“Arrow” wrapped up its third season on a lighter note, but Darhk times are ahead when the show resumes Wednesday night on The CW.
Season 4’s big, bad villain, Damien Darhk, a former rival to the last (and now late) Ra’s al Ghul, is in the early stages of using his organization to cause damage in Team Arrow’s town. David Ramsey’s John Diggle, Katie Cassidy’s Laurel Lance and Willa Holland’s Thea Queen have been doing their best to save their city, Diggle even getting a new suit and helmet to help him out in the fight.
But Damien (Neal McDonough) is about to test their limits. Luckily for Team Arrow, there’s a retired crime fighter and a computer genius not too far away.
David Ramsey as John Diggle (The CW)
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With “Arrow’s” return imminent, while on a break from shooting this Fall’s crossover episodes, David Ramsey previewed the new season, set up how bad things are with Damien Darhk, and explained how Oliver Queen and Diggle might find themselves working together again (yes, please!) to save Starling. But since David mentioned the crossovers…
AccessHollywood.com: Speaking of the crossovers, and I’m going to get into the premiere stuff [in a minute], but I’ve gotta ask you — are you having a lot of Diggle reactions? Do you get to do a lot of that? That’s one of our favorite things about the crossovers is him seeing metahumans.
David Ramsey: (Laughs) There’s a little bit of that that we just shot. I think it’s pretty funny, because he never seems to get used to what Flash can do, so even though we’re not beating that [dead] horse again… we do touch on some of that stuff in terms of when he comes in contact with that particular metahuman again. The things with ‘Legends [of Tomorrow]’ we haven’t touched on yet, so I’m very curious about Diggle’s reaction to the Hawk family – Hawkman, Hawkgirl. I’m very curious about that… I mean, that’s great stuff (laughs). One of the things I like about Diggle is Diggle says and does kind of the stuff that regular people would do or say, right? He’s one of the more regular members of the team, so I relish those reactions.
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Access: And we do too. I’m never going to forget you throwing the fries.
David: (Laughs) Yeah, that was awesome.
Access: One of the classic moments. All right, let’s go back to the beginning though – the beginning of [this] season. We pick up several months later. I must ask you — where did Diggle’s new fighting look come from?
David: It is a combination of what makes sense to him – his background is Army Special Forces, Army Ranger, urban tactical warfare, there’s Kevlar, there’s camouflage, there’s a gun, there are a couple of weapons – and the most talked about element… so far, has been the helmet. These are S.T.A.R. Lab creations. S.T.A.R. Labs had a lot to do with this, and obviously I would suspect, although I don’t know this for sure, Diggle probably had some input in it. But certainly, S.T.A.R. Labs had a great hand in it, and we’ll see as the season progresses everything that the gun and the helmet can do, and I think it probably makes sense for Diggle to have some sort of concealment in the field, everyone else does. But it also makes sense that it’s not as assassin-y, if you will, as the Canary outfit, or Arrow’s outfit or Speedy’s outfit, which are all kind of connected to the kind of more covert, assassin type of apparel and Diggle’s background is urban warfare, which makes sense in Starling City. The outfit absolutely makes sense, which is what I like about it. It probably, in some ways… just maybe, it makes more sense than a bow and arrow, in an urban environment.
Access: Tell me how Diggle feels about Oliver having left town when the season begins.
David: Well… I don’t know if he’s mad at Oliver. He’s at a place where he understands that Oliver is a person that doesn’t work well with a team and [Diggle] is a military guy, right? Special forces, Army Ranger, he’s all about [the unit], he’s all logistics and sharing with the squad and you’re only as good as your weakest link. This is Diggle’s background. This is who he is, so Oliver learned just the opposite on the island. He learned to trust his instincts and do everything by himself and not to trust people, not to trust a team, so this has been very difficult for these two men to kind of come together and meet for the past three years. They both have needed each other a great deal, however. So, I think at the beginning of the season, you’re going to see that Diggle has a certain mind about Oliver. It’s not anger, but it is, at this point, an almost indifference.
Access: So we have Neal McDonough in as Damien Darhk and obviously [‘Arrow’ Executive Producer] Marc Guggenheim has said quite a bit about him, but I’m just curious from your perspective what kind of energy he’s brought to the show as Damien?
David: Yeah, that’s a good question. He’s so cool. His coolness is chilling, right? … That’s part of the edge that he brings to the character is that he’s incredibly confident, and incredibly cool as Damien Darhk. Nothing really rattles him, and it’s a different type of sinister then Ra’s had and a different type of crazy than Deathstroke, but still just as sinister and just as crazy. Maybe even more than both. The writers have done a good job, I think, just kind of each year kind of upping the ante. I didn’t know how you’d do that [after] Ra’s, like how you would get even higher… in terms of sinister and the crazed part of it, but they have, and just in the first few episodes, you see a very determined, very cool, very collected, very chilling Damien Darhk, so the ante’s been upped in terms of just how formidable the bad guy has been so far. His control of H.I.V.E. and what he does with that organization – it’s just crazy.
WATCH: David Ramsey On How Diggle Is Changing In ‘Arrow’ Season 4
Access: Is Diggle equipped to battle Damien this season?
David: Not by himself and that’s one of the reasons why Team Arrow, in its current position at the top of Season [4], which is a well-oiled machine, even without Oliver, has to go to Oliver and Felicity to talk about what they are now encountering because they’re not equipped and even when they get together with Oliver, that’s the question of the season, right? Are they equipped? What other help will they need? The help of Flash? The help of Legends? What help will they need? Or even the League of Assassins? What role will they play because there’s a backstory with Damien Darhk and the League as well, so there [is going to] be different elements that come into play here, in terms of how we face Damien Darhk because no one has faced this before.
Access: Finally, let me ask you this – had you been bugging the producers to give you some new gear — a new kind of look — for a while?
David: I don’t know if I was bugging them, but I was certainly saying, ‘Diggle has to have something, right?’ Flash cuts of any of the action scenes of the season and you have the Arrow in green leather coming and fighting crime, you have Black Canary in all black, and [then] Speedy comes — she’s in all red, and then you’ve got Diggle in a bomber jack, jeans and Glock, right? And he’s cool… because you have to be a certain amount of cool to be able to fight crime with these guys and still be formidable, and still look good, so I give it to Diggle that he pulled off something a lot of people couldn’t pull off. But, that being said, it was ridiculous (laughs) that he didn’t have some type of concealment. And I think Oliver had a very good line, I don’t know if it was last season or the season before, where he said the costume — the mask — is not for him, but for the ones he loves. And if anyone has something to protect in terms of family, it’s Diggle, so I think all this kind of makes good story sense.
“Arrow” returns Wednesday night at 8/7c on The CW.
— Jolie Lash
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