‘Arrow’ Q&A: Brandon Routh On Felicity, Ray Finally Seeing The Arrow In Starling City

Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer made his debut appearance in “Arrow” in the Season 3 premiere, and Starling City may never be the same.

In fact, if Ray gets his way, Oliver Queen’s (Stephen Amell) town will get a makeover and a new name – Star City — under Ray’s leadership at Queen Consolidated, the company he now runs from the Chief Executive Officer chair, after he wooed the corporate company’s board.

Confident, smart and with a considerable amount of charm, Ray also had sway with Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards). Geek gab between Felicity and the handsome Tech Town customer in the “Arrow” Season 3 premiere provided Ray with the tools to break through QC’s firewalls and obtain the raw data that helped him win the CEO job over Oliver.

PHOTOS: ‘Arrow’: Scenes From Season 3, Episode 2 – ‘Sara’

Ray arrived at just the right time. The city needs more help, and Felicity is single again (after her date with Oliver turned, quite literally, explosive). But, when the show returns on Wednesday night, there’s another new threat in Starling City: someone is targeting businessmen. Previews have already hinted that Ray will witness a battle of archers inside QC, and Access Hollywood asked Brandon about what Ray is about to get caught up in. But first, we had to ask about the shockwaves Sara Lance’s death sends through the characters’ storylines.

AccessHollywood.com: [‘Arrow’ Executive Producer] Marc Guggenheim told reporters that Sara’s death has repercussions for [all the characters, including] Ray and Felicity. What can you hint at about that?
Brandon Routh: Emotionally, it really hits Felicity and everyone really hard. We’ll see that in the next few episodes as they kind of try to figure out what happened and I think that affects Felicity and Oliver’s relationship, which then has some backlash into Ray and Felicity, and I guess… ultimately it makes her reconsider — it gives her an opportunity to reconsider Ray’s offer for work. … It makes her really consider that in a new light.

Brandon Routh as Ray Palmer, Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen and Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity Smoak in ‘Arrow’ (Photo Credit: The CW)

Access: Had Felicity not given him information [at Tech Town] which he then used to get those [Queen Consolidated] documents, do you think they would have been the best of friends?
Brandon: Well, I don’t know how upset she is anyway about that, honestly. I think she’s kind of like, ‘Oh, touche!’ She’s feeling, you know, ashamed a little bit, but like, ‘Oh, that guy’s pretty cool.’ But I think in like an alternate scenario — like totally alternate scenario, like I’m not Ray Palmer, and I’m just a guy going to Tech Town, and [if I] kept coming back in, maybe we’d go out, just as two tech geeks.

Access: Where do you think they would go out then if he wasn’t Ray Palmer and just some guy that was a normal geek without the ability to take over large companies in Starling City?
Brandon: Where would they go, for dinner?

Access: Yeah, where do you think they’d go?
Brandon: I don’t know. Ray tends to be passionate and exuberant about whatever it is he gets into, so maybe he’s like a really well trained chef, he’s trained himself to be a chef, so he’d either make dinner or make a really cool picnic and they’d go to the park. He’d wine and dine her with his culinary skills.

Access: So he’s a secret foodie then?
Brandon: Yeah, he’s a master of many – dabbles in many different traits, I think. He likes to know a little or a lot about a lot of different [things] to understand how the world works.

WATCH: Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg: Who Will Felicity Choose?

Access: From the previews of this week’s episode, it looks like there is some fighting going on in the company and you are there when it happens. How does that affect Ray, seeing all this stuff go down? That must be a surprise.
Brandon: It’s a surprise. It’s the first the time he basically sees – Arrow shows up… as a result of this, incident and it’s kind of one of those moments of — what does Ray think of that? You kind of see him watching the fight happening and it’s kind of the two worlds colliding and it’s just kind of left up to the audience to decide if Ray doesn’t like him or does like him.

Access: And it looks like Arsenal [Colton Haynes] is there too and then another masked figure as well. Is that all happening in front of you and you just get to kind of sit there and watch it from the sidelines?
Brandon: Yeah, Ray’s giving a speech and he’s sheltered by his awesome bodyguard, basically, cowering (laughs) in the corner a little bit with his first brush with violence in the show, as his awesome speech is interrupted.

Access: Your big plan last week, the big plan that he unveiled for ‘Star’ City — what can you hint at about what that’s all about? You want to rename it!
Brandon: There’s definitely more of it that happens in this next episode, so the speech is kind of about that, kind of trying to encourage the rest of the wealthy citizens of Starling City to care, basically, and to give back and to reinvigorate the city and to take back our city in the way that Ray Palmer, at this point, can do ’cause I think he’s really a philanthropist in his own way and this is kind of a way to encourage that and show that he’s not just a rich dude just buying companies willy-nilly.

Access: Are you hoping to get into the fighting action? That’s something everyone seems to get wrapped up in at some point on this show.
Brandon: Yeah, well I think definitely that’s one of the things that will be cool whenever that and whatever capacity that happens [in]. It always is fun, but then, part of me is like, ‘Yeah, it’s gonna be fun,’ and then I remember how long it takes some days. It’s a lot of work. That stuff is an amazing amount of work, but the good thing about this show is all the fight stuff is so well supported. The actors, the stunt crew, the team — they have plenty of time to rehearse, they get it right, they do it safe and the stunt doubles are so amazing. All the men and women who work on the show do a fantastic job of making it look so real. .. Also, the positive thing about this show is that, I believe that I will have a mask and so if and when Ray gets into the actual — or The Atom — gets into the fighting, it’ll be easier to have somebody doing what I can’t, whereas Superman was all me all the time, or it was a computer, but mostly, it was me.

“Arrow” continues Wednesday night at 8/7c on The CW.

— Jolie Lash