The CW’s slate of programming is a fascinating one. Many of its shows are actually fairly well-regarded, whether they take place inside of the network’s sprawling Arrowverse or not. Part of the reason these shows have been so successful is because of their excellent casting and captivating stars.
Although the CW has a number of great shows on the air and a really great talent pool, they more than occasionally like to cast actors who are actually related to one another in real life, or are married and have decided to form a new family with one another.
Whether these two relatives show up on the same show or not depends on the specifics of the situation, but as many of the couples on this list are married, it’s often the case that the two of them met while they were filming together. Other times, the relationship between the two actors was the reason that one of them was brought onto a show.
Whatever the reasons might be, it’s clear that the CW has no fears about keeping things close. After all, if one actor from a family works out, who’s to say that others won’t, too?
Here are 15 CW Stars That Only True Fans Know Are Actually Family.
Stephen And Robbie Amell
This one is among the most readily apparent on this list, in part because Robbie and Stephen Amell share a last name. The cousins have also made homes for themselves on the CW, where they have both played superheroes.
Stephen has been Oliver Queen on Arrow for several years, and Robbie has played Firestorm on The Flash. Robbie also played a teleporting hero on Tomorrow People, which has been off the air for a few years now.
In addition to sharing an employer, at least sometimes, the two cousins also look quite a bit alike, and are each quite handsome. Of course, there a number of families who have spawned multiple successful actors because, at the end of the day, part of the reason actors are famous is because of their looks, which the Amells have in spades.
Jared Padalecki And Genevieve Cortese
Jared Padalecki has had a pretty long and steady career on television, and he’s even had the chance to work with his future wife.
Padalecki and Genevieve Cortese actually met on the set of Supernatural when Cortese was a recurring guest during the show’s fourth season. Cortese played Ruby, a demon who seduces Padalecki’s character and causes a rift to form between Sam and Dean.
Although the affair between Sam and Ruby proved to be short-lived, Padalecki and Cortese’s relationship turned out to be a pretty stable one. The couple eventually got married, and they now live in Austin, Texas with their three children. Supernatural is a show with plenty of tragedy, but things seemed to have ended in a happily ever after for Padalecki and Cortese.
Aly And AJ Michalka
Aly and AJ Michalka have been famous since a fairly young age. Both actresses made their debuts on the Disney Channel when they were still quite young, and they also toured together as a musical act. It’s safe to say that the sisters’ careers have been closely related to one another, and that was also true of their work on Hellcats alongside Ashley Tisdale, another former Disney Channel star.
The show followed Aly’s character as she used her gymnastic skills to become part of a rather fiercely competitive and drama-filled cheerleading squad. The show only lasted a single season, but that gave Aly and AJ plenty of time to be on screen with one another, and kept their sisterly bond a featured aspect of both of their careers.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan And Hillarie Burton
Jeffrey Dean Morgan has made appearances in pretty much every popular television show. Currently, he’s Negan, the big bad on The Walking Dead, and in that role, he’s managed to call up a lot of menace from inside him. Morgan has also made appearances on the CW in Supernatural.
On that show, Morgan played the role of Sam and Dean Winchester’s father – the man who inspired them to begin their life hunting demons. Morgan’s wife Hillarie Burton was also a regular on the CW, playing Peyton on One Tree Hill.
The two have never acted on the same CW show, but both were on the network at roughly the same time.
Of course, that was long before they were married in 2014, so maybe the CW was one of the first things they talked about.
Jessica And Richard Harmon
Actors who are siblings in real life are commonly cast to play siblings on television. After all, that’s the best way to make it seem like the relationship is an authentic one. In the case of Jessica and Richard Harmon, though, the siblings actually play unrelated characters in the world of The 100.
Jessica plays Niylah, a character who shows up in the third season and has been with Clarke on a couple of different occasions. Richard played John Murphy, a recurring character during the show’s first two seasons who was bumped up to a major role during the third season.
Whatever went on behind the scenes that led both of these siblings to star on the show is unclear, but it must be nice for them both to have a friendly face on set.
Jensen Ackles And Danneel Ackles
Supernatural is one of the longest-running shows in television history, and Jensen Ackles has been one of the show’s stars for its entire run. Although Ackles’s co-star Jared Padalecki met his wife on the set of Supernatural, things happened a bit differently for Ackles and his wife Danneel. Jensen and Danneel started dating in 2009 and were married in 2010, but it wasn’t until 2018 that Danneel showed up on Supernatural, playing a faith healer.
Interestingly, Danneel once tweeted that if the show made it to its 13th season, which is currently airing, that would be when she decided to guest star. It turns out, that’s exactly what happened.
In their private life, Jensen and Danneel live in Dallas, Texas with their daughter and a pair of twins.
Katie Cassidy And Patrick Cassidy
You’re far more likely to know Katie Cassidy than you are her uncle, especially if you keep up with the Arrowverse shows on the CW. Katie plays Laurel Lance – the Black Canary – on Arrow, and has also played the role in crossover events on The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. After Black Canary’s passing, Cassidy returned to the show as an evil version of her character.
While Katie Cassidy may be familiar, her uncle Patrick Cassidy is only known to CW fans because of a role he had as a non-super character on Smallville. There, he played Henry Small, Lana Lang’s father, and a lawyer who had a strong hatred for the Luthor family. The relatives never overlapped on the network, but they were both there, at least for a second.
