‘The Flash’ star Robbie Amell embraces social media connections with fans

TORONTO – Some things are sacred for “The Flash” star Robbie Amell. Like his tweets.

The Toronto-bred actor, who plays Firestorm on the CTV series “The Flash” and co-stars in the upcoming film “The Duff,” says he got into a Twitter fight earlier this week over the veracity of his feed.

“Somebody called me out, they were like, ‘Oh, man, somebody’s running Robbie’s Twitter page, this is totally a tweet from some company,’” Amell says during a recent visit to Toronto to promote his big screen comedy.

“And I hit back immediately. I was like, ‘I never do that.’ Every single tweet, Instagram and Facebook post comes directly from me unless my account’s been hacked.”

Amell, whose cousin is Stephen Amell of CTV’s “Arrow” and whose fiancee is actress Italia Ricci of ABC Spark’s “Chasing Life,” insists he’d never let anyone else handle his accounts.

“I just feel like it’s important. And some people don’t, I get it. Some people have companies run theirs. But my cousin, myself, my fiancee — we all run our pages and I think there’s much more of a connection with the fans than if somebody else is doing it for you.”

Social media plays a big part in Amell’s upcoming high school comedy, “The Duff,” where a viral video humiliates one hapless student.

Mae Whitman (NBC/Global’s “Parenthood,” Netflix’s “Arrested Development”) stars as Bianca, a high school senior who is sent reeling when her childhood friend Wes, played by Amell, tells her she is widely regarded as “The Duff” — the Designated Ugly Fat Friend — to her prettier, more popular pals.

“Which obviously sounds very mean but you quickly find out that it can be any term and the movie’s really about knocking down these labels and about this girl finding the confidence to be who she wants to be and embrace the things that she loves about herself, even if somebody thinks that they’re not great,” says Amell.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Kody Keplinger and also features Allison Janney (CBS/City’s “Mom,” formerly of NBC’s “The West Wing”), and Ken Jeong (“The Hangover,” formerly of NBC/City’s “Community”).

Amell says that when he first read the script he worried his character would just be “this stereotypical dumb jock.”

“But you quickly find out that there’s more to him than meets the eye,” he says.

“For the most part, he’s a good guy and he develops this relationship with Bianca and the two of them help each other out and kind of lead each other to be better people by the end of the movie.”

Amell says the film was heavily improvised; he and Whitman injected their own senses of humour into the script. That included some zingers his character throws Bianca’s way, as well as a shirtless pec dance that gets prominent display in the trailer.

“It wasn’t rare to do eight, nine, 10 takes where we would just try different dialogues,” he says.

Amell, who managed to tweet and Snapchat between interviews, says he likes using social media to connect with fans.

“You’ll get the occasional person who’s trying to pick a fight on Twitter,” he admits.

But they’re easy to deal with.

“You just slide a little thing to the side and click ‘Block.’ And nothing pisses them off more than that.”

“The Duff” opens across Canada on Friday.

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