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On Location With 'Chuck'
Monday nights on NBC looks to me like it is shaping up to be a great night. There is of course "Heroes" returning for its second season, at 9pm, which promises to be just as good, if not better than the first. Then at 10pm there is the very interesting time travel drama, "Journeyman." Leading off the night is "Chuck" which I guess I'd describe as a Sci-fi meets comedy meets action sort of show.
The pilot was funny, silly and fresh but by far the best part was it's star Zachary Levi. My first thought when I turned it on was "Hey, isn't that the guy who played the preppy, annoying guy on 'Less Than Perfect'?" Why yes it is. He played that role very well but this seems to be the role he was born to play, Chuck Bartowski, an everyman type of guy who's sort of a nerd yet kind of cute in his own way.
As "Chuck" he gets caught up in a whole lot of spy games after he views an email filled with government secrets that gets burned into his brain.
I traveled out to Malibu (rough day at the office!) on Monday where they were filming a portion of episode four. If you are ever having a bad day go hang out on the set of "Chuck." I was coming off some personal drama and everyone from the publicist to the producers, the makeup artists, the actors, the extras made me and my crew feel completely welcome.
This is not always the case when you go to a set. Most of the time we are just in the way and causing stress because we need to get the interviews and the director needs to get his shots.
We did wait around for five hours, I kid you not, to actually get our interviews because they truly were fighting the light as it was an all outdoor scene but in between they fed us, plowed us with coffee and made us laugh. Plus, the house was on a cliff overlooking the ocean so the view was incredible.
The house was this big white contemporary looking thing which kind of reminded me of the house in "Less Than Zero." Very '80s. I guess that was the point. In the scene Chuck and Sarah, the beautiful spy who is helping him (Aussie newcomer Yvonne Strahovski ), are somehow involved with a diamond heist. Poor Chuck is so out of touch with what's cool, he's sporting a Miami Vice suit which he called "the jackass brother of Crockett" look. It's a pool party and there is this really super crazy hairy guy who obviously is supposed to be the rich, evil doer. He was surrounded by bikini clad women in a pool. If that doesn't say, "look at me I have money, so women love me", I don't know what does.
There were lots of bad guys getting beat up by Sarah and another spy girl. Let's let Zach explain what the heck was going on, "There's lots of craziness ensuing today. We are in episode four, 'Chuck vs. the Wookie.' It used to be titled 'Chuck vs. the Speedo' because the main bad guy in this show is a this like dude who wears a Speedo all the time. Then when the casting guy realized he had a good amount, and by good I mean healthy, healthy amount of body hair and so they thought why not call it 'Chuck vs. the Wookie.' So it's this guy whose got his diamond and we're trying to heist the diamond and all hell breaks loose."
I got a look at this diamond which looked to be about 30 karats. Unfortunately, it was a fake prop but this did still lead to a marriage proposal that you won't see on "Chuck". You'll have to watch the video here on AccessHollywood.com to see what happened.
Even though it conflicts with my "Dancing with the Stars" obsession, I really hope this show finds an audience. Zach is so much fun, probably one of my favorite interviews in the last six months or so. Best of all he knows where his bread his buttered! He is thrilled at all the internet buzz surrounding the show, " People have been really responding to it. Comic-Con was a really big deal for that I think because our big core demographic with the comic book, video game, movie generation.. flocks to Comic-Con and there were like 2,000 people there and they got to see the pilot, standing ovation. It was like the most incredible, one of the most incredible, I almost cried. So, it was incredible. I think that from that it kind of virally just went on to the Internet and people were like just going on about it. I'm really excited about that. I just hope that we can keep making a show that people really like to watch."
Check out "Chuck" (or Tivo it!) when it premieres September 24th on NBC.
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