After taking part in matches in WWE, Ring of Honor and the predecessor to All Elite Wrestling, Stephen Amell is now back in the pro wrestling world while starring as Jack Spade in the new Starz drama Heels. The show, which premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET, sees Amell playing Jack Spade, the owner, booker and top champion of the Duffy Wrestling League in the fictional small town of Duffy, Georgia. Throughout the series’ eight episodes Spade has to juggle consistently putting on a weekly show he can be proud of, handling his hot-headed younger brother Ace (Alexander Ludwig), keep the promotion financially afloat and balance family life with his wife Stacie (Alison Luff) and son Thomas (Roxton Garcia).
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Former WWE Champion CM Punk, who appears in the series as journeyman Ricky Rabies, confirmed in interviews earlier this week that he auditioned for the role of Jack years before the series started filming. Amell also noted on a recent episode of Oral Sessions that Michael Waldron reached out to him about the part, saying that the show was having a hard time finding someone who could play the lead role. Both Waldron and showrunner Mike O’Malley explained why they loved Amell for the role during a recent interview with ComicBook.
“Well, casting the lead of any show is hard, because they’ve just got to be an awesome, tremendous actor who can carry a show on their shoulders,” Waldron said. “Playing Jack Spade, there’s the added requirement of you have to have the physicality of a great wrestler. We had to have somebody who could believably pull off this stuff in the ring and outside of the ring, when framed against his wife and kids, and other people in the town, you’d believe this is a pro wrestler who lives here.
“There’s not a lot of people who look like that who are also great actors. Steven Amell is one of those people,” he added. “We were so fortunate to get him, coming off of the success of Arrow, with the ultimate added bonus of the guy loves wrestling. He might be the biggest fan of all of us, and he’s actually wrestled with WWE. So I mean, God, we were lucky to get Steve.”
O’Malley added that one of the biggest things Amell brings to the table that so many other actors couldn’t is his authenticity, given his love for pro wrestling and his in-ring experience — “All we had to do when we found out he was available, we just started sending around a YouTube clip. It’s like, okay, you don’t just jump from the floor over the top of a rope and just make it look like I’m going down the stairs to get breakfast. It was like, come on man. That’s the hardest thing is to get… Look, why are the actors that you love that do boxing shows, it’s all about their authenticity. And this guy is authentic.”
