When Arrow premiered in 2012, it didn’t take long for Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen to find a partner to aid him in his war against crime and corruption in then-Starling City. David Ramsey’s John Diggle (who did not end up becoming a Green Lantern) learned Oliver was The Hood at the end of the third episode, then agreed to work with him in the following one, thus marking, to quote Casablanca, “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Amell and Ramsey also didn’t have trouble having fun in those early Arrow days eiteher, which started when the latter told a specific raunchy joke to the former to make him break.
David Ramsey told the story while appearing on Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, where he also got into a friendly argument with the title host about whether Arrow or Smallville was DC’s true flagship TV show. As for the raunchy joke, Ramsey it set up with the following after being asked by a fan about one of his favorite moments working in Arrow:
Stephen and I are doing a scene, right? And I’m his driver. He’s sitting at the Queen table with all his family. He’s at the head of the table. I come up to him, I whisper, ‘Mr. Queen, your car is ready,’ right? And that’s it. Then I go back to my spot, and I stay there near the door, and I wait for Mr. Queen to get up, and I drive him.
John Diggle was introduced in Arrow as Oliver Queen’s driver/bodyguard. Moira Queen, Oliver’s mother, hired him to look after her son once he returned to Starling City after being thought dead for five years. Diggle’s presence was initially problematic for Oliver, as he kept having to ditch the man in order to carry out his Hood activities. Meanwhile in real life, David Ramsey used this Arrow scene as a way to mess with Stephen Amell, with the actor continuing:
So anyway, so I wait for his coverage. So the camera’s looking at him, and camera’s right there. They get a little bit tighter, and they get tightest, I wait for that. And I whisper in his ear, I say, ‘I have the biggest balls you’ve ever seen in your life. …. Stephen just goes [makes face as if trying not to laugh]. And, ever since then, dude, we never stopped laughing on the set.
I guess it didn’t take long for Ramsey to strike up a good rapport with Amell on the Arrow set if he felt comfortable making a joke like that so early on. I can understand why he had trouble keeping a straight face, and it was a nice indicator of things to come. Ramsey was the only other actor besides Amell who was a series regular for the entirety of Arrow’s eight-season run. Along with his time on the Green Arrow-focused series, Ramsey also played Diggle in various episodes of The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Batwoman and Superman & Lois, though in the latter show, it ended up being an alternate version of the character.
David Ramsey last played John Diggle in The Flash Season 9 episode “It's My Party and I'll Die If I Want To,” which also saw Stephen Amell reprising Oliver Queen for the first time since Arrow ended in early 2020. While the Arrowverse is no more, both actors have appearances lined up on the 2026 TV schedule. Ramsey will soon appear in an episode of Tracker on CBS, and this fall on NBC, Amell will star in the Baywatch reboot.
