Arrowverse actress Katie Cassidy, who is set to reprise her long-running role as Laurel Lance on the planned Green Arrow and the Canaries spinoff, has filed for divorce from her husband Matthew Rodgers, Us Weekly reports. The divorce, which was filed on January 8, comes just over a year after the pair announced that they were married in December 2018 — but the paperwork for their divorce lists their marriage date as December of 2017. It is not immediately clear whether that was an error in the filing, or whether the couple had somehow managed to keep a marriage secret for a year.
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Cassidy listed the date of separation as “TBD” and cited the reason for the split as “irreconcilable differences.” As recently as November, she was posting glowing comment about her husband in a Thanksgiving post on Instagram, although obviously that does not mean everything was perfect until recently.
Cassidy is best known for playing Laurel Lance on Arrow, a role that has changed a lot over the years — including the shocking death of the Earth-1 version, and her replacement on Team Arrow by her previously-evil Earth-2 counterpart. Cassidy appeared to really click with the character during her redemption arc in the show’s seventh season.
With the series’s female lead, Emily Bett Rickards, having left the show at the end of season seven, Cassidy has split the screen with Stephen Amell and David Ramsey as the primary leads for much of the season, although everyone else faded into the background a little once Oliver’s daughter Mia (Katherine McNamara) showed up.
Cassidy is also known for her roles on Supernatural, Harper’s Island, and Gossip Girl. She is also the daughter of singer and actor David Cassidy, who appeared as Mirror Master on the 1990s The Flash series. Her grandfather Jack Cassidy played Max Mencken (essentially Lex Luthor) in a TV musical titled It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman in 1975.
The actress had removed the Rodgers from her display name on social media as of this writing, and had spent much of the weekend with fellow Arrowverse standout (and Lance sister) Caity Lotz, hanging around the Golden Globes and posting actively on social media.
Next week will see the return of Arrow, closing out the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” storyline. The following week will be “Green Arrow and the Canaries,” a backdoor pilot for the planned female-centric spinoff.
In that series, which will be set in 2040 and take place during the timeline where Arrow‘s flash-forwards have been taking place so far, Harkavy and Rodgers will play older versions of their Arrow characters, who work together to head up the vigilante group known as the Canaries.
