The TV show Liam Neeson refused to star in: “We never thought he would”
These days, Liam Neeson has made so many interchangeable action movies and low-rent thrillers that it seems impossible to think of a time when he was one of the most prestigious actors in Hollywood. For instance, long before he began shooting and punching his way across Eastern Europe in movies like Taken and Unknown, it was a true coup for George Lucas to cast the Oscar-nominated thespian in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace.
Similarly, his casting in a Christopher Nolan blockbuster lent an air of class to the project. When he was asked about reprising his role from that movie on TV, though, no one thought he’d go for it, and they were right—to a point.
In 2012, a superhero series that followed the adventures of a fairly obscure DC Comics hero began on The CW. Arrow starred Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen, aka Green Arrow, a wealthy playboy who spent his nights wearing a Robin Hood-esque costume and beating the snot out of the criminals of Starling City. Queen didn’t have any superpowers, but he had honed his body to the peak of physical perfection, trained in martial arts, and wielded an array of gadgets to aid him in his war on crime.
If any of this sounds like the description of another, much more popular DC hero, well…it should. Over the years, even the most hardcore Green Arrow fans have admitted that the character borrows pretty liberally from Batman, another super-rich playboy with no superpowers who beats the tar out of the bad guys of his crime-ridden city every night. Fittingly, then, Arrow often seemed like a Batman television show with the serial numbers filed off, especially because Queen’s Emerald Archer regularly tangled with villains more associated with the Dark Knight in the comic books.
In the show’s third season, which aired between 2014 and 2015, Queen faced off with his biggest threat yet: Ra’s al Ghul, an immortal eco-terrorist who commanded the fearsome and mysterious League of Assassins. Once again, if this sounds vaguely familiar, it should, because Christian Bale’s Batman went up against Ra’s in The Dark Knight Trilogy, where he appeared in the handlebar-moustached, sword-wielding form of Neeson.
Neeson first played Ra’s in 2005’s Batman Begins. Even though the character was stripped of his comic book immortality and commanded the League of ‘Shadows’ instead of ‘Assassins,’ it was still an excellent interpretation of one of the greatest villains in comic history. Neeson returned as the character in a brief vision for 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, and always spoke fondly of his time as ‘The Demon’s Head.’
In 2014, though, when IGN asked him if he’d heard about Ra’s turning up in Arrow, he surprised fans by saying he’d be more than willing to grow out that villainous moustache again. He admitted no one had contacted him about the role, but mused that he’d return “in a heartbeat, if it came my way, yeah. Very much so.”
This quote was music to the ears of CW president Mark Pedowitz, who had assumed Neeson would never consider leaving the silver screen to reprise a character on TV in a project that had nothing to do with Nolan’s trilogy. “We never thought he would,” Pedowitz told Buzzfeed. “We quickly went to him, just on the off-chance that he had the time to do it.”
Unfortunately, Neeson’s schedule wouldn’t allow him to commit to a ten-episode stint on a network show, so he politely refused the part. It ultimately went to Australian actor Matt Nable, who later reprised the part for an episode of the spinoff show Legends of Tomorrow. Still, it’s heartwarming to know that Neeson even gave the idea some thought, and it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to see him return as Ra’s someday, in one form or another.
