Former WWE Superstar Cody Rhodes Talks His Episode of Arrow

Tonight, Arrow brings one of its most anticipated guest stars — professional wrestler Cody Rhodes, formerly the WWE Superstar known as Stardust — to their dark, violent corner of the DC Universe, and nobody is more happy about it than Rhodes himself.

The actor, son of WWE legend Dusty Rhodes, left the WWE earlier this year and is now at TNA.

The man’s been fighting for a living basically since he was old enough to have a job, so the first thing we wanted to know was what kind of experience he had working with James Bamford, Arrow‘s stunt coordinator, sometime director, and frequently referred to as the show’s MVP.

“When [series star Stephen Amell] came to do practices for the Stardust/Arrow SummerSlam interaction, Bam Bam came and was there to provide us on his expertise on Stephen and how he’s built him up as Green Arrow. He provided several little moments that were in the finished product. So I kind of had a background with him in terms of relationship, and his team — woo! — first rate individuals. There was a scary moment on set where, sometimes I think they assume with a pro wrestler you know how to do stunts, but it’s a much different take and I was a little rough with a few of the guys on day one, but they were okay with it. James helped me shape it up — in particular, the difference between a pro wrestling punch and a stunt punch. Now he tells me I have some of the best punches in the business. Working with him was a complete treat. There’s a reason why everybody on that set and everybody crossing all of the shows loves him.”

Rhodes comes to Arrow with some backstory: as he alluded to above, last year he and Amell had a protracted conflict online, which led to Amell coming to WWE’s SummerSlam and putting Rhodes’s “supervillain” character, Stardust, down.

It’s pretty safe to assume that an Amell/Green Arrow victory is a scenario that will repeat itself, but this season, it’s a little more dangerous than it’s been in recent years. Abandoning the role of superhero, Green Arrow is back to “hooded vigilante,” willing to kill the threats he finds himself up against because he believes that a more aggressive strategy last year would have saved the life of Black Canary (Laurel Lance, played by Katie Cassidy), who was murdered while on a mission with Team Arrow.

“I’ll be totally honest: I can’t tell you the end result of this but I can tell you as soon as I got the script I flipped to the back page to see what the disposition would be for Derek Sampson,” Rhodes admitted with a laugh. “They have really made an effort to hit the streets again in terms of the villain presentation, but also in terms of a darker take on Star City. Derek Sampson really felt good. I don’t know if it’s supposed to feel good when you’re a villain and you’re grabbing people by the throats and stuff, but they’ve given the dark side of the show a lot of power.”

Whether he comes back or not, the sense of history and deja vu will be there with him when he arrives in Star City tonight; his character Derek Sampson is peddling a drug called — you guessed it — Stardust.

In the weeks leading up to the episode’s airdate, it was also reported that Rhodes’s character name was to be Garrett Runnels — the actor’s given middle and last name, with Rhodes being a stage name inherited from his famous father. Rhodes says he believes that was “maybe too many winks” at the audience or maybe “kind of a Blue Harvest, just a placeholder until we found something with a little bit of bite to it.”

“I would have been find doing it, though,” he joked. “You’re never going to miss it when somebody calls you by your real name!”

All told, though, Rhodes may have had a tumultuous year with his departure from WWE shaking things up career-wise, but he’s happy to be where he landed — and he’s pleased that he was abole to evolve both his on- and offscreen relationship with Stephen Amell along the way, saying that he thought it would be disrespectful to their mutual fans if they continued to pretend there was genuine animosity between them beyond the Stardust/Arrow affair.

“In pro wrestling, the suspension of disbelief is the endgame, but we moved the relationship from pro wrestling not only to Arrow but just in general,” Rhodes said. “We’ve done a lot of charity work together, and when you do something like that, that area is gray. It’s not black, it’s not white. It always feels very competitive with him. It felt competitive when he came to our world in terms of a wrestling ring, competing with himself and how he was able to hold up with a current roster of wrestlers. When I came to his world, I was looking at that salmon ladder on day one, and I was waiting for him at any minute to bust out a salmon ladder challenge. He was very busy and I didn’t want to distract him, but I sat by it in case he was ready to do it. I really like being able to move that relationship forward. I didn’t think Arrow would come in the way that it did in terms of being on this episode, and I feel really lucky to be on this episode and I feel really lucky to have made a friend. It sounds cheesy, but I’ve been traveling and on the road for ten years and it’s not easy to make a friend.”

Arrow airs Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW. Rhodes will appear on tonight’s episode.