Grant Gustin reveals how he learned to channel the Wellses on The Flash
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Grant Gustin definitely felt the pressure on The Flash's season 7 premiere.
Formerly the 20th episode of season 6 before the pandemic shutdown, "All's Wells That Ends Wells," called on Gustin to imitate the Council of Wells after an accident in the speed lab led to all of the Wellses, who were previously housed in Nash Wells' (Tom Cavanagh) brain, being transferred to Barry's. Over the course of the several scenes, Gustin nailed impressions of Harry, H.R., Sherloque, and more, yielding what might be his funniest performance to date on the CW's long-running superhero drama.
"I was excited and nervous when I read it," Gustin told EW. "Mostly nervous about doing Sherloque, which I feel like is an absurd, untouchable character that only Tom Cavanagh can do justice. That felt like that was the case for a lot of these characters. So I knew I had big shoes to fill even if it was just for like four or five scenes."
Katie Yu/The CW Grant Gustin as Barry Allen on "The Flash."
Instead of rewatching old episodes of The Flash to prepare, Gustin simply went right to the source, Cavanagh himself, to help figure out how play each character.
"I've spent time with these characters for years, and the other helpful part of it was that Tom was in like every single scene I had as these characters," he said. "So, the prep work started with, for specific lines I would ask if he would send me voice memos of just literally how he would say it, and then I would kind of build on top of that."
He continued: "Obviously, [I] knew some of it was just going to be infused with what I brought to these characters, but I did do my best of just kind of doing impressions of Tom playing these characters. Again, thankfully, he was on set with me the whole time, so I had all my prep work at home and I had Tom there to kind of hold my hand through the process."
The CW Carlos Valdez as Cisco Ramon, left, and Grant Gustin as Barry Allen on the CW's "The Flash."
Gustin faces yet another acting challenge on Tuesday's episode, "The Speed of Thought." Thanks to the Artificial Speed Force, Barry gains the power of speed-thinking, which required him to play a less emotional version of the character.
"That was another fun but tough episode," Gustin said.
Showrunner Eric Wallace previously teased how the show would approach Barry's new ability, which is a relatively new addition to the Flash mythology.
"We took our hint from the comics," Wallace told EW. "I thought the speed thinking was such a great thing in the current run of the comic books. We're gonna take some of the visuals from the comics. But we're going to take it to extremes and there will be some definite humor involved."
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on the CW.
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