BLOGS
Everyone knows Chuck is a spy series, but it's just as much a comedy series and a key element of that comedy is Chuck's best friend and sidekick, Morgan Grimes. With the new season kicking off this week, and Morgan recently integrated into the CIA's Team Bartoswki, we were happy to sit in on a conference call with actor Josh Gomez and executive producer Chris Fedak to debrief us on how the season will start and where it will end up.
Josh, the last time we saw you at the end of Season 3, you had blown up the Buy More, so...
Josh Gomez: It was an accident.
Are you still part of the spy team after that, and what can we look forward to in the new season for Morgan?
Gomez: Yeah, I mean, definitely part of Team Bartowski. I don't know how much the CIA loves me, but the Buy More actually is rebuilt and taken over by the CIA, and Morgan basically kind of becomes the sort of the through there. He's kind of in charge of keeping the CIA's Buy More cover, so he's there to kind of make it feel and look and run like a real Buy More. So yeah, the answer is yes, although, you know, I'm not jumping out of any planes yet or anything like that. There's room to grow.
Chris Fedak: One of the things we realized last year is that Josh Gomez is just wonderful in the spy world, so we do look forward to bringing him back on missions at some point.
In the synopsis for the episode, it says Morgan and Chuck go a rogue, globe-spanning mission to find Chuck's mom. Can you mention some of the places those guys hit?
Fedak: It is world-spanning. We do have a monster sequence set in Moscow, but yeah, they go all over the place, and we'll get glimpses of some of those adventures.
So obviously Chuck fans are very excited you have another season, but what are new viewers going to get out of the fourth season if this is the first time they see it?
Fedak: They're going to get a big, exciting action-comedy television show. I think,even though we have a mythology and we have a big story going on, we still design the show so that you can sit down and watch the show on Monday night and you're going to know where you are. You're going to know the stakes and the story, and we kind of remind you where we left off last season and then we're off to the races, we're off to the comedy world of the Buy More, and then the kind of big excitement that we bring in the spy land. And I think that's part of the fun of bringing in someone like Dolph Lundgren or Olivia Munn in our season opener, or Harry Dean Stanton, is that it's a fun way back into the world. And so I think new viewers, if they decide to just start watching on Monday night, I think they're going to get a really fun, big story that anybody can jump right into. However, I would also recommend, you know, going back and buying our DVDs, but it's not necessary.
Gomez: We'll recommend it.
Speaking of Dolph and Olivia, this season has some amazing guest stars, especially with the rotating role of CIA liaison "Greta," of which Munn is the first -- are you trying to make the most of the show's new lease on life?
Fedak: Absolutely. I think that when we got Season 4, it was essentially, not only do we get to tell a big, exciting, new story this season, but we get to use this show as a great way to kind of meet and bring people into the world of Chuck. And there's nothing cooler than meeting and bringing Linda Hamilton and Timothy Dalton into the show. And it's great, because they fit so perfectly into our world. We're super-jazzed to cast in a way that people are going to get excited about, and it makes our set a really exciting place to visit, too.
Gomez: Yeah, it is pretty cool. I mean, it's basically like Josh and Chris are Chuck and Morgan. The guest stars we have are Chuck and Morgan's hit list. It's kind of fun in that way. Not many people get to go to work and go, "I get to play with James Bond today," so it's pretty cool.
Fedak: Am I the Morgan in that relationship?
Gomez: I didn't want to...
Fedak: I think it's implied, I'm the Morgan in that relationship. That's fine. That's cool.
Gomez: Right, it's not that bad. Believe me, you get used to it.
How did you manage to get Dalton to come on the show, since he rarely does TV?
Fedak: We convinced him. We tried to be as charming as possible. Luckily, I was with Josh Worth at the time, who's just fantastic, and Timothy watched the show and he really dug it, so we sat down and started talking about what he wanted to do. And when we starting breaking down this season, we were looking at this specific part, and we were thinking how fantastic it would be if we could get someone like Timothy Dalton. We're about to start filming his first episode, and there is just nothing more exciting than Timothy Dalton just kind of digging in and savoring the character. It's a lot of fun, and it just speaks to like the fun of casting this season. It's been our casting director Patrick Rush who's just done a fantastic job of filling out the ranks of this show and just making each part colorful and exciting and dynamic. And "T-Dal," if you will, is going to be amazing. I think you guys are going to really love him.
You mentioned that a lot of the casting this season is of people that Morgan would like to see, so Josh, you're in Morgan's head. Is there anybody else out there that he would want to spend time with? Gomez: Morgan? Probably Optimus Prime or something, but that ain't going to happen. I don't know, man. Myself, I've always fantasized about having Vince Vaughn working at the Buy More. That would be just -- can we have Vince Vaughn come in and play a Greta? Is that possible?
Fedak: I love that.
Gomez: He'll do it, right? He's got some spare time.
Fedak: Absolutely. Greta is a very quick, you know, it's not a lot of days of work.
Gomez: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Greta's only there for half a day. He'll do it. But no, I don't know. Morgan, I mean, to be honest, having Sarah Connor is just like -- that's pretty ultimate for me, too, because I was such a huge Terminator fan and still am. So I'm really pumped about that. Still geeked out about that.
If Chuck is no longer officially with the CIA, can you talk a little bit about the plans for Sarah and Casey?
Fedak: Well, Sarah and Casey are still with the CIA, so they're traveling the world working on missions, still the best NSA/CIA spy team in the world. And I'll say that the person they're focusing on is a man by the name of Alexei Volkov, who's our big bad this season.
Are there any cool new action scenes you can preview to get people excited?
Fedak: I'll just talk about our first couple of episodes, but in our first episode, "Chuck Versus the Anniversary," we have some really great action stuff. We wanted to go into the the classic spy world of Russian bad guys, so we have Chuck and another fellow by the name of Morgan Grimes getting into some trouble inside a Russian bad guy base, and it's really fantastic. And it's not only just great action, but you have Zach and Josh just being so funny together. One of the things that we really love is their great repartée. I want to do an old reference to Hope and Crosby. They're just so much fun to watch together. But that's a great episode, and then in our second episode, for those requiring some Sarah Walker action, we have a fantastic fight that takes place in Milan during Fashion Week between Karolina Kurkova and Yvonne Strahovski. It's one of our best fights yet.
That sounds hot.
Fedak: I can't say.
Gomez: It's awesome. Let's get to Yvonne and the supermodels, please.
Fedak: Quickly and efficiently.
Is there any chance for a Jeffster performance this season?
Fedak: There's certainly a chance, but I don't want to give anything away.
Now, Chuck has an incredibly loyal base of fans, and of course they've been concerned for some time with the series getting renewed. If, by some twist of fate, the ratings don't hold up this season, are you guys prepared to end it at the end of the 13 episodes? Will there be closure for the fans if that happens?
Fedak: Right now, we're in the midst of working on the 11th, 12th and 13th episodes, and the way we've always broken the show in the past is that we try to tell the most dynamic story we possibly can. So, you know, 13 will be an epic episode no matter what, even if there is a back nine or more episodes ordered, but I don't want to give anything away and imply the end of the show, especially with us not having even aired. I've always been a fan of prologues, not epilogues, so I think that my favorite version of an ending is the one that implies the great adventure ahead. So I do think that 13 will be a very exciting and very satisfactory and -- hopefully, with the back nine -- will be a strangely-placed epic episode right in the middle of the season.
Chuck Season 4 premieres Monday night at 8/7C on NBC, but you can see a clip from the episode below!
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