The first wave of the 2013 Teen Choice Award nominations have finally been revealed and Arrow is up for 3 awards, including Choice TV Show: Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Choice TV Actor: Fantasy/Sci-Fi (Stephen Amell), and Choice TV Actress: Fantasy/Sci-Fi (Katie Cassidy).

Check out who they are up against in each category below. The awards ceremony is set to air Sunday, Aug. 11, on Fox.

Choice TV Show: Fantasy/Sci-Fi

“Arrow”
“Beauty and The Beast”
“Once Upon a Time”
“Supernatural”
“The Vampire Diaries”

Choice TV Actor: Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Jensen Ackles, “Supernatural”
Stephen Amell, “Arrow”
Jared Padalecki, “Supernatural”
Ian Somerhalder, “The Vampire Diaries”
Paul Wesley, “The Vampire Diaries”

Choice TV Actress: Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Katie Cassidy, “Arrow”
Nina Dobrev, “The Vampire Diaries”
Ginnifer Goodwin, “Once Upon a Time”
Kat Graham, “The Vampire Diaries”
Kristin Kreuk, “Beauty and the Beast”

Starting today, fans ages 13-19 can vote once each day per category for their favorite TEEN CHOICE 2013 “Wave One” nominees at www.teenchoiceawards.com. Host(s), performers, presenters and additional nominees will be announced soon.

After an absolutely heartbreaking finale, Arrow is moving full-steam ahead to a strong sophomore season.

JJJ caught up with some of the cast at the recent CW Upfronts in New York City to get their take on [...]‘s death, as well as where they hope the show will go next season.

Want to know what Stephen Amell, Katie Cassidy, Colton Haynes, David Ramsey, and Susanna Thompson had to say about that shocking twist?

On the season finale

Warning: Spoilers under the cut. Click HERE to read! »

“I found out around shooting episode 17 or 18. The producers came up and spoke with Colin and then as soon as they spoke with him, they spoke with me. Then I spoke with him. We had actually be shooting episode 18 and our director goes, ‘So, you guys are almost done with the first season. Who’s going to die?’ I was like, ‘Does that have to happen? What do you mean?’ And then I thought about it a lot and ran through different scenarios in my head, and it still gets me right in the you-know-what.” – Stephen Amell

“I was sad for Colin. I already knew it, but to watch it. I thought we saw Stephen do stuff that we had not seen him do all season, emotionally. He was more human and I thought that was great. I’m looking forward to season two and the anty is up.” – David Ramsey

“I still haven’t watched the finale because of Colin. Colin’s one my best friends and I was very devastated for him.” – Colton Haynes

“Devastating. I had heard prior to the last episode that Colin would be… so yeah, I was devastated because I love Colin. I adore him. He’s a kindred spirit in many ways. Our theatre background, our tastes, and just our aesthetics. He’s a good, down-to-earth St. Louis guy.” – Susanna Thompson

On what to expect for season 2

“We honor gaps in time on the show, so we’re going to take a little bit of time. We’re not going to pick up seconds later in the first episode back. I think a little bit of time has past and everybody is going to be in an entirely different place than they were in the beginning of the first season.” – Stephen Amell

“I have a feeling [Laurel and Oliver] continue the will-they-won’t they, bad, love-each-other-hate-each-other thing. I have a feeling they’ll continue to go back and forth. They are star-crossed lovers, so who knows!” – Katie Cassidy

“The thing about Diggle and Oliver is that they’re both kind of suffering from the same demons. They both have post-traumatic stress – Diggle because of his time in the war and obviously Oliver because his time on the island. So I think they’re both always going to struggle with making connections. I think they’re going to learn to live with that and try to strengthen that, but it’s always going to be a place of contention, which I think is good for the story. It may drive them away, but they’ll always come back together.” – David Ramsey

“There’s three different versions that Roy can become. We pick up a little later (after the finale ended), so you’re going to love certain characters now and then hate some. I hope Roy can deal with his own inner struggles before any hero status or else, he can possibly turn a little bad.” – Colton Haynes

Arrow’s season-one finale left things unfinished. How unfinished? There was a heartbreaking death and half of Starling City was destroyed.

Warning: Spoilers under the cut. Click HERE to read! »

After the seriously epic hour, which saw Tommy (Colin Donnell) die right in front of Oliver (Stephen Amell), fans can definitely expect to see some changes when the CW breakout hit returns in October.

We caught up with Amell, Katie Cassidy and David Ramsey on the red carpet at the CW’s upfront presentation in New York City, where they dished on their “bigger” second season and Laurel’s (Cassidy) road to becoming the Black Canary…

“I’m expecting it to be simultaneously bigger and more personal,” Amell says of Arrow’s return. “Our world on Arrow is about to get a little bit bigger and there’s so much fallout that we’re going to find everyone in a very different place. It’s a second season, but it’s a new series.” Gulp!

