On Season 5 of The CW series Arrow, we’ve been getting insight into Oliver Queen’s (Stephen Amell) past relationship and dealings with Talia al Ghul (Lexa Doig), daughter of Ra’s (Matt Nable) and sister to Nyssa (Katrina Law), who helped train and teach Oliver how to run a business by day and live as a vigilante by night. And now that things are heating up between the Green Arrow and Prometheus, it is Talia who can clue him in to Prometheus’ true identity, as she trained him, as well.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actress Lexa Doig talked about when and how she found out that she’d be playing Talia al Ghul on Arrow, how she approached finding the character, what Oliver means to Talia, being comfortable living in the grey area of and when she learned the true identity of Prometheus. She also talked about her unusual audition experience for the E! series The Arrangement, and how it feels to be experiencing an embarrassment of riches, in getting to play two such cool characters. Be aware that there are spoilers discussed.

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Image via The CW

Collider: How did you come to be a part of Arrow, and at what point, along the way, did you learn that you would be playing Talia al Ghul?

LEXA DOIG: I found out after I’d been cast. The funny thing is that I didn’t audition for Arrow. My agent called me on a Wednesday to say, “Hey, do you want to do a few episodes of Arrow?” And I said, “Yeah, I’d love to!” She said, “Okay, we gotta make this happen fast, if it’s gonna happen because the character plays on Friday.” I said, “Yeah, I’m in, but can I see a character breakdown or some sides?,” because I knew that Arrow is very protective. So, she emailed me a character breakdown and some sides for a character named Lindsay, who seemed to be somebody who trained Arrow. There wasn’t much about her. So, I said, “Sure, looks like fun!” And then, the deal was done and I got a call from the costume designer, who I’d worked win on Continuum, and she said, “We need you to come in for a fitting tomorrow because this shoots on Friday. I’ll get the production office to send you a memo about where to park.” So, I got emailed a memo about parking, and across the top it said, “Re: Talia al Ghul wardrobe fitting.” I thought it might be a mistake. I went running downstairs to my husband and said, “Dude, I think I’m playing Talia al Ghul! I might be!” And he was like, “That’s so cool!” So, when I showed up to the wardrobe fitting the next day, I was like, “Am I playing who I think I’m playing?” And the costume designer was like, “Oh, Talia? Yeah!” I was like, “Nobody told me this!” It wasn’t released until the last minute, and I was all giggly after that. My biggest goal, because they seem to be doing Funko Pop! figurines for everyone these days, is for Talia to have one. That will establish me as genuinely cool, in the eyes of my children.

Once you knew you were taking on Talia al Ghul, how did you want to approach her? Did you want to delve into any of the comics or movies, or did you want to stay away from all of that and make her your own?

DOIG: A bit of both, actually. You want to honor the source material, to some degree, but you can’t honor it more than the writers do. The writers obviously take their own license and creativity with their storylines and characters. Talia al Ghul is someone who’s mostly involved with Batman and hist storyline. The danger, as an actor, is to get too attached to the idea of something that doesn’t end up coming to fruition. My bible, for lack of a better term, is the scripts that I’m given. I informed myself about the background of this character and how she fits into the DC Universe, but the most helpful stuff was going back and watching some of the stuff with Ra’s and Nyssa because that’s the universe that my character was going to inhabit. But even for those storylines, Nyssa al Ghul is very different from Nyssa Raatko. I’ve gotta admit, I haven’t actually seen The Dark Knight Rises and Marion Cotillard’s portrayal of the character. I just went with what was being asked of me, in the script, and what I knew about her family. What was said about her in the script was also very helpful.

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Image via The CW

Because she’s been pretty mysterious, as we learn more about Talia, do you think that increases the chances that we might someday see her and Nyssa cross paths?

DOIG: I have no idea! That’s a writers’ question. But I would love to see her and Nyssa cross paths. I think that would be a really interesting dynamic to explore and see play out on screen.

You’ve said that you think a face to face encounter between Talia and Nyssa would be very violent. Of the two of them, who do you think might win that fight?

DOIG: I think it would probably be a fairly even draw. I don’t know a ton about Nyssa, but I will say that I don’t think Talia is above using slightly more nefarious means to win a fight. She’s not necessarily the most honorable of fighters.

What do you think Oliver means to Talia, and what does Talia mean to Oliver?

DOIG: The second part of that question is probably better answered by Stephen [Amell]. As far as what Oliver is to Talia, I don’t know exactly what her motivations were for helping him, in the first place, other than she had something planned and he helped her. I don’t know if he was aware of that, or not. At the end of the day, Talia is very much about, why should I do what I can get others to do for me? For whatever reason, she sees, in Oliver, some similarities with herself and an ability to use him. This was a decision that I made, that wasn’t necessarily scripted but that made sense to me, because she was never mentioned in any of the previous dealings with the al Ghul family, which is a bit of a glaring omission when you finally do bring the character in, but she parted ways with them and said, “Okay, I’m gonna go do my own thing, guys,” to her family. To me, that meant living in the real world, and not just in the periphery and shadows, as an assassin. She’s just as likely to run a major corporation that funs all of her shadowy activities. That’s not unlike what she’s teaching Oliver to do, living in the shadows and in the light, with an alter-ego that partitions the more extreme aspects of himself, so that he can be Arrow, but he can also exist as Oliver Queen. It’s not really portrayed that way. You don’t see Talia sitting in a boardroom, orchestrating a hostile take-over, but to me, that’s what she’s doing, off camera.

