Stephen Amell, who played Oliver Queen for eight seasons on the hit CW series Arrow, has dipped his toe into the world of professional wrestling on numerous occasions. Not only is he currently the leading man on the Starz series Heels, which centers around a fictional pro wrestling promotion, but he has been in matches in WWE, Ring of Honor and the All In pay-per-view, the precursor event to All Elite Wrestling.
Amell was recently at Popcon and teased getting back in the ring ahead of the premiere of Heels Season 2. He specifically named Cody Rhodes (a good friend of his in real life), AJ Styles and Darby Allin as potential opponents.
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“I think what I’m going to try to do is…I’m going to try to do something with WWE or AEW around the launch of the second season. We’ll see. Whatever that is,” Amell said (h/t Fightful). Heels‘ first season ran from August to October 2021 and filming for Season 2 started in early 2022, but there’s still no word as to when it will premiere. Stay tuned for more updates.
Michael Waldron, the writer and executive producer of the series, talked with Comicbook ahead of Season 1’s premiere and explained how Amell’s love of wrestling made him the obvious choice to play the role of Jack Spade. Amell’s character doubles as both the top heel in the Duffy Wrestling League and its promoter.
“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.”
