For The CW, the Legends of Tomorrow is their Justice League. The time-travel superhero ensemble, which features heroes like Hawkgirl and Atom, and villains like Captain Cold, returns from its midseason hiatus this Thursday, already having been picked up for a second season.
At this month’s WonderCon in downtown Los Angeles, many of the cast members, as well as executive producer Marc Guggenheim, were in attendance to tease what’s next on the show (more on that here), and to share some behind-the-scenes bon mots. What follows is their roundtable discussion.
What are your inspirations for all these different time jumps?
Guggenheim: Sometimes it’s story. Other times it’s what we think we can achieve. In episode 11 we go to the Old West because we knew that there was an Old West town that we could go into and redress and sort of spruce up. We’ve stayed away from, let’s say, Ancient Rome, because we don’t know how to create Ancient Rome in Vancouver right now without relying on a ton of visual effects. Obviously, now that we’re going into the second season, we’re going to keep refining that. We might see ourselves in Ancient Rome, because we’ll be at the point where we might have a good story reason to go to Ancient Rome. It’s feeling our way through. We have an amazing crew. Every time we go to a different time period, which is every episode, we end up having to reinvent the show from a production standpoint. New costumes, new set design. When we go to time periods in the future that requires a complete reconceptualization because there’s no research to do. Obviously, it’s not like when we go to the Old West or 1958, where we can actually research. Mickey Mulholland, our costume designer, has to come up with a completely new wardrobe for the future.
Do you have any dream time periods, budget be damned?
Oh, good question. I keep saying Ancient Rome. I would love to explore New York in the 1920’s, and I think we would pull that off really well. I’d love to get out of North America and not just go to fictional countries in Europe, but go to real countries in Europe.
Your relationship with Victor Garber’s character Martin Stein has obviously grown. What’s it like working with Victor Garber?
Franz Drameh (Firestorm): It’s great. Off screen, me and him get on like a house on fire. We literally just spend all day, every day, taking the piss out of each other. He doesn’t understand a word that I’m saying because I’m always using UK slang and he’s just like, ‘Franz, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. What does that even mean?’ ‘It doesn’t matter what it means, selfie!’ He’s like, ‘Can you not?’ He’s great man, I love him. It’s really nice to kind of start off like that. We’re completely different people, from such different backgrounds, different ways of life, we really kind of come together. We have a really nice relationship as the series progresses; it’s sort of like a father-son bond.
In “Night of the Hawk,” you got mutated into a hawk creature. What was that like?
The prosthetics took like 4.5 hours. Which was long. But it was so much fun to play this weird, scary hawk creature thing. I loved it. I felt like Michael Jackson in “Thriller” or something. It was hilarious. I did do that on set, I just came on with my Thriller hands. [mimes it] I’m always goofing around like that.
What’s the hardest stunt you’ve done?
Caity Lotz (Sara Lance aka White Canary): On Legends I do mostly fighting. There are not many stunts for me. On Arrow, some of the water stuff was crazy. There was one where I was drowning in the ocean, it’s like a giant pool that you’re in, and they make a wave machine, and then it’s raining, and there’s fake lightning/thunder, and you have to look like you’re drowning, so you’re like [big gasping breaths]…doing that, but then a wave would come, and you’re just swallowing water. Then I really started drowning almost. They had a water safety guy who had to swim up underneath me to hold me up, because I was just swallowing water trying to look like I was drowning. Then I was drowning. I was actually dying in that scene.
Are you excited for any episodes in particular upcoming?
Brandon Routh (Ray Palmer aka Atom): All of them? The Western episode is fun. There’s some really cool unique things happening in each episode for Ray here on out. There’s funny stuff and then epic storytelling stuff involving evolutions of his abilities to a degree. We add a little bit of history to his past. We have so many characters in our show, which is amazing, but because of that you only get a bite-sized story from episode to episode. You really have to watch the whole season to get a lot of the arc. It’s much more gradual than you might see on other shows.
Kendra’s gone through so much this season. What can you say about her arc so far?
Ciara Renée (Kendra Saunders AKA Hawkgirl): Tragic little cinnamon bun, right? So sad. Second episode she loses her son and her boyfriend, well not really boyfriend, but it’s been really hard for her. I think every traumatic thing that happens is something that galvanizes her, so that she’s more confident in herself and what she has to do, which is kill Savage. The further along she gets with her training and the more that they get to experience the wrath of Savage, I think it’ll become easier for her…easier? Easier for her to kill someone? Jeez. It’s not really a win-win. But she’ll be more confident in what she has to do.
What’s it like to be play a wanted woman?
Someone tweeted to the writer’s room the next DC show should be “Kendra Bachelorette.” I mean, look Savage, Hawkman, Jax, Ray, and… somebody else? [cagey] Well, somebody else. So anyway, jeez. It’s kind of cool though. It’s a different take than we normally see for a woman. Normally all the women are fawning over one guy. Or the girl is the ingénue that gets to be with the one guy that she’s been destined with and Kendra’s totally fighting that tooth and nail. She’s a pretty modern woman. She doesn’t want to feel like she has to be tied to something or committed to something before she figures out who she is.
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow returns from hiatus Thursday, March 31 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
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