Warning: Spoilers under the cut. Click HERE to read! »

After Tommy died rescuing her, Cassidy teases that “there will be some heartbreak” ahead for Laurel, but also a costume of her own?!

“She’s becoming stronger and she’s driven and very independent,” Cassidy explains, ” But she’s starting to stand up for what she believes in and maybe not always go through justice…hopefully season two she sort of going to be evolving into Black Canary.” Hell. To. The. Yes.

And while Oliver and Laurel got back together in the season finale, there are some fans rooting for the hero to hook up with Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards), his go-to It girl. “I want us to keep working together. I want people to keep enjoying it,” Amell coyly says of the pairing’s future.

But how does Cassidy feel about the love triangle? And what is Ramsey excited to see in season two? Watch our interviews with the Arrow cast above to find out!

Thanks to our co-web DeAdele I have added a mix of mq and hq images of Katie at the CW Upfront and after party to gallery. Katie looked absolutely amazing in her choice of outfit for both events!

Gallery Links:
Appearances > From 2013 > May 15: CW Upfront After Party
Appearances > From 2013 > May 15: CW Upfront

Katie looked amazing at the CW Upfronts yesterday (pics will be added soon!) and her stylist talked about how they achieved that sleek girl next door look that she donned yesterday.

“I loved working with Katie Cassidy – she’s such a gorgeous girl!” Ted gushed to HollywoodLife.com. “To give her this girl next door wave, I first sprayed her hair with Build It blow drying agent for texture, then blew her hair dry with a round brush for volume. I then parted her hair in a side part. Next, I curled her hair with a medium sized curling iron, wrapping 1 ½ inch sections around the iron, leaving the ends out. After tousling with my fingers, I finished with Beautiful Hold hairspray to hold everything in place.

source

The Arrow season finale literally and figuratively rocked viewers’ expectations after killing off a major character and destroying half of The Glades.

Warning: Spoilers under the cut. Click HERE to read! »

In Wednesday’s episode, Oliver (Stephen Amell) was able to defeat the Dark Archer (John Barrowman), and Detective Lance (Paul Blackthorne) was able to disable the Undertaking device. However, Malcolm Merlyn had a backup plan. As the second device leveled half of The Glades, Tommy (Colin Donnell) lost his life, Roy (Colton Haynes) tried to be a hero and Oliver lost his reason for being a vigilante. What does this mean for Season 2? TVGuide.com turned to executive producer Marc Guggenheim to get the scoop:

Everyone assumed that you would have Tommy eventually become the Dark Archer. Why did you decide to kill him off instead?
Marc Guggenheim: It really had nothing to do with his trajectory as the Dark Archer. It really had to do with the fact that we wanted Oliver to suffer a loss at the end of the season. When we thought about the characters that he could lose who would have the biggest impact not just on Oliver, but on the show, Tommy was the name that rose to the top very quickly. Tommy’s death impacts pretty much every member of our cast. Obviously his death impacts Oliver and Laurel (Katie Cassidy), but there’s a closeness between Thea (Willa Holland) and Tommy that we’ve established on the show, Lance, obviously because of the connection that Laurel has with Tommy and Moira (Susanna Thompson) because of her responsibility with Tommy. He’s the one character whose death would have the biggest impact.

Will Laurel feel a sense of guilt over her role in Tommy’s death and possibly second-guess her decision to choose Oliver over Tommy?
Gugggenheim: Definitely she’s going to feel some fairly overwhelming guilt because people, particularly like Ross and Rachel, can argue whether or not [Laurel and] Tommy were on a break when Laurel slept with Oliver in the penultimate episode. The thing that’s pretty much indisputable is the fact that Laurel, by sleeping with Oliver, chose Oliver over Tommy and yet it was Tommy who came to save her. She feels an enormous amount of guilt over, “Did I pick the wrong guy?” These will all be things we’re exploring in Season 2. The reason we did it wasn’t just to end the season on an impactful note. It really was to create all sorts of different stories and dramatic conflicts in Season 2.

Do you think this could be a catalyst for Laurel to maybe put on a pair of fishnets?
Guggenheim: [Laughs] It’s a catalyst for her to do a variety of different things. It’s going to drive a lot of what Laurel does in Season 2, both good and bad. Tommy’s death will reverberate through the cast of characters and will affect the changes and choices that Oliver makes and that Thea makes. It’s going to affect everybody. It’s not like you’ll never hear Tommy’s name never uttered again. If anything, Tommy is a larger presence in death than he was in life.

