INTERVIEW – ‘Arrow’ star Colton Haynes talks costumes, fake abs, and ranch dressing.

We’re two episodes into the back half of Arrow‘s second season, and fans are already getting major developments with the characters. Following last week’s nerd-out last five minutes, Warner Bros. Television was nice enough to give me some time to talk to series regular Colton Haynes, who plays the future sidekick-in-training Roy Harper. The guy is a riot, and here are some of the highlights.

[Warning: major spoilers for last week’s episode, “Blind Spot,” along with mild spoilers for this week’s episode, “Tremors.”]

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Big developments in last week’s episode for your character. Are you pumped to finally get to do what fans have been waiting for, with Oliver now deciding to train Roy?

It’s taken long enough, but obviously it needed to take its time to give Roy a chance to go through the darkness before he starts to see some light. I’m super stoked! It seemed like it was pretty well received. I think this next episode is going to make fans go even crazier. There’s a lot of Easter eggs and a lot things that happen between them that really happen in the comics.

One of the interesting new elements to this origin is that Roy has superpowers, due to the Mirakuru drug injection, when Oliver decides to train him. Can you talk about how that affects the training and their relationship?

Most of it is Roy now has super strength, so in Roy’s mind he doesn’t need any training. He thinks “I can just go beat these guys’ asses. I’m more powerful than you. So what do I need to do?”

What Arrow is going to teach, well attempt to teach him, is to control the strength which Roy doesn’t really understand. He’s kind of a hot-headed cannon. He’s going to be really frustrated by finding out training doesn’t mean fighting people, training means slapping water and these stupid things Roy thinks are useless. Which is only going to make Roy even more mad, even more upset.

Roy is going to be faced with a really heated conversation with Arrow by saying “I don’t need you. Do you want my help or do you not? Because I can do this on my own.” That’s going to be a really fun scene for everyone to see because you’re going to see a side of Roy and a confidence of Roy that you haven’t seen yet, and it’s going to be scary for Arrow.

The training starts this time because Roy has now acquired powers, but viewers haven’t seen Roy do anything archery-related on the show thus far, even though that’s a key element to the history of the character. Can we expect to see that worked in now that Oliver has taken Roy under his wing?

I think eventually there’s a funny part in one of the upcoming episodes that involves archery. It might involve some “Legolas-ing.” I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the term, I just learned it. I don’t think I’m supposed to say that term because I think it’s a bad term, but I just said it!

But there’s going to be some funny aspects to the archery. Roy’s not jumping into that too quickly, because he has to be trusted by Arrow to know that he’s not just going to go off and get into some more trouble.

Is it as much as fun to punch holes in walls and rip the doors off cars as it looks?

Well, it looks really badass. I loved watching it. I thought “Hey, I look super cool!” But the reality is that most of the time it’s not me. I have an amazing stunt double named Curtis who is a freakin’ pro. He’s awesome. I do punch the walls and things like that, but I haven’t been really successful.

You’re going to probably see on the blooper reel, there’s a scene where I slipped on the water and I face-planted. Another time I didn’t hit the wall hard enough, so I didn’t break the wall. I just made my knuckles bleed for two days. There’s a lot of funny things that go into it to get that cool end product. I look like a badass, but let’s just be real, I’m not really that cool.

On that note, do you think there’s more room for a lighter, funny side of Roy on the show? I’ve seen the pic of you in the Jennifer Lawrence dress among other things on your Twitter that show you don’t take yourself that seriously. 

There’s been a few moments where they’ve kind of written that in, which I don’t think they intended on doing. But I don’t take myself too seriously. I kind of walk to the beat of my own drum, which I’m happy that I’m able to do that on my own. They’ve put a few comedy moments in there, especially with scenes with Sin and Thea, like that scene where I was telling Thea to dress Sin in something slutty.

I think it could happen, but right now Roy is going down a dark place, but eventually we could see that if he gets what he wants overall, which would be to become the sidekick. Once he becomes the sidekick [the writers] are probably going to delve into Roy’s past, and I’m sure a few people from his past are going to enter his life, which is probably going to cause some more darkness. So we’ll see, I’m not sure if Roy’s comedy routine is going to continue but I hope so!

Since you are kind of a light-hearted guy, is it hard to tap into some of the darker and angrier places that Roy has to go?

Most people would think “Oh, I need to listen to music and think of puppies dying” but it’s not really that hard for me. It comes pretty naturally. I’ve never really been like that as a person or had to get that crazy, but I moved around a lot and kind of saw the world, so I think that’s helped out a lot with being able to communicate these stories with these kinds of dark characters that I’ve been able to play.

Assuming that it happens at some point on the show, do you have an idea of how you want Roy’s “Red Arrow” costume to look? Have you seen some of the fan art?

I have seen a few different fan variations. I love when people send me their things. Someone put a mock-up shoot of me as Red Arrow, which I think they just Photoshopped me over Stephen [Amells]’s body and made the costume red. It looks really cool. But hopefully whatever I wear is not shirtless. [laughs] I would just love to continue to, if I see a McDonald’s, do what I always do and drive through the drive-thru. And I love ranch dressing too much to be shirtless every day.

So whatever the costume is hopefully it’s like… you know those costumes where they add muscles and make it look like you have a bigger chest and add abs and stuff? I’d love one of those. Maybe they’ll hire an airbrusher or something to help me out. We’ll see. Just something that doesn’t show my whole body so I can still eat fast food.

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Arrow airs Wednesday nights at 8:00pm ET, exclusively on The CW.