Instead of manning-up and actually going the emotionally hard route of being outrightly rejected by publishers, I’m rejecting them first and allowing you to give my entire book a preview, let you read the whole thing or, if you like, download the whole damn thing at no cost. Download and read my first book “Thank You, Goodnight†for FREE.
It was an interview like this that reinforced the sense that there is something to learn about the human condition as it pertains to being able to talk to someone whose face was plastered on thousands of hotel keys, billboards and is on television on an hourly basis as his network hangs their dollars making sure everyone gets familiar with a man named Chuck.
Zachary Levi, as some of you may remember, was interviewed by me years ago when he co-starred alongside Martin Lawrence in BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE 2. The film itself was inconsequential compared to what Zach had to say about his work on the film and how he was going forward with his career.
Things couldn’t have gone better for the man who was looking to continue his career in front of camera as he landed the title role in one of the biggest fall productions for this year and had the pilot directed by kinetic action director extraordinaire, McG. I wish I could have had the opportunity to talk to Zach during the San Diego Comic-Con this past summer about what, at that point, had been a slowly building monster. Unfortunately, and I realize without the video to prove it I can’t be taken at my word, it was exactly at the Comic-Con when I saw the frenzy that was mounting; Zach, his co-star Joshua Gomez and resident hot blonde of the series, Yvonne Strzechowski, were flanked on all sides by a phalanx of television and press as soon as they entered the press room mere moments before they were slated to appear in another room to promote the show to the public. It was honestly a madhouse of unnatural proportions but all three stars of CHUCK were alive with pleasure as they fielded question after question with bombastic aplomb. It certainly wasn’t the typical pensive, quiet press interaction you saw most of the other productions that were to be had that weekend; there was real excitement and whether you you were there or not there was no denying that Zach seemed pleased to talk about the show.
Since we spoke a second time he has starred in a couple of lower-budget productions compared to his stint on ABC’s LESS THAN PERFECT and then has exploded in an excellent independent feature, SPIRAL. Zach can now be seen on CHUCK every Monday night, 8/7c on NBC.
Christopher Stipp: This is Chris.
ZACHARY LEVI: What’s up, Christopher? Zachery Levi calling.
CS: It’s about time. I’m telling you I had to wait more times to talk to you since your appearance at the Comic-Con…I saw the show before going there and I honestly really dug it; I think it’s really funny. The thing was I did not expect the kind of fanfare that was there at Comic-Con.
LEVI: Dude, it was insane.
CS: Literally, it was just a whirlwind. You came into the press room, you sat for I don’t know how long for your other press stuff and then bam, bam, bam, you were on your way. How was that? You and Josh just seemed to be in a blizzard – a flury.
LEVI: I know. It was so crazy. I almost cried, man.
First, we got there and I’m looking at rebel troops, like crossing the crosswalk and it was obvious we were certainly in the right place and then we go in and do a little press stuff and I saw you and then it was “We gotta go, We gotta go…â€
In the screening room – I had no idea how many were going to be there – I’m sitting in the back for the last 15 minutes of the screening and the audience had been enjoying it throughout the whole thing. So we just get the last 15 minutes of them just cheering, applauding, laughing. And I was like…I just can’t believe it.
It took a month to shoot the pilot and this was the first time it was being shown and it was not just a general audience…it was to our core audience – the comic book video game generation. People like me, really. Then the show comes to an end and they announce that we were going to take the stage and we get this standing ovation, 2,000 people give a standing ovation. I just couldn’t believe it. It just goes down in your own personal record book as being one of coolest things you’ve ever experienced. I hope the show lasts and that we keep providing the level of entertainment and that at next year’s Comic Con we can fill the big hall and just keep pumping out the stuff that they want to watch and that we want to watch and hopefully that you want to watch. It was just crazy, man.
CS: I saw people wearing those CHUCK shirts all weekend after that. I was flying home to Phoenix and I saw a couple people walking around, and I don’t know what the shirt said exactly…
LEVI: Oh, ChucksSecret.com or something like that?
CS: Yes, those were the ones. Then your face was on a bunch of hotel keys…
LEVI: Dude, how insane was that??? I had friends texting me “Holy shit!!!!! Your face is on my room key to my hotel room!”
CS: I have to know. What kind of Fourth Wall did that break for you, if at all? I would imagine, with all the things that had your face on it…it had to feel slightly Bizarro World at that moment.
LEVI: Oh that…straight up crazy Bizarro World. Another buddy of mine, an actor buddy who’s on Reno 911, I get a text from him. He took a picture with his phone and sends it to me…What am I doing on this thing, he says. And then, talk about the perfect ice breaker, all the parties going on.
If I could only just stayed in San Diego. We had to go to Comic-Con and then come home and go work. We couldn’t even stay that night. We had to shoot that night. If I could have stayed in San Diego all I had to do was just walk up to people and say “Hey, yeah, it’s me, the card key, it’s me…” it was ridiculous.
