Archive for August, 2015

Heroes Reborn: The Saga Continues

They never had a chance to say goodbye. The 13-episode supersaga Heroes Reborn, premiering September 24 on NBC, will begin five years after the conclusion of Heroes, the fantastical “Save the cheerleader, save the world!” series that started off as a critically adored phenomenon only to fizzle and end abruptly in its fourth season. For the show’s diehard fans, the cancellation and the lack of closure was maddening because, in a way, the story was only getting started: When Heroes left the air on February 8, 2010, young Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere) had jumped from the top of a 60-foot Ferris wheel in New York’s Central Park and revealed her amazing regenerative powers to the media. Suddenly, the entire world knew of the existence of people with superhuman abilities.

Now that world is striking back. In Heroes Reborn, starring Zachary Levi and several vets of the original series, those with special powers are known as Evolved Humans (aka EVOs), and their vast numbers are growing across the planet. They are also being stalked, captured and sometimes slaughtered by an increasingly fearful public. Panic over these supreme beings hit critical mass in 2014, when an international summit at the Primatech company in Odessa, Texas, brought thousands of humans and EVOs together in an effort to foster peace. Instead, the event ended in death and destruction on the scale of 9/11. Claire Bennet was among the casualties. Taking credit for this unfathomable act was none other than Dr. Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy), the kindly, Peter Parker–esque wall walker from the original series.

“Heroes took place in a world that was dangerous and complicated, but it carried a message of hope and world consciousness,” creator and executive producer Tim Kring notes. “Heroes Reborn is something else altogether. Our heroes have been forced into hiding just when they are needed most. There is an end-of-the-world event coming. We’re talking total extinction.” While Heroes spun on “mystical discovery,” Kring says the new series “plays more like those great Watergate-era paranoid thrillers like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View—with a little Quentin Tarantino shock and violence thrown in.”

Scary times to be sure, but Masi Oka is happy to revel in them. The Heroes fan favorite, now a regular on Hawaii Five-0, will bring his time-bending character, Hiro Nakamura, to Reborn for a handful of episodes. Truth be told, he’s showing up for the cast reunion as much as the acting opportunity.

“When Heroes died, there was never a chance for us to grieve as a group,” Oka says. “Tim Kring assured the actors we didn’t have anything to worry about, so we wrapped Season 4 not realizing we’d never be together again with our crew, the producers, the writers, the directors, everyone who made Heroes such an amazing show. We never got to say goodbye to the fans, and that hurt a lot. It was over in a heartbeat.”

Greg Grunberg, who returns in the rebirth as telepath Matt Parkman, won’t forget that fateful day. “I was at a charity breakfast when we were supposed to get word of our pickup from NBC, and I was so excited when Tim called to say we’d do another season,” Grunberg recalls. “Ten minutes later, he called again and said, ‘Nope, it’s only 13 episodes.’ And he kept calling, and each time the deal got shorter and shorter. Then, one of my geek friends called and said, ‘Dude, so sorry you got canceled.’ He’d read about it on a fan blog. That’s how I found out!”

Yes, showbiz is brutal, but it also packs the most insane surprises. One night, out of nowhere, NBC ran a 15-second promo for Heroes Reborn during the 2014 Winter Olympics. “The cast just went nuts texting each other because this was the first any of us had heard about it,” Grunberg says. “To have this second chance is incredible…well, except for the fact I’ve put on 25 pounds since the original and I’m on the treadmill every day trying to look like the old Matt!”

But the old Matt no longer exists. When we last saw the guy, he was an LAPD detective and the show’s moral compass. Now that EVOs are endangered, he’s a hired gun taking any gig that will keep his family safe—even if that means working for the EVO haters. “Matt is a man with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other—and the devil has been winning for the last few years,” Grunberg says. “Some of his choices will shock you.”

Other Heroes stars coming to the revival are Jack Coleman (Noah “HRG” Bennet), Jimmy Jean-Louis (René, aka the Haitian), Cristine Rose (Angela Petrelli) and an all-grown-up Noah Gray-Cabey (Micah). Ramamurthy, who will once again be the show’s hypnotic narrator, was stunned to find out his character is now Public Enemy No. 1.

“This was not the wrap-up for Suresh I was hoping for,” Ramamurthy says with a laugh. “At first, I was like, ‘Wait. Whoa. Whaaat? Suresh is a terrorist?’ But now that I know his entire story arc, what’s happened to him makes sense and I think it’s pretty cool.” Ramamurthy notes that “unless you’re playing an Avenger, a Star Trek character or one of the X-Men, it’s really rare for an actor to revisit a role. We’re all so grateful for this. But let’s face it: Heroes Reborn is not about us old guys. It’s about the new ones.”

