EXCLUSIVE | 'Arrow' archery trainer Patricia Gonsalves says Katie Cassidy was a 'total natural' among all the actors she trained for the show
On The CW's 'Arrow', Oliver Queen / Green Arrow (Stephen Amell) is undoubtedly the best archer of all, which he would have to be as the lead character of the show. But that said, we couldn't help but wonder which of these talented actors is actually the best archer in real life. In an exclusive interview with MEA WorldWide, we put the question to Patricia Gonsalves, archery trainer for the show and the founder of Lykopis Archery, and here's what she had to say:
"I can't really answer that one because we don't really do archery on the show," Gonsalves said. "But what I can tell you is that of all the actors that trained with me, we had one actor in specific who really didn't need much of a lesson. She was totally a natural and that's Katie Cassidy. She stepped in and she just... bullseye, bullseye, bullseye."
Admittedly we weren't too surprised when we found out that Cassidy is just as badass off-camera as she is on it. However, for most of the other actors on the show, it took a lot of work to get their skills honed to perfection, even Madison McLaughlin, who plays Evelyn Sharp / Artemis on the show and is actually a trained archer. Working on the show was especially hard for McLaughlin because they don't actually fire the arrows on camera, they dry fire i.e. they draw the bow and then drop the arrow.
"Stephen put in over a month worth of work to become Oliver and become the Green Arrow," Gonsalves revealed. "As far as the archery goes, he put in a lot of intense work. All of them did. He and Kat came for extra lessons to get it to look really badass and Celina Jade, who has a martial arts background, it was a real pleasure to teach her. And then there was Madison McLaughlin, who was a real treat to train because she's a real archer. So trying to get her to dry fire, to actually let go of the string without an arrow was a challenge because it had been drilled into her to never, ever, ever, ever do that. And we finally played Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’ to take energy off the string," she laughed. "Amy Gumenick, who plays Cupid... She was very keen and intent on making sure that she got that thumb-drop properly, that technique down properly and her bow out of all the bows on the show had the highest draw weight. She was holding 25 pounds in those scenes."
"Everyone was a pleasure to train and every one was different and everyone brought their own thing to it," she added.
'Arrow' Season 8 is currently on a break but it will be returning with an episode of 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' airing exclusively on The CW on January 14.