Is Malcolm Merlyn actually dead? It seemed like his fate was left up in the air. Was that on purpose or do you want to set the record straight?
Guggenheim: I never want to set the record straight. We have a moment in mind for the Season 2 premiere that should give you an answer to that question, but the thing that I always do say — and I said this to John Barrowman and to Colin Donnell — this is a show that does flashbacks. So just because a character is dead doesn’t mean we’ve necessarily seen the last of them on this show.

Oliver thought that defeating Malcolm’s plan was his way out from being the Hood. What galvanizes him now to continue to be this vigilante?
Guggenheim: I want to answer this question without spoiling our plans for Season 2, so the best way to answer it — and this will be one of those things where you’ll go back to this interview after you watch the season premiere to see what I mean — is that I think he’s pretty much done being the vigilante. The question is: What happens now? Come October, that statement will make a lot of sense.

How does Starling City start picking up the pieces after The Glades was destroyed? Will there be a time jump to skip the initial aftermath?
Guggenheim: There will be a time jump, not really to skip over anything, but rather it’s just consistent with the choice we made early on with the show. We always try to pass time naturally. For example, there was a six week break between Episodes 9 and 10 and we wrote that break into the show. That said, The Glades and the Undertaking was a big piece of our engine that drives us forward in Season 2. If the story engine of Season 1 was this notebook of names, I think the story engine of Season 2 is the destruction of The Glades and the impact not just on The Glades, but all of Starling City. You’ve got Merlyn Global and Queen Consolidated both not in The Glades, but the two biggest employers of people in Starling City and those companies are in some dire straits. We’re going to see in Season 2 that the economy in Starling City is pretty decimated.

The other thing I will say is that we’re going to continue to publish the Arrow digital comic for the next few weeks into June. I wrote a two-parter that closes out the finale. It’s really meant as a companion piece for the season finale. It takes place during the finale and in the week following the finale. You’ll actually get a chance to see some things that happened in Starling City after the events of the finale exclusively in the comic book.

Since such a dark thing has happened with at least half The Glades being leveled, does the city need someone like The Hood now?
Guggenheim: That’s one of the themes that we’re exploring for sure in Season 2. There are some people who feel that before there was this hooded guy in the city, there weren’t earthquake devices either. There are other people who feel that if the police aren’t going to step up to the plate, someone needs to. There will be a variety of different points of view held by not just the citizens of Starling City, but our characters as well, which is where we’ll get a lot of interesting debate and conflict.

Will we see Moira on trial next season for her role in the Undertaking?
Guggenheim: All I’ll say is that I’m an attorney and the easiest thing to write for me are courtroom scenes. I think I deserve at least one episode where it’s an easy thing to write.

Roy and Thea both showed very heroic sides in the finale. Is that a sign of things to come?
Guggenheim: Yes. Thea’s line about, “I have wicked aim” was meant to be a little foreshadowing and certainly, Roy’s heroics in the alleyway with his red hood is similar. Our game plan with respect to Thea and Roy pretty much remains unchanged. We’re going to keep pushing them both in the directions that destiny is drawing them. The nice thing for us in Season 2 is Colton Haynes becomes a series regular so it’ll allow us to tell a lot more Roy stories, which we’re really eager to do.

What are the consequences of Detective Lance working with the vigilante next season?
Guggenheim: He probably went through the biggest change of anyone — except for Tommy who went from alive to dead. We’re really excited about where we’re taking him in Season 2. Season 2 begins with him under very different circumstances both personally and professionally. It’s a fun thing for us to play with the real world consequences of all the choices that he made in the season finale. People will be surprised what Lance is doing the next time we see him.

Will he continue to be Oliver’s inside man in the police department?
Guggenheim: Our long-term goal with Lance has always been to make him the show’s Commissioner Gordon, but do it in our version of Commissioner Gordon. In the Batman mythologies, Batman and Commissioner Gordon are partners fighting crime. Obviously we went a different way with Lance starting out hating The Hood and now begrudgingly accepting that The Hood has a real role to play. We’ll be both continuing that trajectory for him in Season 2, as well as dealing with the real world consequences to making that choice. In the Batman mythos, rarely do they ever call Commissioner Gordon out on the fact that he’s working side-by-side with this vigilante. We’ll take a different kind of approach and a slightly more realistic one to the realities of what Lance has elected to do and is going to continue to do.

What will the flashbacks to the island look like next season?
Guggenheim: Things will at first appear to proceed the way you’re expecting, but then in pretty short order, we’re going to reveal that things are a little bit more complicated than what you’re expecting.

I can’t imagine that Slade (Manu Bennett) is happy that Oliver chose Shado (Celina Jade) over a way off the island.
Guggenheim: That is certainly something that we’re going to be exploring in the second season premiere.

check out the cast’s reaction to Tommy’s death and what’s in store for Season 2 below:

Before she played model citizen and lawyer Laurel Lance on The CW Network’s “Arrow,” Katie Cassidy was just a model.