And they are one wild bunch. Among the incoming EVOs are Afghanistan war vet Carlos Guttierez (Ryan Guzman), who fights crime in a Mexican wrestler costume under the name “El Vengador,” and Miko Otomo (Kiki Sukezane), a young Tokyo woman whose sword-swinging alter ego “will take us into a surprising and visually stunning world that’ll have the audience buzzing,” Kring says. There’s also a big teen contingent, headed by on-the-run high schooler Tommy Clark (Robbie Kay), who can make people disappear, and Malina (Danika Yarosh), a haunting beauty directly connected to the end of days.

It’ll be up to Noah Bennet, the former Primatech bagger and tagger, to tie all these characters together, just as he did on Heroes. But first he has to come out of hiding. Now known as Ted Barnes, “Noah has gone off the grid since the Odessa incident and is selling cars and living a life of domestic tranquility,” Coleman says. “He wanted out of the EVO game, but, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, they keep pulling him back in.” After learning that his memory of the Odessa tragedy has been mysteriously altered, Noah finds himself in a battle spanning time and space with new über-villainess Erica Kravid (Rya Kihlstedt), and he will seek help from Hiro.

“These five years have really changed Hiro,” Oka says. “He’s now running his father’s company [Yamagato Industries] in Japan and keeping his powers under wraps. He’s no longer the innocent. He’s done going back in time to fix things. But he can’t say no to HRG.” Before long, Hiro is in “the most startling sword fight of his life, with not one but two katana swords—Darth Maul–style,” Oka says. “If we go another season, you may see him with three.”

But if Heroes Reborn does end up returning for another round, will Levi make the cut? It’s hard to imagine that happening. In a darkly disturbing career turn, Levi—best known as the adorably dorky secret agent in Chuck—will take on the role of Luke Collins, whose EVO son was killed in Odessa. Luke and his wife, Joanne [Judi Shekoni], are now bent on revenge against all EVOs, and in the first episode, they will infiltrate a church and slay several members of an EVO support group—a scene uncomfortably reminiscent of last June’s mass murder in Charleston, South Carolina. The act seems utterly unforgivable. But is it?

“My hope is to make the audience understand and sympathize with Luke,” Levi says. “If we can somehow find the humanity in someone we consider a monster, and maybe even relate to him, well, that says a lot about us as humans, doesn’t it? Luke is so tortured and hopeless that he believes this world can’t be safe and good as long as there are people with powers in it. He kills not just to honor his son’s memory but to save his marriage and his wife’s sanity.”

Joanne is another story. “Luke is so conflicted [about eliminating EVOs] that it gets to the point where he wants to die,” Levi says. “But all this murder only serves to bolster his wife and to further her bloodlust.” Joanne is in so much pain that “killing becomes her addiction and the only way she can feel better,” adds Shekoni. “She’s actually enjoying this, and it might split them up as a couple. You won’t know from episode to episode if they’re going to make it.”

Especially when a major secret about Luke is revealed. “My character is basically Paul from the Bible, the guy who persecuted Christians and then became one,” Levi says. “Luke will go through a huge identity crisis when he becomes the very thing that he hates.”

The actor knows he may disappoint some of his fanbase, specifically those who prefer him kooky and cuddly. “I’m definitely feeling the fear factor, but you know what? Being Chuck required very little acting on my part,” Levi admits. “This show challenges me. This show makes me believe in myself as an artist. As a longtime Heroes fan, I want to take the viewers—new and old—on a f—ing awesome ride. You can’t please everybody, but that doesn’t mean you don’t try.”

Heroes Reborn premieres Thursday, Sept. 24, 8/7c, NBC.

Fear the Walking Dead Rises at the Dawn of the Zombie Apocalypse

Welcome to the beginning of the end of the world.

Tucked away within eastern Los Angeles, where the 5 and the 10 freeways merge, is the community of El Sereno. Often overshadowed by the nearby downtown skyscrapers and the glittery star power of Hollywood, it’s the oldest neighborhood in the metropolitan area, full of middle-class families and diverse culture. It also happens to be ground zero for the beginning of the zombie apocalypse in Fear the Walking Dead, AMC’s highly anticipated new “companion series” (as the network calls it) to The Walking Dead.

