Katie Cassidy Revisits Arrow Firing, Recalls Telling EPs, 'I've Always Been Given The Short End Of The Stick'
Katie Cassidy's self-described workplace motto — "Happy to be here, easy to work with!" — was nearly tested when she got the official word in October 2015 that she was being let go from The CW's Arrow, four seasons in.
In the latest episode of Smallville alum Michael Rosenbaum's Inside of You podcast (cued up above), Cassidy offers a new level of play-by-play detail about her unexpected ouster, recounting how she grew to suspect that "Laurel Lance" would be the answer to Season 4's "Who's in the grave?" mystery and then fast-tracking confirmation before heading to New York Comic Con.
Cassidy says that she was rooming at the time with The Flash's Danielle Panabaker, who would try to speculate on who would be revealed as in the grave shown in a flash-forward at the end of Arrow's Season 4 premiere. "She's like, 'Are you sure you're not worried?'" recalls Cassidy. "I'm like, 'No, it's fine.'"
Ahead of New York Comic Con weekend, Arrow showrunners Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle sent cast members an email — not long before they were to film an episode featuring a big death — asking to "catch up" that Monday. "And for whatever reason, my stomach just dropped," Cassidy recalls. "I immediately text Marc Guggenheim, who I adore, 'I'm fired, aren't I?' I was like, 'Marc, I have a sick feeling in my stomach, please don't make me wait the weekend. Please, can we get on a call tomorrow?' He said, 'Wow, you're really intuitive. I'll call you tomorrow.'"
The next day, in a conference call with Guggenheim and fellow Arrowverse EPs Greg Belanti and Andrew Kreisberg, "Marc said, 'Listen, unfortunately I have to tell you you're the one that's in the grave.'" Cassidy says that she was "angry at first" and "emotional" as the storyline reasons for Laurel's death (at the hands of Damien Dahrk) were spelled out for her.
As for why she/Laurel was chosen as tribute, "I have theories...," Cassidy says, only hinting: "I think it was political." (Guggenheim, in an April 2023 post to his blog, wrote that at the time "there were still a lot of cooks in the kitchen and very few decisions were made by a single person.... This is true for the decision to kill Laurel.")
Cassidy says that in her "only anger moment" on that phone call, she said to the EPs, "I just have to say I feel like I've always been given the short end of the stick," before announcing she had to go, hanging up, and crying. Arrow lead Stephen Amell "called me immediately and was like, 'I'm so sorry, I don't want it to be you,'" the actress reports.
At New York Comic Con that weekend, where many a fan question was about "Who's in the grave?," Cassidy says, "Our whole cast is on stage looking at each other and I'm like, 'Maybe no one's in the grave, I don't know.' I had to play like I wasn't crushed."
Of course, Cassidy's firing story was soon retrofitted with a happy ending, when Flash boss Kreisberg invited her to guest-star on the Arrow spinoff that same spring as Laurel's Earth-X doppelgänger aka Black Siren. Weeks later, it was announced that Cassidy would be a series regular across the Arrowverse for the 2016-17 TV season, and come Arrow Season 6, she was asked back as a seres regular, as Earth-2's Laurel Lance.
"I did get a call after Flash aired, from Marc, that said, 'Would you come back as a series regular? I think we may have made a mistake.'" And then I was back and better than ever and happy."
Looking back on it all, Cassidy is first to acknowledge that "quite frankly, them killing me off... took every other series regular and... sends these other characters spiraling in different directions and reacting. It's storytelling, and I don't take it personally.
"I think they did a great job in writing for me, quite frankly, and I got a lot to play with," adds Cassidy, who was even in queue to co-headline a prospective (but ultimately shelved) Green Arrow and the Canaries spinoff. "So for that I'm grateful."