Zachary Levi

There are about 23 references to Die Hard in the first two seasons of “Chuck “ on NBC. Zachary Levi, who plays the loveable nerd turned spy Chuck Bartowski, can name about half of them. The references are thrown in by Chris Fedak, one of the two creators, who is an avid fan of “Die Hard”. These aren’t the only pop culture references easter egged away in the show. But knowing them is what makes Zachary Levi so perfect for this role. A self professed geek, Zachary doesn’t need to stretch much to play Chuck. “I’m really just being myself for the most part. It’s fun. I really love playing roles like Chuck. I relate to them more.” Even when it comes to video game references, he is quick to pick up on them as well as the many other pop culture tidbits. That’s easy to understand given his acting background. You may only know him as Chuck but Zachary has been in the acting game for some time.

Zachary Levi.

Zachary was born in Louisiana in 1980 and moved around the country for most of his childhood. When his family finally settled in California, the acting bug took a big bite out of Zachary. He did some stage work through college, then at 22 landed the role of Kipp Steadman on ABC’s “Less Than Perfect”. A lot of people want to put Zach as getting his big break with Chad but “Less Than Perfect” ran for four seasons, hardly a small role. Still, it was eventually canceled. It was at this time that Zachary found small roles in other shows and made his big screen debut in “Reel Guerillas”. Then in 2007, he landed the role of Chuck Bartowski and the rest, as they say, is history.

Zachary as Kipp Steadman on “Less Than Perfect”.

To get to know Zachary is in many ways to get to know Chuck. He’s always been the best friend to girls, not the popular crush. (He broke up with his girlfriend in January). He loves video games, although unlike Chuck, he actually is a good poker player. And when I say loves video games, I don’t mean like most guys who can always find time to sit down and play Halo. Zachary leans towards the obsessed side. He likes sports, good music, and has a wicked sense of humor. But one of the things that makes Zachary stand out among others in Hollywood is his faith. Zachary is vocal about being a Christian in Hollywood but he’s honest about it and himself. “The liberal segment of Hollywood, they look at Christians as hypocrites that are false and fake. The tough part is that in many cases I can’t argue with them. My job is just to love people.” It’s a rare thing to find an actor who doesn’t just claim faith because its popular at the time. But even more refreshing is that he’s talented and real. Many of the religious actors in Hollywood get pigeonholed into small roles. Zachary clearly isn’t one of those and on the real side he enjoys his life, not adopting a pious outlook. Faith and friends have shaped Zachary into the man he is today.

Zachary and Joshua Gomez (Morgan on Chuck) best friends in fiction and reality.

It’s a good thing Zachary Levi has plenty of faith. He’s needed a lot of it with Chuck. Though a critic and fan favorite, Chuck was cancelled after the 2nd season and only brought back after a massive outpouring of support and Subway’s decision to sponsor the show. Even this current (3rd) season is still waiting to hear the magic word…renewal. The numbers just aren’t quite high enough. Zachary has his thoughts on this. “Hollywood is fickle in general, but television, especially, I find to be extremely fickle, and understandably so. There’s a lot of money in it, and advertisers are very specific about what they want, and therefore networks and studios have to be very specific. But the problem is that we’ve come to this place in society where audiences don’t want to invest themselves in shows until they know that the network and the studio are 100 percent behind it. Because there are too many examples o fshows that are one or two episodes and out, after millions in advertising campaigns. So audiences become fickle, which in turn makes networks even more fickle to get thing on, and they don’t necessarily give them a chance to breathe.” He had faith in Chuck though, and it has been more than repaid. “To feel the love from the media and to see our numbers continually grow—albeit sometimes in small increments—but nonetheless, growing and not falling is a really incredible experience. And it’s a great role to paly. As an actor, you hope for a role where you get to do action, comedy, romance, drama and mystery all in one little hour long block. It’s a dream. When you get to make people laugh and blow stuff up, you know you’ve got something good.” Good is right.

Zachary as Chuck.

Many of those pop culture references that make the show so good come from shows featured at Comic Con. Which makes it easy to see why Zachary was thrilled to join other cast and crew members on a Comic Con panel. He knows the crowds are brutally honest at Comic Con and was overwhelmed when the show’s screening earned a standing ovation. (Check out some of the videos of the Chuck panel on Youtube—the cast is hilarious). Zachary jokes that Adam Baldwin gets all the love at Comic Con (although rightfully so, “Firefly” was awesome), but its clear Zachary loves working with Adam. This new season brings us more of Agent Casey’s backstory “and it’s a great episode for Baldwin. I love the guy so much. He’s just an incredible guy. So much fun and an incredible actor and a seasoned veteran.” Zachary tends to gush equally about his other cast members, showing the strong bonds between all those working on the show.

Zachary and the Chuck cast at Comic Con.

One of the things that Zachary is excited about is his behind the scenes projects, in particular his role as executive producer on the film “Spiral”. He made the movie in 2007 with his friend Joel Moore. They had very clear goals with the film and subsequent production company they started. “We wanted to write a script that could be a festival favorite kind of film. Something that’s a little darker, a little edgier, but we didn’t want to make the same old formulaic thing. We wanted to make something that was actually art and something that was entertaining.” They succeeded as the small film garnered criticical praise. It was only given a limited release but fans seemed to enjoy it. The success grounded their production company and enforced its goal “ to just continue to make stuff that we don’t look back on 10 years from now and go, ‘What did we do that for? That was such a piece of crap!’ I’m not making guarantees, we could make a bunch of crap. But the main goal is to be proud of what we made.”

Zachary Levi.

It’s this attitude that Zachary carries over into the rest of his life. That desire to be proud of his accomplishments, plus his fun and lively personality make it easy to see why this ‘nerd’ will always be a star.

What You Didn’t Know

-He won the NBC party’s “The Singing Bee” game.
-He often has to be pulled away from video games to shoot Chuck.
-He hopes to star on Broadway someday.
-He’s worked as both a busby, video clerk, and a car washer.
-He had to get 14 stitches after he put his hand through a light fixture while playing Wii Tennis.
-He says any girl he marries will have to love watching him play video games.
-A quote: “I think life should be a musical. I always hate it when people watch a musical and they go, ‘Oh, it’s so unrealistic, no one just breaks into song in the middle of their day.’ Yeah they do – if they’re me.”
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