But on this particular sunny July afternoon, the screams of terror that one might expect to hear coming from a show like this one are instead replaced by squeals of joy coming from inside a rainbow-colored bounce house inflated on the front lawn of an old single-family home. The streamers, balloons and table piled with presents signal the start of a young child’s birthday party, but attendance is alarmingly slim. “We’re getting a bunch of cancels because of that bug going around,” the hostess explains to neighbors Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) and Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis), who notice another perspiring pale-faced neighbor struggling to pack up his car between coughing fits. “Slowly, civilization starts to fall apart before our very eyes in our very own neighborhood,” Dickens explains between takes. “And when bad things happen, they happen pretty quickly.”

Fear the Walking Dead goes back in time to explore the early days of the zombie outbreak through the lens of a new urban setting and a fresh cast of characters. “Since the beginning of The Walking Dead, the question that I’ve been asked the most is ‘What’s happening in the rest of the world?’” says AMC president and general manager Charlie Collier. “Now, we’re about to see a totally different story, and yet, at its core, this is a character drama just like the first one. These are real people who are going to be pressed in real ways, and then the world starts to turn.”

Robert Kirkman, cocreator of the Walking Dead comic book and TV series, teamed with executive producer Dave Erickson (Sons of Anarchy) for the six-episode first season, which will begin to fill in the blanks during the five-week period that original series protagonist Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) was in his coma. The duo set out to tell the story of a blended family led by Madison, a widowed high school guidance counselor struggling to raise her drug-addicted son, Nick (Frank Dillane), and ambitious teen daughter, Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey). Madison finds strength and companionship in fiancé Travis, an English teacher who has his own strained relationships with ex-wife Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie). “We start off with a slow burn in our first few episodes because we had the opportunity to explore the dysfunction that comes with family,” Erickson says. “We also wanted to have characters who were completely ill-equipped for the apocalypse.”

Even as domestic drama heightens, the producers thought it paramount to ensure that the central bond between Madison and Travis was strong. “They are the love of each other’s life,” Curtis says. “Madison is in some ways more of a pragmatist, while Travis is more of an idealist, and who they become through the sequence of events throws up some very big challenges in their relationship.”

In addition to introducing new characters, the producers wanted to move the action away from the Georgia backwoods of the original series and explore the disintegration of a major American city. They settled on Los Angeles because it syncs up with the show’s theme of shifting identity and reinvention. “Los Angeles specifically is a place where you go to reinvent and cast aside your old self to become someone new,” Erickson says. Just don’t look for any shots of the Hollywood sign or Walk of Fame. “You won’t be seeing any L.A. landmarks during the course of the show,” he says. “But the ocean is important. There’s something interesting about having your back literally at the edge of the continent during the apocalypse.”

The diversity of the city also allows viewers to follow families with different perspectives, like the Salazars, whose barber patriarch, Daniel (Ruben Blades), immigrated to the United States from El Salvador to provide a fresh start for his family, including daughter Ofelia (Mercedes Mason), who has very much embraced American culture. “This young woman sees herself as her parents’ protector and guide through the world,” Erickson says of the clan, who will be introduced in the second episode, airing August 30. “The relationship between father and daughter is going to become quite important [in terms of] coming to understand the human side of your parents.”

While the writers of the show have plenty of human stories to mine, the undead will still take center stage. Producers tapped The Walking Dead special effects makeup supervisor Greg Nicotero once again to perfect the visual aesthetic of the freshly turned zombies, which the Fear characters refer to as the “infected” rather than “walkers,” as they are called on the original series. The cast also had to get used to acting opposite their bloodied and rotted costars. “It was really horrible,” says Dillane, who shot his first scene with a young woman (Lexi Johnson) made up as a flesh-eating zombie. “I remember her turning to me and being in horrible, horrible shock. It’s not like anything anyone’s ever seen before, so I found it really difficult to work alongside.”

Although Fear’s timeline sets it at the beginning of the apocalypse, Erickson says the exact cause of the outbreak or the pursuit of a cure will not be addressed. Also, the families will have to catch up to what the audience already knows, such as learning how to handle the infected, including avoiding bites and scratches and discovering whether or not the humanity of the zombies can be preserved even as their bodies deteriorate. “We have our characters confronting friends, colleagues, family members—people whom the day before they’d be getting coffee with and now, for whatever reason, this person is trying to tear their throats out,” Erickson says. “I think the first instinct for most people wouldn’t be to kill but either run or find some way to help these folks, assuming they’re sick. There is an emotional toll and psychological trauma that goes with that.”

Back on the show’s El Sereno set, the sun is setting as Debnam-Carey prepares to shoot her inaugural encounter with one of the “infected,” and her excitement is palpable. “This is a fun day for me because it’s my first zombie experience!” she says with a laugh. “A lot of scenes are so hard to navigate because you don’t know how your character is supposed to react. There are no rules.”

