing Iris West? How does… What?’ So I read a couple of comic books just to get the tone of what Barry Allen and The Flash is all about, and then I kind of trusted the scripts that were being created for the show because it is an adaptation and I felt like Geoff [Johns] knew what he was doing and Andrew [Kreisberg] knows what he’s doing, so the bulk of that would be in the scripts.”
Check out the rest of our interview with the lovely Candice Patton for more on what viewers can expect from season one of The CW’s The Flash:
