SPOILER WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for "Bay of Squids," the latest episode of DC's Legends of Tomorrow.
Nate Heywood is living the dream. In "Bay of Squids," the latest episode of DC's Legends of Tomorrow Season 6, the team landed smack dab in his area of expertise: the Cuban Missile Crisis. In order to prevent nuclear armageddon, Waverider Captain Ava Sharpe tasked Nate with stalling John F. Kennedy, in the hopes he could preserve history and convince the President of the United States to deescalate the situation. However, in true Legends fashion, the mission went sideways and resulted in an unusual game of tackle football -- with none other than the nuclear football at its very center.
Speaking to CBR, Legends of Tomorrow star Nick Zano broke down the team's latest adventure from Nate's point of view. He recalled the "chaos" of filming that nuclear football scene in the Oval Office, as well as the process of preparing to "steel up" for this mission. He discussed the challenges of playing an energetic, detail-oriented character and how Nate's relationships with Ray and Behrad organically evolved into "an example of what male friendship could look like." He also teased the upcoming Western episode directed by Arrow alum David Ramsey, why Nate becomes an "emotional caretaker" this season and more.
CBR: I've always wondered how the writers break these insane plot points to you. Do you discover it in the script, or do they sit you down and say something like, "Nick, this week you'll be QB with the literal nuclear football in the Oval Office?"
Nick Zano: I think in a post-Beebo Legends, anything goes. At this point, there's no sit down. It's sort of like, "Oh, we are playing football with the literal nuclear football in the Oval Office. Copy. And that's Wednesday? Got it!"
Speaking of which, that Oval Office football scene looked like complete chaos. Tell me a little about how that came together behind the scenes.
I'll tell you this much: that was some of the most fast-paced, high-impact confined-space fight sequence/football sequence we've ever had on the show. I've been in a bunch of fight sequences on this show, but that one in particular just popped off like a bar fight while we were shooting. It was chaos! You didn't know who was who -- who was an actor, who's a stunt guy -- and it just popped off. At the very end of it, everyone's just sort of looking at each other in a heightened state like, "Oh, shit! Everybody okay?! Yeah! Do it one more time!"
I feel like Nate got to steel up for the first time in a while this week. Is that something we'll see more of this year?
I have the good fortune and the misfortune of having a wonderful superpower that costs a tremendous amount of money. It's really something that's a budget reason. We have an enormous show that we pack in every week, and in order for Nate to steel up, we're gonna have to not be on location. I believe it's a fiscal issue. It's very expensive to turn me to steel. Had everybody had the knowledge we have now, I think they would have given me a different superpower when I first joined the show.
What does the process of prepping for those Steel scenes look like for you these days?
It's all digital, but what we do to help that is, at first, it started off as mascara dots on my face, neck and any exposed skin. So that is for the effects team to tie the steel onto my skin in post. So now we've moved to dots, like sticker dots, black sticker dots that go all over me and in all the exposed areas of my skin that are going to be turned to steel at that moment. The tricky part of it is, if I have dialogue while I'm steel, then it gets tricky. So if I'm just turning steel in the fight sequence, it's a lot easier than being steel and delivering dialogue.
Look, I'm a native Bostonian, so we've got to talk about the JFK impression. Did you practice on that one, or was it more off the cuff?
It was 1,000% off the cuff. We have this thing where, moments like that, we give one another a little air. So if we're supposed to cut somebody off while they're rambling, we always give them a little extra air, because in that extra air, if we get into a flow, something usually happens in that air. And in that air, I ended up rolling into a JFK impression, which was not scripted, but I thought called for.
I mean, how could you film a JFK episode and not do the accent?
For me, you know, I'm supposed to be the historian on the show! And for me, the history is always like deep, deep, deep, deep dives, in the deep tracks of history. So for this one, being so relevant still to Camelot and JFK and Jackie and Bobby, this was kind of exciting, because it still feels fresh. I mean, as you said, it's still very treasured, and also still on the surface of our country and people who live in it and around the world. So the JFK was exciting for me, because if you're gonna get into history, usually you start at JFK and then it goes back. So I gave Nate a quiet connection to JFK.
I've grown increasingly fond of Nate over the years, particularly for his endless enthusiasm and excitement for history. How challenging is it to play a character who is so energetic all the time?