Well, maybe one: Don’t expect a crossover with Rick, Daryl, Michonne or other characters from The Walking Dead mothership any time soon. “You’d love to find a way to conflate those two narratives at some point, but obviously there will be issues of geography and timeline, so there are no plans to do so right now,” confirms Erickson, who points out that Fear’s first season will take place over the course of just three weeks. Still, the actors can’t help themselves from planning their own dream cameo situations. “I think Madison and Rick would get along, since he is my favorite,” Dickens says. Adds Debnam-Carey: “I’ve thought about how Alicia and Maggie [Lauren Cohan] would be a great team.”

The cast has also thought about the immense pressure and expectations to follow TV’s second most watched scripted drama (after NCIS.) “It’s pretty daunting because you really want to please this loyal and amazing fan base,” Dickens says.

This will be AMC’s second gamble at franchise expansion this year, after the successful launch of Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul. “It is a fool’s errand to predict numbers,” says Collier, who has already renewed Fear for a 15-episode second season. “I hope people come into Fear expecting it to be its own thing as opposed to comparing it to The Walking Dead.”

And new viewers won’t need prior knowledge of the original series. “If you’re one of the seven people in the world who have never seen The Walking Dead, you can come into this show fresh,” Erickson promises. “It’s just another badass story that lives in this larger world that Robert created.” Clearly, as all hell prepares to break loose in the City of Angels, the only thing left to fear is Fear itself.

Fear the Walking Dead premieres Sunday, Aug. 23, 9/8c, AMC

America’s Favorite Felt Heroes Return to TV in ABC’s The Muppets

It may not be easy being green, but it’s about to get a lot more fun for the world’s most famous amphibian when the Muppets make their overdue return to TV this fall.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” marvels Kermit the Frog, ringleader of the beloved menagerie at the center of ABC’s The Muppets. Indeed it is. The latest entry in the crew’s anthropomorphic oeuvre—a gag-packed, behind-the-scenes look at a late-night talk show, hosted by Miss Piggy, natch—is a joyful mash-up of The Office and The Larry Sanders Show, as performed by felt animals. Including, literally, Animal.

“We are doing something that hasn’t been done before—two shows at the same time,” Kermit says. “One of them, the most important one, is a late-night show called Up Late With Miss Piggy.” The other is a backstage documentary being filmed about the making of Piggy’s chatfest, but if you ask the Up Late hostess, it’s really all about her. Like most things.

“You know, the fans always want more these days, and so we decided, actually I decided, to let a team of documentarians follow me wherever I went,” the ageless blonde diva says. “I’m completely comfortable with giving my fans an all-access pass.”

She’s in good hands (no pun intended). The Muppets comes after multiple attempts to reboot the franchise. “It happens every 20 years: 1976 was The Muppet Show, 1996 was Muppets Tonight, and now this one,” points out Debbie McClellan, vice president of The Muppets Studio. “We had a lot of people trying to bring the gang back in some form.” The popularity of the recent films The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted certainly helped audiences get reacquainted with Kermit and Co. Among their biggest supporters was executive producer Bill Prady (The Big Bang Theory). “I started talking about this particular project 10 years ago, and eight years ago we even shot some test footage,” he says of his previous stalled pitches. “Back then, the feeling was that the timing just wasn’t right. Now, apparently, it is!” It’s also right that the obviously patient Prady be the one to bring the Muppets back to primetime: After all, he got his start writing for Muppet creator Jim Henson in 1982 after leaving his job (and eventual BBT inspiration) as a computer programmer.

“Jim was producing a show about technology at the time—though it wound up never getting made—and I was hired to be a production assistant and researcher because I had that computer background,” he says. “The Muppet offices in those days were in this amazing townhouse on a residential street on the Upper East Side of New York City. Imagine what the Muppet-iest old New York mansion would look like if you got it exactly right. It was like going to Kermit the Frog’s house every day!”

After working with writers like Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and several Sesame Street scribes on that project, Prady moved to the company’s licensing and merchandising department, cranking out copy for everything from Muppet-themed computer software to the packaging for Kermit the Frog plush toys. “I looked around and said, ‘I will take any job here. Any job.’”

