Arrow Episode 100 Green Carpet Interview: Andrew Kreisberg

Alongside Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim, Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg was with Arrow at the very beginning. Kreisberg’s involvement moved on to the launches of The Flash and Supergirl, two series that are also highlights of any given week of TV viewing.

We caught up with Mr. Kreisberg at the Arrow Episode 100 “Green Carpet” in Vancouver where the cast and crew were celebrating 100 episodes of the series. We all, of course, get to see Episode 100 this Wednesday, December 30.

There’s text of the interview below; if video is more your thing, you can find it at the very end. More Arrow Episode 100 interviews can be found here!

GREENARROWTV’s CRAIG BYRNE: When did you first start to realize that people were loving Arrow?

You know, I’ve always said that Arrow benefited from perfect timing. The Christopher Nolan movies were riding high, and Smallville had been off the air for a couple of years, and I think there was a desire to see a hero like this and to see DC Comics back on television, and we just came at the perfect time, and we were the beneficiaries of all that goodwill.

As the weeks went on – It’s funny, I think the audience loved it almost more than we did at the beginning, because we were struggling so much to make it in those early episodes. We hadn’t quite figured out how to make an episode of Arrow beyond the pilot, and we didn’t really do that until midway through the season. Fortunately, the fans were so enamored of the characters and the world that we set up that they stuck with us until we figured it out and then we all went on the ride together.

As a fan of DC Comics, are you surprised by some of the characters that you are able to play with?

What amazes us is that every year, I can’t believe what we got to do. I’ve been pitching a Human Target episode for, like, three years and we finally got to do it this season. Just to have Chance and to see him with Oliver… yeah. It makes the episode feel like a crossover in a way, even though we haven’t met Chance before.

How difficult is it to juggle a crossover with four shows in it this year?

It’s funny, because every year we learn something new and we learn a new way to make things easier, but then we raise the bar that much higher, which make it that much more difficult. This year, in some ways, it’s gone a little bit smoother. We definitely got screwed by the rain this year. This is the first time that rain really interfered more than time, money, and cast members getting sick, and somebody getting hurt. This time, Mother Nature was against us.

What can you tease about how the Arrow characters will react to Supergirl in their world?

I think my favorite reaction is David Ramsey’s as Dig. Dig thinks at this point he’s seen everything. He’s seen Mirakuru soldiers, and he’s seen The Flash, and he’s seen time travel, but nothing can quite prepare him for meeting his first Kryptonian, and that’s a highlight of the episode.

Some of the best episodes of Justice League Unlimited had team-ups between Green Arrow and Supergirl. Do they get any kind of interesting team-up here?

Yeah, they do, and they’ve got a really interesting reaction to each other. It’s not quite what you’d expect, which I think is fun.

What excites you to be bringing back for people to see in the 100th episode?

To me, my favorite moments of the 100th of Arrow are the quieter moments between the characters. There’s amazing visual effects and amazing fights, just as there always should be, but there are scenes in there that hearken back to the early seasons that were really fun to watch.

The 100th episode of Arrow airs Wednesday, November 30 but the action begins on the Monday, November 28 episode of Supergirl that kicks off this four-part crossover! An epic trailer for the crossover can be found here. Video of Andrew Kreisberg’s interview can be found below; more Arrow “Green Carpet” interviews are coming and you can go here to see what’s already been posted!