Ding-ding-ding!
Brothers go from rivals in the wrestling ring to enemies as siblings in wrestling-themed series Heels.
Heels
Season 1 Thursdays (from 15 September) M-Net (*101) 20:30
“In the ring, somebody must play the good guy and somebody must play their nemesis – the technical term is ‘heel’. But in the real world, those characters can be hard to live up to… or hard to leave behind,” reads the official description of wrestling drama series Heels. And the show has brought in some big names to fill those wrestling tights as bodies fly through the air. “We approached Stephen Amell after seeing what he did as Oliver Queen in superhero series Arrow. We knew that he’d be physically perfect as Jack Spade, but then we needed someone to go toe-to-toe with him and that wasn’t easy,” says series creator Michael Waldron. But then they found their perfect hero. “[Drama series] Vikings was winding down production and we got hold of Alexander Ludwig (Bjorn Ironside). He’s physically more imposing than Stephen and that makes him perfect as the face (hero) of their family’s indie wrestling business.”
THERE’S ALWAYS A VILLAIN
Wrestling like WWE (Fridays, Mzansi Magic *161 at 23:00) need two sides of the coin for storylines to play out. “There’s the good guy who’s the hero, and the villain who everyone loves to hate,” says Stephen, whose character has to constantly remind his brother Ace that their in-ring personas aren’t who the brothers are as people. “You need to learn to separate you the character from you the person,” says Jack to Ace.
And Stephen is talking from experience – he was scripted into the WWE’s storylines in 2015 while playing Arrow and he’s worked the circut with real-life independent companies as research for the show. “It’s not as fake as people think. The arcs and storylines are scripted – you get a page of lines to say – but when you’re in the ring, you’re really getting thrown around and hurt. I had daily appointments with company’s physiotherapists and chiropractors to get the knots out my body. And I got so many bruises that my body might as well have been spraypainted purple. But when we left the ring, the guys (the actual wrestlers) would come backstage to see if I was okay and that I wasn’t too badly broken,” says the actor.
DO AS YOU’RE TOLD
The problem for the brothers is that while they’re trying to keep Duffy Wrestling League alive, they can’t agree on how to behave in-ring. And that affects them when the wrestling audience goes home. “They’ve always been on good terms, but when there’s trouble, they turn on each other,” says Alexander. “That’s the problem of working with family – you don’t do it. Because one is always jealous of the other.” Not that Jack has reason to be green with envy – he’s the person scripting what goes on in the ring and Ace is the nice guy. “Jack knows he’s the baddie, but he also wants people cheering his name, to feel good about himself,” says Stephen. “He goes through a rollercoaster of emotions.”