The 'Walking Dead' alum talks to ETonline about Tuesday's brand-new episode.
From zombies to metahumans, Emily Kinney is about to give Central City a dose of evil.
The Walking Dead grad makes her debut on Tuesday’s The Flash as Brie Larvin, a reimagining of DC baddie Bertram Larvin, who is a tech-savvy genius with the ability and the intelligence to hack anything. When she decides to wreak havoc on her former boss Dr. Tina McGee (original Flash star Amanda Pays) through an army of robotic bees, Brie (a.k.a. Bug-Eyed Bandit) will have to face off against Starling City's equally computer-smart Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards).
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For Kinney, jumping from the world of the undead (R.I.P. Beth!) to a universe filled with superheroes wasn’t intimidating. In fact, she embraced it.
“It’s a lot of the same fans,” Kinney tells ETonline of the The Walking Dead and The Flash’s similar comic-book origins. But, she’s also looking forward to showing viewers a more villainous side. “It’s going to be cool for everyone to see me as a very different character.”
Brie will certainly be different. By changing the character from male to female, the 29-year-old actress said it afforded her room to play.
“It allows freedom for interpretation,” she explains. “When I first found out I’d be working on this, I looked up the Bug-Eyed Bandit who Brie was based on, and it was such a different character than what I looked like as me and also what I was reading in the script.”
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While Kinney is aware that many viewers still associate her as sweet Beth from The Walking Dead, she’s hopeful that her turn on The Flash changes that – though she admits she “definitely” had to dig deep to find Brie.
“Beth was so sweet – it was fun to play someone who was holding a grudge and angry. It was nice to have that switch,” she adds.
But does Brie, whom Kinney described as “sexy computer hacker,” have the ability to triumph over her new nemesis Felicity? Viewers will have to wait and see! One thing Kinney was excited for fans to see was the hacker versus hacker showdown between Brie and Felicity, who never share the same room during their battle.
“We’re having this battle but we don’t actually see each other, it’s all on a computer. One thing I think that was good about that was I do feel like Brie is sort of an isolated person,” Kinney says. “She’s had this grudge [against her former company] because her career was ruined because she was developing these evil bees.”
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Are there aspects to Brie that give her a leg up on Felicity? Kinney was coy with her answer, saying with a laugh, “Brie’s pretty good at her computer skills so it’s a good matchup.”
A recent trailer revealed a swarm of bees attacking The Flash (Grant Gustin), which got us curious: Did Kinney have to work with actual bees in the episode? Turns out, they were all CG’d in later!
“For some reason I had in my head that they would at least use plastic bees, but then when we would actually film on set, it was all pretend,” she says. “I would pretend that I was talking to the bee in my hand. There was a lot of imaginary bee-talking!”
As huge Walking Dead fans, we couldn’t help but pose a hypothetical: Would Beth be BFFs with Felicity?
“Beth would be on the good side. She’d be friends with Felicity, yeah,” Kinney says.
As for a possible return to Central City, Kinney was hopeful, pointing to tonight’s episode as a potential clue: “You’ll have to tune in and see!”
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.