The Flash was once one of the biggest superhero shows on television, and was the first to expand The CW's comics-based slate into a wider Arrowverse. As such, plenty of heroes from the pages of DC Comics were adapted to the small screen to join Barry Allen, played by Grant Gustin for nine seasons and nearly 200 episodes from 2014-2023. One of those heroes was the speedster Jesse Quick, played by actress Violett Beane. The former Flash actress spoke with CinemaBlend about her experience and quitting her restaurant job to take a chance on the show.
While the actress went on to land major roles in God Friended Me and most recently Death and Other Details (now streaming with a Hulu subscription), The Flash was her first major gig, and she appeared in more than twenty episodes between 2015 and 2018. When I spoke with Violett Beane at SCAD TVfest in Atlanta, I asked if she still hears from fans of the superhero series, and she shared:
Oh, all the time! And honestly, that was my biggest takeaway from that show, was how supportive the fans are. Like no other fan base. I remember when I joined the show, everyone was just instantly like, 'Oh my god, you're so cool. You're amazing. Thank you for this!' And I was just like, 'What? Like, I'm just a kid that auditioned.' And I think that that's really really special.
Violett Beane only had the highest of praise for fans of The Flash, and she was enough of a hit on Grant Gustin's show that she also took Jesse Quick over to Legends of Tomorrow elsewhere in the Arrowverse. At the time that she landed her role as Jesse, Beane's only multi-episode TV gig had been five episodes of The Leftovers Season 2; she'd go on to recur on The Flash in an impressive step up in screen time.
She went on to speak about the risks she had to take for acting in the superhero series, including quitting a job. When I asked if that support as Jesse gave her a confidence boost, she said:
Absolutely. And also the ability to just act, which so many people, with the way that things are, you can't just book a job and then not work. You have to keep working at a restaurant or whatever it is, and I quit my restaurant job to go work on The Flash, so it was absolutely – in that regard – life-changing.
While quitting her restaurant job to appear on The Flash in 2015 (which you can currently find streaming via a Netflix subscription) was a risk, it obviously paid off! Even though we can't say if The Flash helped her land the lead roles in God Friended Me (which was cancelled in 2020) and Death and Other Details, Jesse Quick changed her life. When I asked Beane if it was scary for her to make that jump from guaranteed work to acting, she responded:
Oh yeah, oh yeah! Because you're freelance. You don't know when the next thing is coming in, but I'm really happy I did. You can't just dip your toe into life. You gotta go for it.
The actress certainly did go for it, and definitely hasn't been typecast into the superhero sphere since The Flash. She arrived on streaming earlier in the 2024 TV season to play the lead role of Imogene Scott opposite Mandy Patinkin himself in the mystery drama Death and Other Details.
Sadly, Hulu's intriguing series has not been renewed, despite the showrunners telling CinemaBlend that they had "lots of ideas" for Season 2 and would "love to be able to make a second season." The show is still worth watching even in light of the cancellation, so you can always revisit all ten episodes streaming via Hulu, and/or all nine seasons of The Flash via Netflix.
