Send to KindleZACHARY LEVI “CHUCK” INTERVIEW
By Abbie Bernstein
For five seasons, Zachary Levi has been charming audiences as big box store worker-turned-spy Chuck Bartowski on NBC’s CHUCK, which is about to wrap up its run (the final episode, scheduled for January 27, is entitled “Chuck Vs. the Goodbye”). Levi has brought Chuck from a confused young man trying to cope with glitchy spy software - the Intersect - in his mind to a confident operative able to go on missions after the Intersect was removed. Chuck has also wooed and married his spy handler Sarah Walter (Yvonne Strahovski), brought his best friend Morgan (Joshua Gomez) into the espionage game, lost his super-secret agent father (Scott Bakula), found his even more super-secret agent mother (Linda Hamilton) and done much, much more, all while retaining the basic humanity and sense of optimism that sets him apart from most other characters in this genre.
Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and raised in Ventura County, California, Levi actually had a four-year gig on the half-hour comedy LESS THAN PERFECT and more recently voiced the somewhat Chuck-like bandit hero Flynn Rider in Disney’s animated musical TANGLED. CHUCK has also given him the opportunity to direct with the episodes “Chuck Vs. the Beard” (Season Three), “Chuck Vs. the Leftovers” (Season Four) and “Chuck Vs. the Hack Off” (Season Five.)
Levi reflects on all of it an NBC party, where he’s been palling around with cast mates Gomez and Ryan McPartlin (who plays Chuck’s brother-in-law Devon, aka Captain Awesome).
CHUCK premiered just before the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike. Every season since then has been a question mark, with NBC hesitating to renew the show until the last moment. While many shows have loyal fan followings, CHUCK’s ardent admirers waged such a successful campaign of supporting major CHUCK advertiser Subway that they can be directly credited with getting the series picked up for its fourth season.
Even with the high level of fan devotion, Levi says he doubted fifth season was going to happen. “I thought our ratings had dropped enough, at least in the live viewers, where I wasn’t sure if we were going to come back or not. I knew syndication was a plus for bringing us back, but I wasn’t sure, and we came back.”
This doesn’t mean Levi had made other plans for his work year. “You have to live life and explore things, but you never know, and I thought, ‘You know, there’s definitely a big chance that we could come back.’ So you plan accordingly.”
How was it working with Bakula as Chuck’s dad, Hamilton as Chuck’s mom and Timothy Dalton (who had played James Bond, if one wants to speak of classic spies) as one of Chuck’s archenemies?
“Oh, they’re amazing,” Levi replies. “I mean, they’re an absolute pleasure to work with, really talented people that have been part of such incredible projects in the past and an honor to have them playing in our sandbox. It’s really cool. I love Scotty Bakula, I love him, had a great time working with him and [Hamilton was] definitely an interesting way to take the relationship with Mom and it’s been a really cool journey.”
In one of the episodes Levi directed, the characters participate in a game of charades, with Dalton’s Alexei Volkoff pantomiming something that looks like a chicken. What movie title was Dalton trying to convey?
Levi says he’s not quite sure himself. “He was very tight-lipped about it. He didn’t want to tell anybody. I want to say it was LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. And I don’t know how the chicken wings is LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, but that’s what he told everybody later that it was.”
There was a lot of improvisation in the scene, Levi adds. “I basically just told him, ‘Look, I could tell you what to do, I could give you a movie, but it’s far more fun if you just pick it and go with it,’ so that’s what he did, and he did such a good job.”
Has directing been what Levi imagined it would be? “It was easier and harder,” Levi says. “Every episode’s very different. And it was very cool and intimidating but awesome to direct Linda and Tim, but I felt like the episode just had certain things about it that were more of a challenge in some ways, and some things that were less [challenging]. l [have] done one more this season, Episode Five ["Chuck Vs. the Hack Off"], which I [was] excited and terrified about. I’m still a newbie director, so I learn a lot every time I direct and it’s a lot of responsibility, but it’s very rewarding as well.”
