TWENTY-EIGHT years after a teenaged Adam Baldwin made his film debut as the troubled title character in “My Bodyguard,” he’s back to guarding some geek.<\/p>\n
The geek in question: Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) of NBC’s “Chuck,” a spy drama spoof in which Baldwin plays National Security Agent John Casey, whose orders seem to be to do whatever it is to keep Chuck alive – until the government finds a replacement for the database that accidentally got downloaded into his brain.<\/p>\n
At which point, it’ll be Casey’s job to kill him.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for Casey, “Chuck’s infectious,” said Baldwin in an interview this summer on the show’s Burbank, Calif., set, inside the Best Buy-like Buy More store where Chuck and Casey work together.<\/p>\n
Like Levi himself, whom Baldwin describes as “a modern-day Dick Van Dyke,” Chuck’s “a lovable character. It would be a shame to have to do him in,” he said. “But if they give him the order, [Casey’s] a patriotic young man. He’ll follow the order.”<\/p>\n
Given that the show’s called “Chuck,” that seems less than likely, but Baldwin, whose credits include Fox’s doomed “Firefly” (and its big-screen followup, “Serenity”), seems to take nothing for granted.<\/p>\n
“I like television for the civility, the consistency . . . although they could cut it off at any time, it all depends on what the audience wants,” he said.<\/p>\n
Civility probably isn’t a word that’s often applied to Baldwin’s characters, many of whom have fallen into the category of seriously scary, roles he thinks may have come to him “because I was channeling my inner demons – and I’m tall.”<\/p>\n
In real life, or what passes for it in an interview setting, he’s dry, and maybe a bit funnier than he claims to be, recalling a memorable stint on “Angel” as “a violent role and a beautiful suit” that he didn’t get to keep, and feigning horror at “the feminization of John Casey” when it’s suggested that writers may be softening the characters.<\/p>\n
Any inner demons were nowhere in evidence as Baldwin talked enthusiastically about “a beautiful wife and three kids [who] . . . really keep me grounded,” but, yes, he’s tall.<\/p>\n
When he was chosen from among 4,000 young aspiring actors for the role of Ricky Linderman in “My Bodyguard,” a part for which he still receives mail from fans who say the film changed their lives, “I think I was about 6-3,” Baldwin said.<\/p>\n
“I think I’ve put on an inch since then.”<\/p>\n
On most shows, that would just about guarantee a decided physical advantage over whatever bad-guy-of-the-week popped in, but not on “Chuck.”<\/p>\n
“We’ve had some really gigantic villains on this show, thugs [and] whatnot,” he said.<\/p>\n
Ex-Giants defensive end Michael Strahan surfaced earlier this season as a bully from a sporting goods store who was menacing the employees at Buy More.<\/p>\n
“We had [ex-NFLer] Matt Willig, who’s bigger than Strahan,” Baldwin said, playing a bodyguard in another episode. “Hell, I had to take him out with a microwave oven to the head. Guns won’t penetrate.”<\/p>\n
“It’s funny, I said, ‘Well, the little ones, I can just shoot ’em. And the bigger ones, you’ve got to put me in a fistfight with them.’ Choreography’s the key.”<\/p>\n
Choreography also comes in to play when Casey’s occasional disagreements with Chuck’s other protector, CIA agent Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski), turn physical.<\/p>\n
When he fights with Strahovski, Baldwin said, “they frame her nicely and me not so much, so she wins.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ellen Grey with Philly.com (home of the World Series champs!) recently spoke with Adam Baldwin about working on Chuck, the secret to his casting (hint: he’s tall), and why Sarah always beats Casey: TWENTY-EIGHT years after a teenaged Adam Baldwin made his film debut as the troubled title character in “My Bodyguard,” he’s back to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chucktv.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chucktv.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chucktv.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chucktv.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chucktv.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chucktv.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":782,"href":"https:\/\/chucktv.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781\/revisions\/782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chucktv.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chucktv.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chucktv.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}