John Wesley Shipp Talks Being Flash Again
At the end of Flash Season 02, John Wesley Shipp was both killed, and reborn. As his role as Henry Allen, father of Barry Allen, was killed. But, he was revealed to be the one true Jay Garrick, aka Flash of Earth-3. Since then, he has returned multiple times as Jay Garrick, including in tonights midseason finale of Flash.
Shipp talked with IGN about being Garrick, and how he was not told about the twist involving Garrick when he was hired for Flash.
“No. In fact, if they had come to me with the role of Jay Garrick in the beginning, I’m not sure I would have done it. Because, clearly, I was a superhero 25 years ago. I would have felt like I was competing with myself. It would have been a very weird dynamic for me to come back to The Flash as a speedster. To come back as Henry Allen – a very realistic character who’s quiet, simple, truthful and has very emotionally rich scenes – I thought that I was grounding myself in reality in a comic universe. so that after two years of that and audience appreciation for that relationship, then put on a suit and come back and Flash around. I feel like I can have some fun. There’s nothing to prove at this point. Whatever I had to prove in the Flash world about myself as an actor, I proved as Henry Allen. And now I feel like I can have some fun.”
Of course, he also talked about how it was for Jay to be with Barry, and see another Flash in his prime.
“My Jay is very close to my Barry. In fact, when I found out I was going to be suiting up again, I went back and watched a couple episodes of the old show to kind of remind myself of what I did and to bring elements of that forward, because – what a great resource. We have our back-story all written. I was Barry! I was the speedster in the show while Jay was the speedster in the universe. And now he’s suddenly confronted with this new guy who, if anything, he’s faster and more powerful than Jay. So how does Jay come to terms with that? It’s a very rich environment.”
Flash will return on January 24th on the CW.