For the first four seasons, the character Chuck was partly defined by having the Intersect in his head, giving him crucial information and sometimes even killer fight moves. At the end of Season Four, Chuck had the Intersect removed; it wound up in Morgan’s mind. How is it playing Chuck without the Intersect? “It’s great,” Levi states.. “It’s fantastic. I’ve had a lot of fun with it. I love that Chuck is kind of having to stand on his own two feet now, and I love that Josh - Morgan - gets to have fun with it. Josh is a really talented guy, and our stunts and fight coordinators are incredibly fantastic and talented, so he’s in good hands.”
Gomez joins the conversation. “Zach is amazing. The thing that people don’t understand is how much love I have for him personally.”
“I love you, too,” Levi sais.
Both Levi and Gomez are thrilled to be working with guest actor Mark Hamill or, as Gomez refers to him, “Luke Skywalker.” “Any time you get to work with a childhood hero,” Levi observes, “that’s just icing on the cake.”
This season, CHUCK is paired on NBC’s Friday nights with GRIMM, a supernatural procedural which stars David Giuntoli as a Portland, Oregon, police detective who is also a Grimm, someone able to see the true otherworldly qualities of individuals who only appear human.
Todd Milliner, one of GRIMM’s executive producers, playfully starts interviewing Levi. “If you could describe CHUCK in three words?” Milliner asks.
“Unique. Fun. Special,” Levi answers.
Milliner goes for the abstract next. “If you were a Monopoly board character …”
“Oh, the race car,” Levi says without hesitation. “Always. That’s a great question, by the way. It’s identifying. Some people like to be the thimble. I like to be an actual motivated thing. It’s either the race car or the dog or the wheelbarrow, if I have to. But the hat, why? The thimble - they don’t move naturally and I don’t like unnaturally moving things.”
“Our show is about unnaturally moving things,” Milliner quips, then asks, “CHUCK going into GRIMM, the show that I executive produce. How are you going to help build the audience for GRIMM?”
“It’s going to be tough,” Levi laughs, then gives his serious response. “This is what I would say about this, in all honesty. I always appreciate when NBC partners us with shows that are of the same demographic. And to me, [last season's] THE EVENT was a show like that. [EVENT star] Jason Ritter, I love him to death. Their whole cast, their creative team - I really enjoyed the show and they had their run and it was what it was, but from a CHUCK standpoint, to be able to be partnered with something like GRIMM, where when you go down to Comic-Con and you have those fans and you have that core demographic and they’re about that type of content, that’s exciting. So I’m excited about it.”
“So are we,” Milliner observes. “CHUCK perseveres.”
Coming back to CHUCK, what are some of Levi’s favorite points in Chuck’s evolution? “Just the evolution itself,” Levi replies. “I love that I’ve been able to play a character that’s changed every season, physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. A lot of times, you don’t get to play characters that change and evolve and they’re stuck in kind of their archetype, I suppose. With Chuck, I’ve been able to explore a lot of different avenues and a lot of different colors, and it’s been great.”
Season Four’s “Chuck Vs. the Fear of Death” is one of Levi’s favorite episodes. “I was captured and I was strapped to a chair and it was just a very good episode, really cool visuals, big fights and yeah, I thought it was cool.”
Levi adds that he’s also “incredibly” happy with the way TANGLED turned out, as both a critical and box-office hit. “I mean, it was a bucket list thing to begin with, just being able to be part of a Disney animated musical. It’s something that I’ve grown up watching and loving my whole life. So for it to perform like it has at the box office and to have the critics enjoy it and make so many year-end lists of Top Tens and whatever is really amazing. It’s all kind of a dream come true.”
Speaking of waking dreams, how was this year’s Comic-Con? “It was incredible. I mean, our CHUCK panel for me was very sobering, emotional. I got to throw my own event down there, called Nerd HQ, which was just a very fun interactive experience for fans, and that’s what I wanted to give them, an hour Q and A, all to themselves, very intimate panels. And they could secure a seat and not wait in line all day, twenty bucks, every penny went to charity. It’s a big win/win. It was good for the Nerd Machine, my company, it was good for fans, it was good for my friends from this industry who came down to participate, so the entire experience at Comic-Con was great.”
Is there anything else Levi would like to say about CHUCK? “Always, I can’t thank the fans enough for being as amazing as they are. We’re just always thankful and appreciative of our fans who have stayed with us for all this time, and I hope they continue to enjoy the rest of the season.”
By Abbie Bernstein
Entertainment Reporter: BuzzyMag.com
