Vik Sahay & Scott Krinsky Talk Halloween, Jeffster, Waiting For Godot

Resident Chuck creepers cover band JEFFSTER are back from their summer on the lam, ready to show those uber-efficient CIA drones how to slack off, Buy More style. Actors Scott Krinsky and Vik Sahay joined reporters for a conference call today to talk about what’s next for Jeff, Lester, the band, the Buy More, and how Jeff & Lester are like the main characters in Waiting for Godot.

Vik got the ball rolling by mock-yelling at the NBC publicist for mispronouncing his last name: “It’s Sa-HI, d@mn you!” So, the gloves are off.

In “Chuck vs. the Aisle of Terror”, Jeff and Lester are given the mission of decorating the Buy More for Halloween. Scott tries not to give much away, but Vik reveals that this does intersect with the spy world, so they aren’t completely separate enterprises.

Asked if Jeff and/or Lester will be “in the know” about the spy world this season, Vik accused the questioner (who may or may not have been named Mel) of trying to trick plot information out of him, then threw it to Scott. Scott’s answer? “We don’t know.”

Expanding on the idea, however, Scott confesses that he likes the fact that Jeff doesn’t know about the spy world yet sometimes unknowingly assists Team Bartowski. Vik posits that if Lester did find out about the espionage going on around him, he’d be more easily swayed to “the other side” than just automatically siding with the good guys. In fact, when asked what he’d like to see happen with his character now that they have an additional 11 episodes, that was his first thought. Be afraid, people, be very afraid.

They would both like to see more about the development of JEFFSTER! as a band, maybe some backstage scenes for one of their “gigs”. Scott is particularly eager for more JEFFSTER! down the road. He’s mum on when we might hear from the band again, but thinks the fans should vote on a song for them to cover. (He’s hoping for Journey or Aerosmith.) Vik jokes that he’d like to tackle Susan Boyle’s version of “I Dreamed a Dream”. But seriously, folks, he’d like them to cover a rock opera, such as Tommy but is concerned that it would require singing lessons for him and he feels that would be a betrayal to the character.

“Lester isn’t taking singing lessons. He’s not singing to sound beautiful, he’s singing to exorcise his rage and passion.”

It’s obvious as the call progresses that Vik has given serious, deep thought not just to Lester but to the duo of Jeff and Lester.

“It’s been an interesting exploration of these two characters, for me, personally. We’ve kind of emerged through this band and as this twosome as The Odd Couple. We seem, in my mind, we’re kind of  following a long line of mismatched duos in entertainment. From Neil Simon’s Odd Couple to Cheech & Chong to Gene Wilder & Richard Pryor, Scott likes to say Lenny & Squiggy, and Mork & Mindy, Batman & Robin, Beauty & the Beast. For me, forgive my perhaps romanticized theatrical background heart, I see us really as Vladimir & Estragon from Waiting for Godot. I feel that we’ve become a bigger part of the show, but we kind of exist in our own void, our world, our own show if you will. It feels like we’re occupying time, we’re waiting for something to save us, for some kind of divine intervention, and to pass the time, out of that existential void, we attach to the minutia of our lives with life-and-death passion and panache. To build a bridge to the Halloween episode, we’re asked to take care of a certain aspect of Halloween for the store, and we put everything we have into it. The actor in me always asks, ‘Why do we care? Why are we doing this? What’s our motivation? Are we afraid of being fired? Not really. Do we care about the store? Not really. Are we trying to impress somebody? Maybe. Lester certainly has that in him. But real answer seems to be just because it takes up our day. In the same way that Vladimir & Estragon play word games and hat games while waiting for Godot, so too does it feel like we’re occupying our time. It’s been kind of an amazing journey in terms of creating a separate world for Lester & Jeff.”

Scott has given some thought to a spin-off of Jeff and Lester, giving us insight into their characters outside of the Buy More. Perhaps they live together, he says, in the vein of The Odd Couple, but in the van as they drive around the country to their gigs. For now they’re excited to see what the new writers come up with for their characters, and the show as a whole.

Vik gets deep again when asked about his character’s backstory and if he’d like to see a glimpse of it on the show, like we got with Jeff in “Chuck vs. Tom Sawyer.” Vik reveals that has a huge notebook filled with Lester’s history and his family life, although he keeps it mostly to himself.

“I think he comes from a very well-to-do family, but a family that were jet-setters and traveled the world, and the influence on him was one of neglect, and trying to win love and trying to prove himself. I really see him as a guy whose insides are broken, and he’s trying to prove himself to his mother, and hence he goes about things in a heavy-handed way. He tries too hard, he pushes too hard. If only he would kind of gentle-down, you would see that he has a very breakable heart. That’s where I lead from, that his snarkiness, his jack-assedness, his anger is a shell that’s covering a place in him that’s very wounded. I actually find it kind of exhausting to play him, because he’s got this engine of rage that I have to turn on and build up and keep going for however long we’re shooting, and sometimes it’s days in a row, and an anger that I don’t actually have. I think he’s got a few incidents in his past where there’s a void, there’s a missed something in his upbringing. He’s trying to scream at the world to say, ‘Look at me, look at me!’ He’s raging against a world that he thinks is hating him.”

Although they are regulars on the show, they generally work 2 out of the 7.5 days of shooting per episode. They are on call for the other days, in case they didn’t get to a certain scene during the day or if something needs to be reshot. So what do they do during their free time? Vik works on independent films and he reads novels constantly. He just finished Freedom by Jonathan Franzen and is currently reading Nemesis by Philip Roth.

Vik also boxes. For real. He finds that there’s a “kindred spirit-ness between boxing, tennis and acting, in the sense that there’s a very solo preparation that goes into all these things. So when I’m boxing, I feel very connected to my [inner] Actor, so I like to do it when I’m not shooting.”

Scott does stand-up comedy, surfs, practices yoga, reads, and goes to a lot of movies. He recommends the latest from Woody Allen and Let Me In, the remake of the Swedish vampire thriller. It sounds like they have a fair amount of free time, but they’re tied to the production even when they aren’t on set.

Bits & Bytes

• Scott Krinsky grew up on Star Wars, Starman.
• Vik tends to like something for the acting, no matter the genre.
• When asked when he would be on Twitter, Vik responded: “LEAVE ME ALONE.” So we’ll take that as a “not soon.”
• Scott’s greatest fear is darkness. Vik’s are illness and sharks.
• Scott would love to have Bill Murray or Lily Tomlin guest star on the show.
• Vik has always pictured Lester’s mother as someone like Bette Midler and his father as someone like Jeff Goldblum.
• Scott on Summer Glau’s turn as Greta in episode 4.08: “She was awesome. We got to see her kick some butt.”
• Scott likes the ability to communicate quickly and instantly with fans on Twitter.
• Halloween costumes: Scott usually throws something together at the last minute; Vik plans to go as The Actor Scott Krinsky.

“Chuck vs. the Aisle of Terror” airs Monday, October 25 at 8/7c on NBC.