Brandon Routh And Courtney Ford
Brandon Routh has spent large swaths of his career playing superheroes, as he currently does on the CW’s Legends of Tomorrow.
Routh has been married to Courtney Ford for more than 10 years.
The couple met when Routh was a waiter, and they’ve been together ever since.
Routh isn’t the only one who has appeared on Legends of Tomorrow. Ford has also made appearances on the show as Nora Darhk, a character which started on Arrow before migrating over to Legends of Tomorrow. Now, Ford gets the chance to work on the same show as her husband. That might be an interesting change of pace, especially since the two of them have spent so many years working separately. Now, they see each other at home and when they get to work.
Joseph Morgan And Persia White
Coworkers get together all the time. It’s only natural when you consider how much time they spend together, and that’s doubly true of actors, who often have incredibly intense shooting schedules, and get to know one another fairly well as a result.
These two actors met when they were filming the third season of The Vampire Diaries. Joseph Morgan played Klaus, one of the show’s original vampires, and Persia White was playing Abbie Bennett Wilson, a witch who was the mother of Bonnie Bennett.
Morgan was eventually given his own spin-off, The Originals, and White only appeared in a handful of episodes of The Vampire Diaries, but the connection between them was enough to lead to a relationship outside of work. The two kept their relationship a secret for quite a while, but they were eventually married and have been now for over three years.
Alexa Vega And Carlos Pena Jr.
Alexa Vega may still be best known for her work in Spy Kids, but she was also one of the stars of The Tomorrow People, a short-lived CW show that focused on superheroes.
Vega’s show may not have lasted long on the CW, but she’s hopeful that her husband’s project on the network will last longer.
Vega’s husband Carlos Pena Jr. is currently starring in Life Sentence, a new CW show that just premiered this year. The two actors aren’t on the same show, and they weren’t even on the network at the same time, but it’s nevertheless true that both have been employed by the CW, which feels almost like a strange coincidence.
There’s a lot of TV out there, so for a married couple to end up on two different shows on the same network is a little strange.
Donna Lynne Champlin And Andrew Arrow
Donna Lynne Champlin has been among the breakout stars on the CW’s critically-acclaimed Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. As Paula, the protagonist’s supportive best friend who has plenty of her own problems to deal with, Champlin has become a standout character on the show, so much so that she actually got her real-life husband on as a guest star in a single episode.
Andrew Arrow, Champlin’s husband, played Hank in a single episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Arrow was a member of Champlin’s on-screen husband’s barbershop quartet, and he performed admirably.
Although it wasn’t exactly the role of a lifetime, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the kind of show that is always willing to sneak in little Easter eggs. In their real life, Champlin and Arrow have been married since 2010, and have one child.
Jesse Haddock And Thomas Dekker
The CW hasn’t been around for long, but that doesn’t mean that every show that it’s had has been one that lasted for several seasons. Like every other network, the CW has had its fair share of short-lived programming. One show in that vein was The Secret Circle, which followed a young girl who was told that she was actually a powerful witch. One of the stars of that show, Thomas Dekker, is actually married to Jesse Haddock, who played Jordan Kern in a single episode of Arrow.
This is another case of two actors appearing on two different shows.
Dekker’s role on his CW show was more substantial than Haddock’s, but neither had a very long-standing relationship with the network. Still, a job is a job, especially for actors.
Italia Ricci And Robbie Amell
Robbie Amell is one of the few actors with two entries on this list, and that’s thanks to his marriage to Italia Ricci, who had an arc on Supergirl where she played Siobhan Smythe, aka the Silver Banshee. Most of her arc actually took place when Supergirl was airing on CBS, but since the show is a part of the CW’s Arrowverse, just like Amell’s Firestorm is on The Flash, it’s hard to deny the connection.
Even so, Amell and Ricci’s characters never shared the screen, and it seems to be largely a coincidence that Ricci and Amell were both cast as villains on Arrowverse shows. When the world contains that many different superheroes and villains, maybe it’s hard to avoid casting people who are related to one another.
Stephen Amell And Cassandra Jean Amell
Stephen Amell is among the biggest stars on the CW today, in part because he launched the Arrowverse, which now dominates a huge chunk of the CW’s original programming. Amell married Cassandra Jean in 2012, and it’s hard to say which one of them made off better in that pairing.
Although she has yet to appear on Arrow, Cassandra has guest-starred on a number of other shows including Mad Men and the CW’s One Tree Hill. Amell was actually married before his relationship with Cassandra, and was divorced in 2010. He has one daughter with Cassandra who was born in 2013.
Although Cassandra and Stephen have never appeared on screen together, they’ve both gotten checks from the CW, and that’s only one of many things the two likely have in common.
Robert Buckley And Jenny Wade
These two may not technically be family just yet, but they certainly plan to be in the near future. Robert Buckley, who played Clay Evans on One Tree Hill, just recently announced his engagement to Jenny Wade, who appeared on Reaper, a short-lived program on the network. Buckley has also returned to the network in recent years as Major Lilywhite on iZombie.
The engagement was only recently announced, but it’s very possible that Buckley and Wade met at some sort of function that was put on by a mutual friend or even the network itself.
Reaper and One Tree Hill didn’t air at exactly the same time, but there was enough overlap that the two of them could have very easily be connected through the network. The rest, as they say, is history.
Did we miss any CW family members? Let us know in the comments!
