How does this sound? An average guy working for the Nerd Heard (like the real Geek Squad) inadvertently becomes the government's most import tool in the espionage game. Sounds like a cool concept to us. Well, it's NBC's latest entry into the comedy /action ring called Chuck, which premieres September 24 immediately before Heroes. After checking out Chuck's online web portal (www.chuckssecret.com), we called the show's star, Zachary Levi (Chuck), to get the lowdown on the series, what it's like working with McG, and his love of video games.
ZACHARY LEVI: Hey, man. Thanks for phoning in on a Sunday. I appreciate it.
UGO: No worries. [laughs] That's why I get paid the big bucks, you know.
ZACHARY: [laughs] Well, there you go.
UGO: So Chuck is pretty much every guy's fantasy, a retail worker turned super spy. What's it like playing him?
ZACHARY: Oh man, it's a dream job. I write as well and I've written characters similar to Chuck, but for a guy like me it's a perfect job. I'm more like Chuck than I am not, so instead of working I can just be my nerdy self. It's a lot of fun. The gunfights and the car chases, explosions, comedy, and drama - I mean it's got everything. It's an actor's dream.
UGO: You're also going to be the lead in to Heroes. That's not a bad spot to be in.
ZACHARY: Yeah, we're going to be leading into Heroes on Monday, and I'm really excited about it.
UGO: So Chuck sees a bunch of government secrets on a laptop and now the C.I.A. has to use him as an encyclopedia of sorts. Is there a main arc like a terrorist plot or will there be different case files from week to week?
ZACHARY: Yeah, basically, it's all of the nation's secrets. Be it the F.B.I., C.I.A., N.S.A., whatever, they're all kind of plugged into this one super computer that gets hacked and all of the information is contained in this specific image, like the flash of a picture. But it's interlaced with all of the information, so visually, as Chuck sees these things come up on his computer screen, it programs his brain to be exactly what the intersect is. Chuck, if nothing else, is a really smart guy. On the show he's an advanced calculus or something similar at Stanford. He was a brainy guy and was never the jock. In a nutshell, that's how it all happens. It's going to be predominately procedural, but who knows how much that will change. About every sixth episode or so we'll get some mythology and we'll get some back story on the characters, but every week there's kind of a "mission of the week", a new bad guy or a new bomb threat.
UGO: I loved your story about the Nintendo Wii. I heard you hurt your hand while playing. Since that real life event fits perfectly into your on-screen character, have you suggested any personal stories to the writers?
ZACHARY: Cheers! That's one of my favorite stories, too. Not necessarily, little things here and there, but it's not really like, "Here, let me tell you. This one time..." I will see things come up with Chuck and I'll make little suggestions, just little character things. I'm trying to draw upon my own experience without diving into it. The Wii thing would work perfectly, but now I've pretty much told everybody and so many people know. If we put it in the script, they'd be like, "Ah, that really happened to him."
UGO: What was McG like to work with on the pilot? Do you think he'll be back for more episodes?
ZACHARY: Working with McG was a dream. I love that guy so much. He's so talented and I love his energy. We'd be going late into the night and he'd just stay up and stay positive. He would keep people going. It was a lot of fun. We miss him, because the pilot took about a month to shoot. We were like making this mini-movie and he comes to check in on us, visit the set, and he's really good about that. As for directing more episodes, I don't know. He's a big film dude and he's got big fish to fry, but I do think if we go a full season and have a cool season finale, which hopefully we will, he could hopefully come back and do that. You know, like tie up the year. I know that he loves the show and wants it to live, so I know he's fully supportive. If it means the network going, "Hey, it would make a great finale if we could put your name on it and you go take these kids for another couple of weeks and make the finale." I'm sure he'd be all over it if his schedule permitted.
UGO: It's weird, a good portion of the cast has appeared on Without a Trace. Is that show some kind of farm team of talent for you guys, or is it just a coincidence?
ZACHARY: [laughs] That's so funny. I know so little about the casting other than Patrick Rush, our casting director, who is great. I mean, clearly, look who he found to star. I kid, of course, but look at everyone in the cast - Adam Baldwin, Josh Gomez, Sarah Lancaster, Yvonne Strzechowski, Vik Sahay, Scott [Krinsky] and Julia [Ling]. But I had no idea about the correlation to Without a Trace, other than...
[a sudden but loud noise in the background]
ZACHARY: Oh wow! There are a couple of big Apache helicopters flying by.
UGO: Where are you?
ZACHARY: I'm in downtown Iraq right now. I'm doing a USO tour. [laughs] No, I'm in L.A.
UGO: Speaking of tours, I hear they loved you guys at Comic-Con. How was that experience?
ZACHARY: Oh, my gosh. I can't even express in words. It was so incredible. I'd always wanted to go to Comic-Con, because it's my kind of thing in a lot of ways. I love comic books and I'm a huge video gamer, but I just never got around to it. I think this is the coolest way to go for your first time, as an invited guest. They play your pilot, and we got a two thousand person standing ovation. It was incredible and they were so supportive. It's cool, all of the advertising, posters, and everything. They had my face on the key cards at the hotel down in San Diego. I got a call from my publicist a few days before I went down and she said, "Oh my god, our hotel room key has you on it." But yeah, Comic-Con was a really big thing. It really sealed the deal for a huge demographic of ours. I mean, our core demo in so many ways are guys and girls like Chuck, because they love that stuff. We have espionage and cars with... I can't give away too much.
UGO: Tell me about the fight you had with Josh Gomez and the ninja?
ZACHARY: That was so much fun. It was a great little action night where we had the real candlestick and stuff, and then we had harder rubber versions of that and I had to put a cup on. It was ridiculous. Then we had a breakaway glass vase. It was so much fun. Doing physical comedy is so much fun and we tried to incorporate as much as we could without getting slapsticky. Gomez was so much fun. When he cracked me in the head with the vase, it was just a blast and we get to incorporate that throughout the show.
UGO: In a recent online interview, I saw you and Joshua talking about Madden NFL and I was wondering what other video games you're into.
ZACHARY: I'm strongly rooted in BioShock right now. It's so good. It takes a minute to warm up to. It's a pretty vast world and they took a lot of time making this game. It's a first person shooter, but there's a lot more story to it than other first person shooters. Granted, I'm playing it on hard, but those big daddies, those guys in the big suits... the first one you come across you don't even know how you're going to kill it. Eventually you find yourself with three of them walking around. You get these mutation things and the story is very deep and cool. You can freeze things, light them on fire, electrocute them, and there's also telekinesis. There's one where you can hypnotize the big daddies to become your friends and if anyone shoots at you they just take everybody out. It's a really good game and Josh Gomez does voice work on it, so it's even cooler. I don't get to play as much as I used to, so when we're on the Buy More set I bring my X-Box and sit between takes and play a little bit.
UGO: What can you tell me about the Weiner and Shades of Ray projects?
ZACHARY: Wiener is this buddy comedy. Three best friends taking a road trip in a wiener wagon. Shades of Ray is a drama. It's kind of a romantic comedy drama. It's this great indie film that I made and it's about this young half white, half Pakistani kid who's kind of finding his way in love and life between these two different cultures.
UGO: What's the deal with The Bill?
ZACHARY: It's so funny how things work like that. I did a pilot for Fox a couple of years ago called The Worst Week of My Life and that was a British show they were bringing to the States. Someone saw a report that I was doing an American adaptation of a British show and they assumed it was The Bill and they posted it on IMDB or something. I never did The Bill and was never going to do The Bill, but if The Bill ever called and I had the time, sure I'd go do The Bill.
Original page : ugo.com
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