That willingness earned Prady the attention of Henson, and he quickly moved on to penning Muppet comic books, jokes for the Dial-a-Muppet phone line (yep, that was a real thing) and episodes of 1987’s Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series before landing a full-time position on 1989’s The Jim Henson Hour. That anthology featuring the icon’s top-tier Muppets as well as newbies (who remembers the semirobotic Digit? Exactly) vanished after nine episodes, but it solidified Prady’s place in the puppet-verse. “My Muppet experience,” he recalls fondly, “was working with Jim Henson every day.” Fittingly, Prady earned an Emmy nod in 1991 for cowriting the tribute special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson following the legend’s passing the previous year.

Of course, a lot has changed since Henson unleashed his globally adored puppets. Originally introduced in 1955 on Washington, D.C.’s daily Sam and Friends sketch series, several of the characters soon found a home in 1969 on Sesame Street (a Children’s Television Workshop production, and separate from The Muppets Studio), while a new batch of Henson creations was featured in regular bits on the first season of Saturday Night Live in 1975 and 1976. Along the way, there have been eight feature films, countless guest appearances, TV movies and specials, the aforementioned Jim Henson Hour and 1996’s equally brief Muppets Tonight.

No matter the missteps, it has always been the group’s comedy-variety hit The Muppet Show, which ran from 1976 to 1981, that remains the gold standard. The show was filled with celebrity guests, goofy sketches and fresh furry faces like Gonzo and Fozzie, and the backstage mayhem at Muppet Theater was weekly, wickedly funny proof that these creatures could appeal to kids and their parents. In fact, one of the two pilot episodes for The Muppet Show parodied the growing amount of sex and violence on TV at the time. “The Muppets can go on Good Morning America and Saturday Night Live…on the same day,” McClellan says. “We don’t talk down to our audiences, and we’re never mean to each other. We speak to the fans with a smart, sophisticated humor. That, I think, has always been the key to the Muppets—that kind of comedy.”

For the new series to work, the producers looked to the past for an idea on how to drive that comedy. “When The Muppet Show came on in the 1970s, the dominant form of entertainment on TV was still the variety show,” Prady explains, citing everyone from Sonny and Cher to the Smothers Brothers. “The Muppet Show was mocking [that format]. If Jim Henson were alive today, he wouldn’t make a variety show, because that’s not what’s big on TV. He’d look at the mock-documentary style that came to the U.S. from England—The Office and Parks and Recreation and Modern Family—and say, ‘Let’s try to make fun of that.’”

And we bet he’d be proud. The 10-minute trailer Prady and company pitched to ABC, with its legalized marijuana joke and edgy innuendo-laden gags, is both nostalgia heaven and as sharp and relevant as ever. That’s thanks in large part to the decision to give the Muppets actual backstories—Fozzie is dating a human! Rowlf runs a tavern!—and set them in the real world, while also honoring their Muppet Show roots as the most diverse cast working in showbiz. That’s right: The entire puppet posse is on staff at Up Late. “Kermit is the executive producer of the show and he deals with the very difficult host in Miss Piggy,” laughs cocreator Bob Kushell. “Fozzie is the sidekick and warm-up act, Gonzo is the head writer with Rizzo the Rat and Pepe the King Prawn working for him, and Scooter is the talent coordinator/scout.”

In addition, a parade of celebrity guests will be visiting Piggy’s show. (The original series featured Julie Andrews, Johnny Cash and Elton John, to name just a few.) Up Late’s “live” studio audience will include those beloved balcony curmudgeons Statler and Waldorf, the house band will be Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, the Swedish Chef is handling catering, and Sam the Eagle is sure to be hawking around the wings now that he’s landed the perfect gig in Standards and Practices.

It’s a roster that should entice the most jaded star (and animal control officer), yet at least one key player involved seems to be looking down her snout at the assembled employees. “You know, if I had been hiring, it would’ve been a completely different staff,” confesses the notoriously picky Piggy. “The one thing I like is that Fozzie does my preshow warm-up, and he’s absolutely horrible at it. That’s a good thing for me, because he sets the bar low and then people can enjoy moi even more.”

Miss Piggy’s disdain may be related to issues more personal than personnel, and it is so far the only sign of backstage drama as Up Late—and The Muppets—heads into production. “Coming together to develop and create this world has been such an amazing process,” says Kushell, speaking for, we assume, the show’s human contingent. As for the rest of the Muppets, it sounds like they too are all about making sure their new show reestablishes the rainbow connection with fans. And Kermit, for one, is thrilled to have at least some of that pressure off what he calls his “nonexistent shoulders.”

“You can do anything with them,” he raves, always so supportive of his zoological crew. “And many of them just work for food. That’s always nice.”

Better get busy, Chef!

The Muppets premieres Tuesday, Sept. 22, 8/7c, ABC.