At age 11, Cassidy began her career as a model, something that would last several photographic shoots.

“It began as a photoshoot for Mervyns. Somehow I was in modeling. Actually that sounds like runway modeling. When you are a child, I don’t consider that modeling. It’s like, “okay, you want to put me on a poster, sure,” Cassidy recently told the Journal.

She was discovered in a mall where she was shopping with her mother.

“He was like, ‘you should do print work.’ I guess print work is a better way of saying it at that age,” said Cassidy.

Although the 26-year-old actress doesn’t remember what she wore or how she posed, or ultimately where her pictures ended up, she recalls the temperature as if it were yesterday.

“It was freezing, it was a summer shoot but they shoot summer during the winter, so I was freezing,” she said.

After Mervyns, she modeled briefly for Kmart before moving onto Abercrombie & Fitch ANF.

“It was one of their catalogs. They had 10 models do it. After that I was like ‘I am done with this. I want to have friends and go play and be done with this,’” said Cassidy.

Even though she may have disliked the work, she enjoyed making her own money.

“I got paid $250 and my mom was like ‘what do you want to do?’ And I was like, ‘I want to spend it.’ I bought a belt that was $180 and then she gave me the rest and I went to the movies with my friends. I was very excited about it. I was very into fashion at that age,” said Cassidy.

When it comes to life lessons learned, Cassidy definitely realized a few. The actress is the first to admit they didn’t stick.

“I think it would be don’t spend most of your money on clothes, but I cant help myself. I’m obsessed with clothing.”

“Arrow” airs Wednesday’s on the CW.

Oliver Queen may be down, but he’s certainly not out. This week marks the season finale of the CW’s “Arrow,” in which our beloved vigilante finally comes face to face with the biggest and baddest adversary he’s yet to encounter: Malcolm Merlyn, a.k.a. the Dark Archer. With this current season almost at an end, we sat down with “Arrow” executive producer Andrew Kreisberg, who was kind enough to shed some light on the highly-anticipated season finale.

“I think the relationship between Malcolm and Oliver, which we’ve gotten glimpses of over the course of the season, really comes to a head in the finale,” explains Kreisberg in a recent interview with MTV Splash Page. “It’s just full of these great Shakespearean things. Malcolm essentially killed Oliver’s father. Your hero is only as good as your villain, and we feel like we’ve had both a great hero and a great villain.”

“The reason that Oliver can’t beat him is not because he’s not faster or stronger,” Kreisberg continues. “It’s because Malcolm believes in the cause more than Oliver does. And I think that Malcolm is going to be surprised at how much Oliver believes in what he’s fighting for in the finale.” So far, every time that Oliver has encountered the Dark Archer he has been utterly defeated. In fact, he even saved Malcolm’s life at one point! That, of course, taking place back when Oliver and Tommy Merlyn were still friends.

“Tommy is pretty pissed,” jokes Kreisberg on the shattered friendship. “Laurel will always be between them and I think that Tommy’s reaction to finding out that Laurel and Oliver hooked up is going to lead to some great conflict in the finale and go to some surprising places.” Surprising, as in Tommy will be assuming the role of the Dark Archer once Malcolm is defeated? Let’s hope so! But what are we to expect as far as the island flashbacks go?

“This year’s flashback story will wrap up,” Kreisberg elaborates. “But it’s always been our intention to have the flashbacks throughout the course of the series. I think you’ll see a culmination of the Oliver/Fyres storyline, but that will hopefully launch a new storyline that will take us into season two.” Kreisberg goes on to explain that season two will focus more on the budding relationship between Oliver Queen and Roy Harper, as well as the budding relationship between flashback Oliver and Slade Wilson.

“Oliver and Slade have really developed this great friendship,” states Kreisberg. “And watching how that friendship deepens and changes in season two is one of the things I’m most looking forward to exploring.” So does that mean we’ll finally be seeing Slade Wilson’s devolution into Deathstroke?

“We tentatively delve more into Slade Wilson,” Kreisberg teases. “Whether that translates into Deathstroke, you’ll just have to watch.”

The “Arrow” season finale premieres this Wednesday, May 15th, at 8 P.M. EST on the CW.

I’ve finally caught up in getting all the episode stills of Katie that have been released and I’ve added them to the gallery!

Gallery Link:
Series Television > Arrow > Season 1 > Episode Stills

Last night Katie attended the 102.7 KIIS FM’s Wango Tango event in California and I’ve added 6 high quality images to the gallery from the event, more will be added when I find them!

Appearances > From 2013 > May 11: 102.7 KIIS FM’s Wango Tango 2013