Fans have a lot of questions about Taiana, the mysterious character that Elysia Rotaru plays in the fourth season of The CW’s juggernaut superhero show, Arrow – but Rotaru doesn’t have many answers.
Or maybe she’s employing her ninja actress skills when she claims that she doesn’t know much about the character with whom Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen has been bonding in this season’s flashback arc.
(For the uninitiated: the flashback arc is a storytelling device that Arrow employs to roll out the Green Arrow’s origin story in parallel to present-day events in Star City).
“I say this truthfully: I don’t know,” laughs the Vancouver actress during a recent interview in the lobby of a downtown hotel.
“We don’t know, and at the end of the day, it’s exciting, because I have to be on my game every day, and to have my dialects ready, my body ready, and my brain ready.”
What Rotaru can say is that she admires that Taiana – a slave labourer on the island of Lian Yu, where Oliver transforms from billionaire playboy into bow-and-arrow-wielding vigilante – has real fight in her.
“I think she’s pure,” says Rotaru. “She’s been through a lot, and she has nowhere to hide.”
To date, Rotaru’s scenes have mostly been with series star Amell.
Rotaru – whose previous credits include Supernatural, Smallville, Lego Star Wars: Droid Tales, and iZombie – describes Amell as a “nourishing dude.”
“For me it’s nice when someone of that caliber embraces you into the ensemble, and he did,” says Rotaru. “I walked into the tent when we were on location, and he said, ‘hey, nice to meet you, let me know if I can do anything,’ I was like, ‘Perfect, I will!’”
Amell’s Oliver is one-part of the fan-favourite ‘Olicity’ pairing (the other part being Felicity, played by Emily Bett Rickards).
Rotaru remembers the moment when news broke that her character would be romantically linked with Oliver – something fans of Olicity weren’t keen to hear.
“I was sitting on the Lions Gate Bridge in my car coming home from a voiceover session and my phone exploded, and it was all of these friends, family, and people cheering, and then fans being like, ‘What the hell?! No!’” she marvels. “It was a weird energy, and I didn’t get it.”
Now that it’s clear that Rotaru’s character is pretty much in Oliver’s past (at least, that’s the conclusion that Reel People is drawing based on what’s aired to date), her fan interactions have been overwhelmingly positive.
“I appreciate the energy coming at me. I just don’t know how to receive it or work with it yet, if that makes sense,” she says. “I’m looking forward to doing a comic-con.”
Rotaru grew up in Vancouver, and the arts were always present in her life. She started playing the piano when she was two: classical music when her parents were listening, and Bryan Adams when they weren’t.
As a teenager, Rotaru was a loner. “I was a disturbed, awesome, intense, aggressive, deep-tissue weirdo,” she says, grinning.
But she was comfortable being different. “I had this disciplined, but freeing childhood,” she says. “My parents were super open to the arts, but they were also like, ‘do math, do school, get your brain in.’”
Rotaru modeled, and was an army cadet. Increasingly, she found a home away from home in the theatre.
“The theatre was where I was really allowing the authentic voice that I had, and the authentic body and movement that I had, to come into one,” says Rotaru, who ultimately studied theatre at Simon Fraser University.
“I was attracted to those moments when the imagination, the body, and the voice came together.”
Here’s how Rotaru entered the film & TV biz: One day, while working as a medical office assistant at a clinic in North Van, a man asked her out on date. She said no. He left, and then returned, this time to deliver a business card.
“He said, ‘You should call my brother, he’s an agent,’ and I was like, ‘This is so weird,’” says Rotaru.
But after a couple of days and some research to make sure the agency was legit, Rotaru called the number on the card.
“They saw me, signed me, and within two or three weeks of being with them, I was flown down to LA to test for 90210.”
Rotaru didn’t book the 90210 gig, but many others followed. Her filmography encompasses all kinds of roles, and her favourites are those where she can “go balls out and bring all of that training that I have to fruition, where I’m utilizing the viewpoints and vocal work and all of that stuff.”
Taiana, she says, counts as one of those kinds of roles.
“I’m really allowed to explore this character more in depth because of the time,” says Rotaru. “They’re giving me the time to play and work and have fun.”
Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8pm on CTV.
