For the past two years, Hartley Sawyer has won over the hearts of The Flash viewers through his role as Ralph Dibny/Elongated Man. In a recent interview with HollywoodLife, he revealed that he wouldn’t be opposed to helping bring the series to life behind the camera. As Sawyer revealed, he is partially motivated to follow through with the idea after seeing his costar Danielle Panabaker, direct an earlier episode of the most recent season.
“Now that she’s done it and that was a really inspiring thing for me, to see her work so hard to educate herself and saturate herself in the process.” Sawyer explained. “And then go out there and do it and do it with such confidence and be so prepared with such an amazing demeanor that it still intimidates the hell out of me. But more than ever I’m like, ‘Oh man, I might want to try that.’ But I need to educate myself a lot more to see if I can really pull that off. If I’m going to do it, I want to do it right.”
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As fans will remember, Panabaker directed Season 5’s “Godspeed” episode, which primarily focused on the future-set origin story of Nora West-Allen. Panabaker, who plays Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost, became the second Flash cast member to direct an episode, after Tom Cavanagh.
“I think it has certainly helped me,” Panabaker told ComicBook.com. “I think that’s one of the reasons that really made me want to direct as well, because having been on the show for so long and having paid attention, I felt that I probably had a leg up on any new directors who were coming in. It’s a very specific language, and I understood it just by the fact that I have been around for so long and have been paying attention. I think it also did help me with the cast because they know that I’ve been in the trenches with them, and I also intimately know their storylines in a way that, again, a new director coming in has probably seen a dozen or so episodes, and I lived them with them in a very different way.”
“I feel like that was one of the things also that I took from Tom was to really be as prepared as possible going into every day, and also try to communicate what the plan was for every day, so we were all on the same page,” Panabaker said. “It’s just playing with a different skill set. It’s playing with a different set of toys. What fun cameras can we use? How often can we use the crane? What could we do visually to help tell the story? It was fun.”
Would you want to see Hartley Sawyer direct an episode of The Flash? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
The Flash will return for a sixth season Tuesdays at 8/7c this fall on The CW.