CS: Obviously the promotions on NBC have been just as crazy.
LEVI: The promotions have been so incredible and I am so grateful for them. Because I know what it’s like not to have any promotion. Working on a show that’s just thrown in there and I know the networks and studios have just so much money that they can spend on promotions for their entire season and I feel very fortunate and very blessed to be on the receiving end of all of that. They are pumping us like crazy.
I just saw a cardboard standee that’s going in all the AMC theaters and it’s going to be Chuck on popcorn bags. Dude, it’s ridiculous. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what it going to be like to go in to an AMC theater and see my face on a popcorn bag.
CS: You’ve got to be honest with me – are you bringing that stuff home…possibly putting it up in the bedroom…telling the ladies, “Oh that? Yeah, that’s me.”
LEVI: Yeah, right!
You know what’s funny? I always, in the back of my mind, said maybe I should hold on to one of these things for posterity but I never ended up doing it. Family and friends always want one but I just kind of feel like, I don’t know, it would just get lost somewhere. What’s the point? Life is too short. I remember. I remember I was a cardboard standee. If somebody else wants to collect it….rock and roll, go for it but I don’t know.
CS: How’s the production going?
LEVI: The production has been great. I mean you know they are long, long days. It a really ambitious show. What we accomplished in a month, we are trying to accomplish in 8 days
CS: Really…
LEVI: Really tough. Really tough. But I think it’s doable but it’s just a matter of everybody following the rhythm. We have new people on the crew and now we got writers that are trying to write episodes that we can shoot that day. We started back with the first episodes that had 80 scenes – that’s a lot of set ups and then they started to trend down and made it about 50-60. We’re trying to get it to a place where we can do it in 8 days. But what we’re hoping is that we don’t have to trim it down too much and that we can, show Warner Bros. and NBC when we start airing that we are a contender and then hopefully they’ll have more faith and put more money in the production side of it and give us a full functioning second unit because that’s what we really need.
It’s not a matter of more days on the first unit schedule and it’s not a matter of making it smaller in scope because if you do that you are not giving the show justice that should be done. The show is an action comedy – you need to have the action. You need to have the car explosions and the gun fights and the cool stunts and that stuff and you need to have the time with the characters to have the relationships and the comedy becomes the spy stuff as well and it’s an ambitious show. HEROES is an ambitious show as well and they have a fully functioning second unit that is shooting the whole time the first unit is shooting. So they are able to pull it off. That’s they way it should be.
CS: Right. As the show is progressing, like you said, a month’s shoot for this one show – great premise great beginning, middle and end, now you have your second episode and you physically could not top it but what do you think in the back of your head that in the writer’s room that you hope keeps going as the episodes progress? Is there anything that you say that this is an aspect of the character that you want to retain and not put off to the side because there is only so much that can fit in there?
LEVI: No, no, like week after week I was just looking at the pilot and seeing what McG did and it was just, the effects, everything, like you said it took a month to do but you can’t do that in 8 days, so what’s the one core thing that the writers and obviously the directors as they move along that they want to retain that’s not lost in any of that?
Well, I think in a perfect world, you want to retain it all.
I think television is coming into a place where people are expecting more but studios are still expecting it to be shot in an 8 day typical hour long fashion, and it’s not…It’s not realistic.
To me it’s not and I understand that studios need to be frugal. They have a lot of shows and they don’t know what’s going to pop and what’s going to not and I also feel good about that they will allocate funds appropriately. Like, last year NBC had STUDIO 60 and HEROES and they put most of their money in STUDIO 60 and mid-way through the season they said STUDIO 60 is not performing and HEROES is so let’s invert these scales if you will. So what I’m hoping is that we start airing some episodes, they’ll see the promise in our show, and will want to give us more to stay on track with the initial vision of the show. In the meantime, sacrifice as little as possible. And by little I mean by still keeping some great stunts in every episode, great relationships, great methodology and maybe we are losing a few setups, maybe more of a technical thing than anything and this stuff of “fake it til you make it†kind of thing until you air it.
Because right now we are on episode three but we are still missing shots from episode one. So in order to get it done the way we want to get it done and get everything done that we want to get done, we just kind of put off scenes until later. We just finished episode one and we still need a couple scenes from episode two and started episode four today and we saw episode three but I’m fine…I’m fine going back…and as long as we can keep the integrity and vision of the show we started out to make and not be watered down lower budget, less time version of that. I’d rather work longer hours and make a great show than work less hours and produce a show that’s like it’s another television show. You know?
CS: How are you handling the new hours?