Yeah, that's my fault! [laughs] I started it that way, so then I had to match it. That's my bad! Sometimes, I look at Dom [Purcell] and I'm like, "Oh, he doesn't speak!" and I was just like, "But yet, he gets his whole point across!" Meanwhile, I'm delivering five speeches to tell you about how special JFK is, but it's a choice!
You know, there are still people who get very excited and passionate about things they love and do. That's Nate. Nate loves history. He loves the fact that he went from a hemophiliac to a superhero, and I have superpowers! The journey he's been on, and where he is now -- he's now into his own as a hero.
So he's not the new guy anymore. He's kind of settled into who he is. The thing that always rings true is when we go to a place that he's crazy about, studied about, his thesis is on, that's just his sweet spot.
As the show's resident historian, how difficult is it to prepare for his dialogue, which is often very detailed?
It's not easy, because to come off conversational about either fictitious history and being like, "This is what happened!" and these are just made up words describing a fake event that never happened, has its challenges, but also those challenges are fun: How do I make this real? How do I convince you this is true? The challenge of it is fun for me -- after the fact. Gearing up for it, it's always like, "Oh, God, here we go! What is this?!" and then trying to nail it all down and talking to myself and all these things you do as an actor. Then, when it's over, you're like, "Damn right! Feel good about that one." You feel great about the accomplishment and of pulling it off.
Has playing this role taught you anything about history that perhaps you didn't know before?
Yes, but also, I have to purge all that information out to make room for the next. So there's this weird thing of taking it all in and then delivering what we have to deliver and shoot what we got to shoot, and then letting it all go and go into the next week and then bringing it in. I still have a binder I put my script in every episode, and I pull the pages out we shoot, and I can't go to the next episode until we're on the last day of the episode we're shooting because it just seems like it's too much.
So it's like a little mental game for like the 15-episode season I play, and then it's just like, "Okay, this is done. Let it go, and it's time to make room for this." So it's really hard to keep anything! It's hard for me to track of our season, sometimes, in discussing it, because it's just like, "I'm in it." I'm just trying to bring it in, make it real, let it go; bring it in, make it real, let it go.
Nate has been incredibly unlucky in love on the series so far. Will the odds ever shift in his favor?
Well, I think what's happened this year is that Nate's kind of become like an emotional caretaker -- which, you know, after so much love/loss, love/loss, you're hyper aware of emotions and what people are going through. I think for Nate, this year, not having a love interest for the first time, he's aware of what's happening around him and what people are feeling. So he transitions into this caretaker of like, "We're gonna get through this! It's gonna be hard, but we're gonna get through this, and we're gonna stay together."
Nate's relationships with characters like Behrad and Ray are so wonderful and untoxic. What do you hope viewers take away from that?
It's funny, because when Brandon [Routh, who played Ray "The Atom" Palmer] and I started working and that bro thing started happening, there was no intention of making any sort of statement, like we were going against anything. It was just two performers, while in that zone, something came out of it, and out of it came this relationship dynamic that was just two dudes rooting for each other! Like, "I don't want anything bad to happen to you," and they were like, "I don't want anything bad happening to you."
So it's just a sincere care, that you can't really plan it beforehand. It just happened! And it just so happened to coincide with what was really important in our culture, and unbeknownst to us, we were becoming an example of what male friendship could look like, and that certainly was not an agenda of ours. It just happened organically with the time.
It's kind of amazing what happens when you're nice to other people!
Right?! When people started talking about it, I was just like, "Damn, man! We were just being nice people to each other!" [laughs]
Can you tease one moment or scene from Season 6 that you just cannot wait for fans to see?
Oh, yeah! There's an alternate reality Nate that comes into play. That was as much fun as I could have had doing it for the episode I did it for. But also, there's a great Western episode. You know, we do one Western a year. This Western episode is maybe one of the best of the season, maybe one of the best Westerns of the series.
Arrow star David Ramsey directed that Western episode, didn't he?
Yeah! Rams! That was hilarious. It was just funny, just because it's Ramsey! So he's just hanging out! I'm like, "Rams, This is not Arrow."
A bit of a tonal shift, yes!
Yeah, I go, "Bro, you're directing Saturday Night Live by comparison to Arrow."
DC's Legends of Tomorrow stars Caity Lotz, Dominic Purcell, Nick Zano, Tala Ashe, Matt Ryan, Olivia Swann, Jes Macallan, Adam Tsekhman, Shayan Sobhian, Lisseth Chavez and Raffi Barsoumian. Season 6 airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.