Emily Kinney Revels In the Fun of Terrorizing Arrow and The Flash

Former The Walking Dead star talks playing a character across multiple CW superhero shows

By Billy Nilles Mar 30, 2016 10:17 PMTags
Emily Kinney, ArrowThe CW

It's becoming increasingly more common for our beloved heroes in the Flarrowverse to cross back forth from Arrow, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow to help one another save the day. Less common, however, is the opportunity for the villains to do the crossing over, jumping from one show to another. But that's about to change. 

On tonight's episode of Arrow, Emily Kinney reprises her role of Brie Varvan—aka the Bug-Eyed Bandit—a role she help adapt from the comic books nearly a year ago on season one of The Flash. While they may share a universe, the shows certainly don't share sets—but Kinney tells E! News that bringing the insect-obsessed to a second series wasn't as daunting as one might think.

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"I think the reason that it works so well is because, if you remember in that episode of The Flash, Emily Bett [Rickards'] character Felicity had also been guesting on that episode, and so even thought I was on The Flash, I was mostly battling behind my computer screen, battling wits with Felicity," she explains.

This time around, however, it was out from behind the screen and into her co-star's faces for Kinney as Brie escapes from jail and makes her way to Star City for some unfinished business. "I come for Felicity mostly because I'm looking for this bio-chip that she has, but eventually I start to realize that she was the one behind those computer screens when I was battling someone on The Flash," she says. "That's what's so cool about this episode, I think, is that you see these discoveries happening about Felicity and you get to see them interact in a way that's a little more within the scenes, rather than behind computer screens.In The Flash, I was basically shooting the scenes by myself because it was just about computer acting."

What exactly does Brie want with the bio-chip in Felicity's spine that's allowing her to walk again? Kinney won't say—and you have another show you might have heard of to thank for that. "I think with The Walking Dead I'm so trained for no spoilers," she teases. "You do find out why she needs this bio-chip and, I think in that discovery, you learn a lot about Brie...You understand why specifically she's being so evil."

 

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Following her time as Beth on AMC's hit series, Kinney's dabbled in different arenas. She recurred on Showtime's Masters of Sex and Cinemax's The Knick. She released an album, This Is War, in Oct. 2015. But coming to play in the Flarrowverse has been especially fun for her. "I get to be a little bit sillier, I feel like, in Arrow," she says. "Brie, even though she's an evil villain, is definitely one of the sillier villains, in a way, just with the way that they write her. She's always making these puns about the bees...There a lot about her that's—she's evil, but there's a little bit of a hint of, I don't know how else to say it, silliness to her evilness."

"It's also fun for me to get to go to set and dress sexy in leather pants and make-up and stuff," she continues. "That obviously is a very different world from The Walking Dead when I would go to set and get dirtier."

When asked whether she keeps up with the zombie apocalypse now that she's no longer a part of the cast, Kinney admits she doesn't watch regularly, though she tries to be aware of what's going on. Without spoiling anything, we put her to the test, asking if she knew what had just gone down with her former scene partner Daryl (Norman Reedus). Her reply: "What?! OK, I've got to watch that." If only she had time in her busy schedule.

Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on the CW.

Watch: Stephen Amell Spills on Intense "Arrow" Season 3 Finale