LEVI: Oh man. Well, I’ll tell you this: everyone is working 12 hour days. To give you an idea….like last Friday we were shooting night exteriors and finished shooting at 6:00 in the morning – we’re working over schedules, working the night shift. And then last night we’re out there at 6 in the morning and call time today is 6 pm and so we’ll probably wrap again around 6 in the morning. It’s a far cry where you might work 30 hours in a week and all of that was real hard work…(Laughs) You just got to show up and hang out and have fun all day long and make jokes with your friends and have custom omelets made and a live audience. It was so cush.
But it’s much more fulfilling to be in a drama, especially on the lead. I get to run around with guns. I don’t get to shoot the guns which I am a little bitter about but we can get to that later…. But there’s gun fights, and car chases and helicopters. It’s just everything I ever dreamed about when I was a kid. Just playing around and playing war and throwing dirt wads at your buddies like they are hand grenades. That just what you hope you get to do. And now I get to live that dream and the show gets to be funny. I’m young, I’m single, I don’t have any pets. This is the time to be doing it.
CS: Absolutely. I know the answer will be “Great!” but, really, talk to me about how you and Joshua Gomez have come together and made the chemistry work between the two of you because I will honestly say, and I wouldn’t b.s. you if I didn’t believe it, that these two guys have a good relationship with one another; best friends, in a way. You believe it….you know?
LEVI: Thank you. It’s really a big blessing. I mean Josh is so incredible because I feel I’ve known the guy forever.
We sat down and for all those times that my mom or anyone told me do not play video games, guess the work paid off. Because Josh and I get to play gamers on the show and we are both huge gamers in real life so immediately we have this kind of jumping off point. We just clicked immediately. Talking about all our favorite games from like Atari all the way to the present….which one Super Mario Brothers franchise was superior and why weren’t they OK. My favorite first person shooters games. Neither one of us is into sports games all that much. We like shoot ‘em ups and stuff like that. We just got BioShock and Josh just did some voice work on that, he’s done a lot of voice work on games. I got my Xbox in my dressing room – he’s got his Xbox in his dressing room. We just don’t have a lot of time to play anymore because we’re working so much but we’re still gamers to the core and the first day we pretty much sat down and we knew that we had good acting chemistry. I got cast and they had me come in and read with the guys auditioning for his role and he was just – all the guys were great – but he was just the funniest and we definitely had the best rapport. And then they had us sit down and have lunch one day just to try and get to know one another and I think he turned to me at one point and said, “So are you a gamer?†Because we played them in the show and I turned on him so quick, like “Am I a gamer? Yes, I am, thank you.” And he just said “So am I” and we just talked about our favorite video games.
And he is, honestly, just one of the sweetest, funniest, nicest guys you will ever meet in your life. He is the salt of the earth and we just have fun everyday. Everyday we get to work with each other we just have fun. It can be complete utter nonsense. Like little inside jokes with friends you’ve know for 10 years, we’ve known each other for 10 weeks. Which is good. And we both see what a huge blessing that this is. We just get to play video games for a living in our characters and get wrapped up in espionage – it’s just so much fun. And, so thank you. I’m glad that it works on the screen and I thank God that he was able to bring Josh and I together because I felt it in my personal life and went right to screen. It’s just good to know.
CS: Absolutely. What the two of you have together is obviously the comedy, is it different now – there is no audience, there is no closed set, you guys are free wheeling in front of the camera having to be funny, is there retake, are you used to doing it again and again making it just as funny on the 1st take the 2nd take the 3rd take?
LEVI: You know what’s interesting is it’s tougher to gauge what’s funny.
Laughter is a good gauge to tell if a joke landed or not and everyone has to be quiet in front of the monitors and cameras and what not, but I think Josh and I have a pretty good idea of what’s funny. We talk to one another and say, that was really funny or whatever. There’s a little more leniency and they definitely support us in our adlibbing and our characters probably get to do the most together so we’ll constantly change it up. We, of course, get what’s scripted but after that we just have a field day and we’ll throw something in there and say, “Have you tried this or that?”
I try to not tell them, I just like to surprise everybody by the monitors. I’d rather not tell them I’m going to do this. I’d rather say “Hey Josh, let’s do this†and of course after the take and you hear people laughing then you know you did something good.
CS: Then, I’ve got to know – the Vicki Vale BATMAN reference – it makes me laugh every time I see that part, was that scripted?
LEVI: Well, the actual Vicki Vale song part?
CS: Right.
LEVI: Well, that part was scripted but the phone drop was not.
The way it was scripted was that – stop the presses was that the Vicki Vale thing and I look up and I see her and I quickly put the phone down but I thought, I don’t know, I love physical comedy and I love slapstick not too slapsticky but some jokes and some physicality.
So the first take, I just thought, “Well, I’ll just let the phone drop and then play it off.” She liked it but then we went back and forth – should we put it in and we go back to the take where I didn’t drop it and back and forth and then they decided to put it in and now they used it in the Fall trailers. It was a fun moment.