Talia is clearly not specifically always on the side of good or always on the bad. What do you think her moral code is, and how does she determine whether someone has crossed it?

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Image via The CW

DOIG: I think Talia is very comfortable living in the grey area of morality. I’m gonna let my inner nerd show a little bit because I’ve played D&D at various times in my life, and she strikes me very much as being a true neutral, which is a really difficult alignment to wrap your head around. She’ll switch sides in the middle of a battle, if she thinks that’s what needs to be done. Whatever her ultimate goal is, is hers and hers alone. So, in terms of her moral code, I think it’s flexible. With Talia, the ends justify the means, however she has to get there. She’ll find a way to justify it within her moral code. But I do think that family, to her, is still family. Family, or the people you love the most, is who you fight the hardest with. In terms of anyone harming her family, I don’t think she’d take too kindly to that.

We know that Talia lets Oliver in on the fact that Adrian Chase is Prometheus. At what point did you learn that Adrian Chase was the man behind the villainous costume?

DOIG: When I got the script for that episode, that’s when I knew. Literally, when I read that line, “His name is Adrian Chase,” I was like, “Oh, okay, so that’s who Prometheus is!” I will say that I did know, because Stephen [Amell] told me, that Talia had trained Prometheus. He didn’t tell me who Prometheus was, but he said, “Just FYI, part of the reason your character is here this season is because she trained Prometheus.” I was like, “Oh, okay, cool!” And then, I found out that Prometheus is played by Josh [Segarra].

As the person who trained both of these men, how does she feel about what the Arrow and Prometheus are doing, especially knowing how much of a threat one is to the other?

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Image via The CW

DOIG: It’s kind of like a teacher in math class who sees her students fighting. In terms of how she feels about it, I think that will be revealed. I don’t want to give away too much. You do get to know how she feels about it. 

Because they were both trained by the same person, it’s interesting to see how much more evenly matched they are than what Oliver is used to.

DOIG: Oh, for sure! But there are downsides and upsides to that. On the one side, he knows how good Prometheus actually is. He also has a pretty good idea of how he actually fights. He’s not super surprised by his opponent because he knows how he’s been trained.

What was it about The Arrangement that drew you to that project and made you want to be a part of it?

DOIG: That was another weird one, in terms of getting the audition. When you live in Vancouver, and it’s probably true in L.A., as well, often the first step in auditioning is that you put yourself on tape with the casting director. When you do that in Vancouver, especially for pilots and L.A.-based shows, it was an L.A.-based show and I thought, “If this shoots in L.A., I’m probably not going to get the part ‘cause they’re going to cast somebody who’s American.” So, I went in to do the audition with the casting director in Vancouver, and that was it. I was running late. It was one of those days where it was one on a list of 15 things I had to do that day. I didn’t actually think a ton about it, after I did it. A lot of auditions that actors have, you’re not going to get because they put out an offer to somebody else, or they want to cast based on citizenship because of where they’re filming, but it’s good practice. I always recommend to actors starting out to audition anyway ‘cause it’s still practice. You get to act, and that’s what you want to do. So, I went in and did the audition, and then I forgot about it. It was a couple weeks later that my agent called me, and I was in Toronto because my husband was filming another series there. As soon as school has let out, for the past five years, we go to Toronto, so that our kids can hang out with their dad. My agent called me and said, “By the way, that Arrangement audition, I think they’re gonna want to screen test you for that.” I said, “Well, I’m in Toronto. Is that going to be okay?” It’s weird to go from just being on tape to going straight to a screen test because there’s usually a couple of other auditions in between. And then, she called back and said, “Okay, they’re not going to need to fly you in. They’re going to tape test you.” That means the tape they had of me was going to be my screen test. I was sitting there going, “Okay, so I’m really not getting this part, am I?” My husband was like, “Listen, it’s all good. You don’t have to go down to L.A. and potentially screw this up. You’re audition was obviously good, so let that be your screen test.” And then, the next thing you know, I got the job. It was one of the easiest jobs I’ve ever gotten. But then, I went spinning down a shame spiral of, “Oh, my god, what if they find out that I’m not very good!” But, they seem to be pretty happy with the job that I did.

It must be very cool to get to play two very, very different characters, at the same time, on two such fun shows.

DOIG: It’s an embarrassment of riches. I got really lucky with both of those characters. I’m having a lot of fun doing them both.

Arrow airs on Wednesday nights on The CW. The Arrangement airs on Sunday nights on E!.

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Image via E!