For Amell, living in quarantine is “not too bad.” “My wife and I have a six-month-old baby, and my wife’s mom came to town right before everything came down,” he said.
Amell is leading the cast in Amazon’s highly-anticipated series Upload. This sci-fi, romantic, satire series was created by Greg Daniels, and it is set in the near future, where people who are near death can be “uploaded” into a virtual afterlife of their choice. He plays the handsome Los Angeles party boy Nathan. The 10-episode series will premiere May 1, 2020. “It was great doing Upload. Greg Daniels, who created the show, is a genius. Going into it, I was really excited to work with him. Greg is so smart, so funny, and so down-to-earth. It was fantastic to work with him,” he said.
“Greg thought about this concept 30 years ago, when he was writing for Saturday Night Live. Nobody was willing to touch it because it was so out there. I had so much fun on this show. It has been a long process, we shot the pilot back in January of 2018,” he said.
In addition to Upload, Amell is a part of the hit sci-fi thriller, Code 8, which he produced with his cousin Stephen Amell (Arrow). In this thriller, Robbie and Stephen star in the lead roles. Code 8 is a crime thriller set in a world where four percent of the population are born with supernatural abilities, but instead of being heroes, they are feared and heavily policed.
Code 8 is directed by Jeff Chan with Chris Pare as the screenwriter. It premiered in theaters and On Demand on December 13, 2019, and it premieres on Netflix today, on April 11, 2020, in most territories. “We drop this Saturday. Code 8 was a passion project of mine that I did with my best friend Jeff Chan and my cousin, Stephen. It was a short film that we raised money for on Indiegogo,” he said.
“I am really excited for people to see both of these projects. They have been long journeys for me but I’ve had such a blast,” he added.
On being an actor in the digital age, Amell said, “I like it. The digital age is definitely the Wild West of filmmaking right now. We can see anything from small-budget to big-budget films and projects landing on these streaming services. With streaming services, it is more convenient for me to watch things at my own time.”
He listed Christian Bale, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Seinfeld fame), as his dream acting partners. “It would be awesome to work with Christian Bale and Jake Gyllenhaal, and I really like Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She is so funny, so fantastic and I am just a giant fan of hers. Working with these three would be amazing,” he said.
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