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Titans068 | W W W. S C I FI N OW.CO.U Kthat happens, we see that Dick Grayson was
right. It’s not great [to work with Batman].” And
as for how Jason and Dick get on: “The current
Robin's ideals may be a little less than what he
would have thought,” Thwaites tactfully reveals.
The show may start as Dick and Raven’s story,
but the other characters soon make their debut.
Ryan Potter, who plays Beast Boy, describes the
introduction of the characters as “a slow-burn,
but it’s worth it, because you’re waiting for these
characters to show up on screen.”
Both Potter and Anna Diop, who plays
Starfi re, drew upon their own background
as immigrants to America to inspire their
characters. “I just loved the idea of being
alien, and that means so many things to me
personally,” Diop says. “I was born in Senegal
in West Africa and we moved to the States when
I was six years old, so I had to assimilate, and
I learned the language in two months, I was in
school two months later, assimilating into this
culture. And sometimes I feel like an outsider
too, and I think a lot of people can relate to that.
I love being able to embody what being alien
feels like, if that makes sense. Because I think
that’s something I do understand.”
For Potter, Beast Boy and the Teen Titans have
been a big part of his life for a long time.“[W]hen I moved from Japan to America,
Teen Titans was the fi rst animated series that
was similar in style to something I’d watch
back home, so Teen Titans was really the fi rst
animated show I fell in love with, and Beast Boy
in particular, the way he assimilates to humanity,
because he’s green, because he’s in exile or a
reject or whatever you want to say, his use of
pop culture and I guess pop culture knowledge
to integrate into humanity and to make friends.”
Potter tells us that he related so much to Beast
Boy because he used to use the same tactics
to relate to his school friends when his English
was still “rough”. “It’s full circle, man. Beast
Boy’s been a part of my life since I was seven.”
He calls actually playing Beast Boy “frickin’
bizarre”, and says that “it’s fun, but it’s also a
bummer sometimes because you almost want
to be the animal.” Unsurprisingly, CGI had to
be employed to bring Beast Boy’s powers to
life in live action, and Potter is thrilled with the
fi nal result: “I think it’s a testament to how much
effort they’re trying to put into the series, and
especially attention to detail.”
The cast is rounded out by Alan Ritchson and
Minka Kelly as Hawk and Dove, characters
who have been affi liated with the Teen Titans
in the past, but have never been regular comicbook members of the team. Similarly, in Titans,
they’re slightly on the periphery. “They do feel a
bit isolated a lot of the time,” Kelly admits. “But
there’s a history between Hawk and Dove and
Robin. When they were kids, they used to fi ght
together. They were a team. And so we reunite
and fi nd our way again – but, yeah, we fl ow in
and out of the Titans team.”
Ritchson, having played Aquaman in
Smallville, was initially reluctant to take the
role. “Geoff Johns called me and pitched me
on the part. I was like ‘I’ve done the DC thing
and respectfully I want to keep trying new
things,’ and he was like ‘let me tell you why this
is different and why it has to be you,’ and he
pitched me so I was like ‘okay, I’m in. If it’s what
you say it is, I’m in’.”
Titans took a while to make it to screens –
initially there was talk of a live action movie,
then the show was originally developed for
TNT (where Barbara Gordon, AKA Batgirl,
was set to be a regular character in the show)
before being reworked for DC Universe. “There
have probably been softer or harder stories
but fundamentally this has been the narrative,
which involves Batman leaving,” Goldsman, who
has been on board since the beginning, says.
“Sometimes it was the day after he left in otherRobin is struggling to
forge his own path.“HE’S
PROFOUNDLY
UNDER THE
SHADOW OF
BATMAN”
AKIVA GOLDSMAN