‘Chuck’ Makes A Dork A Hero

Zachary Levi, star of the upcoming NBC series Chuck, told SCI FI Wire that the show celebrates nerd culture and will appeal to those who may be “cool-challenged,” a label he willingly applies to himself.

“Dork is definitely the new cool,” Levi said in an interview at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., on July 17. “When I was in high school, I was, like, tucked away in a theater somewhere doing theater all the time. I wasn’t like a jock. So I am Chuck in many, many ways.

In Chuck, Levi plays an ordinary tech-support clerk at a big-box retail store who becomes involved in the world of international espionage when a former college buddy e-mails him a computer program that downloads the entire national intelligence database directly into his brain. When the destination of the e-mail is discovered, the NSA and CIA each send an operative to protect the secrets Chuck possesses at all costs. Meanwhile, he must maintain the illusion of a normal life with his sister (Sarah Lancaster) and best friend (Joshua Gomez).

“I feel that the typical audience or the general audience that watches television can relate more to a Chuck than they can to a superhero, somebody that’s really cool and really debonair and has all those powers,” Levi said. “Chuck is just a schmuck. Chuck’s a schmuck that can’t get a date. I mean, that’s really what it is. He’s a great guy who really means well, and he cares about people, and he wants to fix people’s computers to the best of his ability. But at the end of the day, he’ll pee his pants if a gun gets pulled on him.”

The character finds himself caught between two worlds, Levi added. “One is my home, regular life, and one is the espionage, spy life,” he said. “And it’s Josh and Sarah on the family life [side]. … And then that balances perfectly with the contrast of Adam Baldwin and Yvonne Strzechowski, who are two amazingly talented and good-looking NSA and CIA operatives that are constantly pulling me away from the comfort of my home life into this crazy world that I know nothing about, and I’m a fish out of water. So you get a lot of comedy in both.”

There are also hints in the pilot of a budding romance between Chuck and his CIA minder, Sarah, who finds his dorky, unassuming nature charming. “What’s interesting about Chuck and Sarah is that we’re really almost kind of the same person,” Levi said. “We’re very different in the sense that obviously she’s a spy and can kick anyone’s butt and can wield guns and drive cars and all [that] stuff, like, super cool. And I’m the polar opposite of that. But when it comes to normal life and fitting in a normal life, she’s a CIA operative. She doesn’t know what that’s about. She’s been on missions since she was 21. So I teach her a lot, and in the process there’s this really interesting dynamic. And I think that’ll play out, and that’s how our love connection may start.” Chuck premieres Sept. 24 and will air Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. (NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.) —Cindy White

(source)