JOHN WESLEY SHIPP on the Reasons Why the Flash Failed Early on #insideofyou #theflash

you know it was very funny when we did the the pilot for flash when they asked me to come back is harry henry allen you know uh barry's father wrongly convicted of killing his mother in front of a ten-year-old barry you know which was not my origin story in 1990 right brothers for cbs at all so that was just a role i would want to do whether i had never been barry allen or not but having been barry allen it brought those things together you know it's like you talk about being in the moment being close to who you really are because it was a unique situation i was playing his father i had done this role he knew i had played the role i knew what he was taking on maybe what some of his hopes and dreams and insecurities might be and so there were times in those beautifully written scenes between henry and barry uh in the in the uh prison in iron heights that you know i didn't know if henry was talking to barry or if old flash was talking to new flash or if john was talking to grant and when those things all come together yeah it's it's really done but those scenes i can watch and go they will always be among my favorite that's great that's a great feeling too do you do you look back and think god you know if we had the producers or the just the knowledge we have now and you know if we had different producers or designers or whatever it is for the flash of 1990 when you were there this could have been something big and and also how did you deal with that disappointment it only lasted a year right yeah yeah yeah yeah well we had it all we were the most expensive show warner brothers had ever done for television oh wow at that point it was a high-tech suit designed by oscar winner you know bob short and built um and our writing was great danny wilson and paul demaio were excellent i mean we had uh howard chaikin as the story editor we had uh i i don't even want to start naming because we had so many great and talented people and we were nominated for an emmy for art direction right when we did a big lot premiere on the back lot for the international press our reviews were through the roof i mean washington post new york time i mean the big louisville courier journal you know and they talked about the acting and they talked about the art direction and they talked about at the time state of the art effects right for television and so we were a creative and industry hit now it was the hardest thing i have ever done i mean we would start at 7 a.m monday morning and work till 10 or 11 at night come in 10 11 at tuesday and uh work till two in the afternoon on wednesday come in at two and so by wednesday or thursday we were shooting all night by saturday we were blacking in the back line at warner brothers to shoot day for night and then we were back in at 7 00 a.m monday morning um and you're in everything you're in every day i mean you're the flash i mean our transportation department whenever i thought i had it bad i'd look at you know the fact that they were they were having 25 26 hour days i mean our overtime was through the roof and we were already budgeted um so at by the time we did that through the third week in august through the second week in may with five days off for four days off for christmas and that was it because we had to do mostly live action practical effects we didn't have the cgi capability then that we have now and so it was hours and hours and hours and danny and paul were uncompromising they wanted to do the show that they wanted to see and so i can look at it today and i can appreciate i can appreciate the fact that the technology has come it's 30 years later one would hope and i think what i was saying i think what i meant to say was why didn't the stars align for that project and now that hearing you say all this you know all you had all these great components of it so why didn't succeed has to be even more disappointing now you're like you know it just was it was revered it was all these things so what was it well as a combination of things i think number one it was 30 years ago putting on a superhero costume in 1990 was very different from putting on a superhero costume in 2014 from the new cw show we were like i was hesitant to even audition for it because i had been on broadway in new york i had my two daytime emmys i had you know i had fashioned myself a series and i thought only superhero reference i had was being spoofed at that point and i just didn't think that that was where my talent lay and then april webster i'm sure you know grip multiple emmy award winning caster director said john just read the script that's all i ask and then i i read it and there were all these human values there was the unblessed son of a cop family in which real cops worked the streets but i had gone into the crime lab so that my mom didn't have to worry that all of her men might not come home that night my older brother was the street cop who my dad loved and my dad was always putting me down so bear my berry was the unblessed son you know in the family who gets these superpowers and his first reaction is i don't want to know from this i have no uh desire to be a hero i have no pretensions to be a hero i have settled for my lot in life and that's the deal until his brother's killed and then it's like okay it's on and then he has all this ability that he knows his dad it would make his dad so proud but he can't tell him so there was a i'm starting to feel it you know by about that point right and then they promised me we will not put you in a pair of red tights i came to kind of regret that later because that suit was so hot it was i'd be in it for 20 minutes and you could wring me out but i don't want to you know the last thing people want to hear is those of us who've been fortunate enough to play these iconic characters yeah sit around and whine about our suits right right right but uh there were there were challenges

Channel: Inside Of You Clips

Views: 362,543

Keywords: inside of you, iou, inside of you podcast, michael rosenbaum, michael rosenbaum podcast, smallville, smallville podcast, mental health podcast, john wesley shipp, john wesley shipp podcast, john wesley shipp interview, john wesley shipp Inside of You, john wesley shipp the flash, john wesley shipp dawson's creek, john wesley shipp grant gustin, john wesley shipp old flash, john wesley shipp cw flash, john wesley shipp barry allen, john wesley shipp the flash interview

Id: Y9iLPZWTKhI

Length: 6min 53sec (413 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021