There’s a lot of stuff in the pilot that we made up – that was not originally in it. When Yvonne says “You geeks are good” that was supposed to end of that scene but then I was like, “Josh, let’s do this thing where we both look at each other.”
You know we’re both nerds playing like we are not the Geek Squad but we’re trying to be but Best Buy wouldn’t do it – we tried to get that cleared but Best Buy wouldn’t do it which I find kind of ridiculous because it’s such a great show…but at the end of the day we had to create our own world and we don’t have some corporate guys breathing down our necks making sure we’re not doing anything outside of what they want. So it’s just little moments thoughout making it, layering it and making it more of our own. I’m free to discover my character and play and make those moments and I’m glad they end up working.
So in answer to your question, Vicki Vale was partly scripted and part improv. One of my favorite moments as well.
CS: And you are also now with Adam Baldwin who some would say he peaked with SERENITY but I would say MY BODYGUARD.
LEVI: It’s funny, it’s kind of a generational thing – I’ve never seen My Body Guard.
CS: Are you serious?
LEVI: I’m 26.
CS: That’d be about right.
LEVI: When did it come out?
CS: Let’s see, I’m 32 and I barely remember seeing it on HBO.
LEVI: I saw a lot of movies when I was a little tiny kid. My parents had HBO but for some reason I never saw MY BODYGUARD and I’ve been meaning to rent it since working with Adam but I haven’t yet. Adam Baldwin is one of the greatest guys I’ve ever worked with, he is so talented. He’s had one of those careers you can only hope for as an actor. He’s never gotten to the A list, break out huge, but he’s worked a lot. Been able to support his wife and three kids. His daughter is going off to college. It’s crazy. He’s 35….40 whatever. He is the most solid dude in the world. Papa Bear. Because every one else in the show is generation X, or whatever. And Baldwin, he’s the rock. He’s they guy who’s been around the block a couple of times and he’s so grounded, he’s even tempered, he loves being at work. All the things you look for in a co-worker. And he’s really supportive.
He’s been working before I was born and he supports me. He is constantly with you, using words like you’re the leader, lets do this action and it means so much to me. Adam Baldwin deferring to me that way, it is so akward. This guy has been working so long. I’ve been working a little bit but not nearly as long as him. But it means a lot. It really inspires a lot of confidence in me and I just hope I can get to work everyday and really appreciate it. This crew works so hard and long hours and into the night. I just hope they all know that it’s all for the best. I really believe that if we continue to work hard and continue to put these hard hours in now that once this show airs and we can find our audience and it will all be worth it. And we’ll get the extra money for the stuff that we need in the budget whether it be extra days, second unit, better equipment and we can give pay raises for the second season, third season, what have you. But I look at the show as a big family because I spend more time with them than with my friends and I want people to feel taken care of and when you put in hard work you should be taken care of.
CS: Well I don’t want to take up any more of your time…I know you have to run but I have just one last question to ask – do you feel there is weight on your shoulders? Obviously, all the promos have been about you, all the things have been just about you, you, you. Do you feel any of that pressure that you are the center of attention?
LEVI: I never once felt like it was a weight or a burden. I always felt like what an amazing opportunity. What a great gift. I’ve been around people that have that opportunity and squander it. You know, people that treat crew badly or less than what they deserve and I feel like when you are given that place you are given this great gift to be able to really just love and appreciate and support your cast and your crew and it’s incredible how far it goes when your crew and your cast feels like you the lead or the star or whatever that you care about them or that you take the time to just say “Good Morning” even, it’s sad how many people don’t do that and how detrimental it is to a show and
I have been able to kind of check that out from the sidelines and see how people have done well with it or not done well with it but always look forward to the opportunity to be given the opportunity to do well with it because I see the beauty and the benefit of it.
And the promos and stuff, to be able to go and tell how much I love my cast and crew, I look at that as such a great opportunity and I don’t know…with all the talk shows and stuff starts happening I guess that can get a little hairy at times…they are always looking for funny antidotes. I don’t think of myself as an antidotal type person. I have this really weird habit of forgetting all the funny stores that happened in my life. So I don’t know how that will all turn out…I hope well.
But I don’t look at it like a weight or a burden. I look at it as the greatest gift I’ve ever been given in this business. I will always appreciate it. Even if I’m having a bad day. Put it in perspective. I mean, I’m I get to be CHUCK in a show called CHUCK and shoot at Warner Bros. – historic Warner Bros. And our sound stage – a CASABLANCA stage. I’m saying that Humprey “F’ing†Bogart walked around on this stage…To be able to work with such incredible actors and an incredible cast, writers, and directors…You dream of being the title character, you dream to be in a show where you get to be funny and action and drama and romance. So being a weight, no. Do I certainly put it in perspective and see the possibility and great responsibility that is? Absolutely.
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