A couple of months prior to Stephen Amell's new series Heels' debut on Starz, the Arrow vet made headlines not for his fictional roles, but for the loud and disruptive role he played on an airplane over the summer. As fans may recall, Amell was removed from a plane prior to takeoff back in June after he'd allegedly been yelling at his wife Cassandra Jean Amell. The actor hadn't spoken too much about it in the aftermath, but Amell has now offered up a full explanation behind the incident, and willingly admits that everything was his fault.
In making his latest return to the guest chair for the podcast Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, Stephen Amell approached the airplane drama early on, so that he could speak his piece about it without fear of being rushed or having his thoughts get twisted up. Amell started with a pun, saying:
I wanted to have just a slight runway here to be able to talk about this, because what happened was — and it's very, very simple — I had too many drinks in a public place, and I got on a plane. And the reason that I wanted to talk about it . . . is that I was pissed off about something else that had nothing to do with Cass, my wife, and I picked a fight. I picked a fight because I wanted to be loud and upset, and it was a 'fight,' as in 'it was not an argument.' In order to have an argument, two people have to be talking. My wife said one thing the entire time, which was, 'If you don't lower your voice, they're gonna ask you to get off the plane.' That's the only thing that she said the entire time. And you know, honestly, I can't even remember what I was upset about, which was indicative of two things. A. Handle your liquor. Too many drinks. And B. it clearly wasn't important. I was just upset and wanted to be upset. And sure enough, after she said this, a guy came by and said, 'Sir, you have to keep your voice down, please.'
Certainly, many people reading this can sympathize with Stephen Amell's situation, without necessarily being approving of it. There are many times in life when our minds can get railroaded by an upsetting topic that becomes impossible to stop thinking about. And even if that topic has nothing to do with what you're currently dealing with, the angered feelings are still going to flow regardless. Which is obviously not a great deal for anyone else who happens to be around, since they can often become a target, as opposed to being a reason why calmness should be restored. Common sense does not work well with emotional distress.
And if alcohol enters the picture? Fuggedaboudit. That's basically just asking someone for a megaphone. Sure, being in a public place should tamp some of that down, especially a close-quarters public place like an airplane. But tell that to the booze, I guess.
In any case, Stephen Amell said that while he did start to calm down at that point, the damage had clearly been done, and others on the place presumably weren't overjoyed by his outbursts. He continued, saying:
So obviously, Cass was 100% right here. I was being loud. I was probably dropping a few F-bombs. I've got the noise-cancelling headphones - this is not an excuse. I don't even want to smile while I'm telling this story, because I'm frankly deeply ashamed of it. But I was quiet for ten minutes. Clearly I had made somebody uncomfortable, and they had said something, and they just made the decision. 'You gotta get off the plane.'
While Stephen Amell said he wasn't attempting to excuse himself by bringing up the fact that he was wearing noise-cancelling headphones at the time, I think that's a pretty big factor for why he was talking so loudly, if not why he was talking so harshly. No headphones out there can be blamed for someone being rude to their wife or surrounding strangers. But they can certainly make the difference for whether that rudeness is whispered and easy to ignore, or if it's intrusive and echoing off the plane's walls.
Perhaps it was a bit of life imitating art, seeing as how Stephen Amell has to be loud and angry a lot within his new role of Jack Spade on Heels, where he plays a wrestler who heads up and runs the DWL, the Duffy Wrestling League, in Georgia. It's a more physical role that he had as Oliver Queen/The Green Arrow, and the show has helped him and co-star Alexander Ludwig appreciate the sports-entertainment world all the more. (Not that Amell was a stranger to wrestling prior to being cast.) But here's hoping Amell handles his liquor a little better the next time he's traveling from Texas to L.A., or anywhere else for that matter.
New episodes of Heels air on Starz on Sunday nights at 9:00 p.m. ET. While waiting, be sure to catch up with all the other exciting new premieres coming to the 2021 Fall TV season.
