Heroes Reborn is almost here, and while most of it is still mired in mystery, Zachary Levi gave us some insight into the event series and his character during the Global TV Upfront presentation in June. Here’s what we’ve learned so far … and we’ll have more from the Heroes Reborn cast following their world premiere at TIFF last Tuesday!
First off, Levi made it clear that this goes beyond just another sci-fi or superhero tale, for those who may not be into genre fare, or burnt out on the genre.
“I believe that the best type of storytelling — and I hope that’s what we’re achieving on this — is telling human stories; they’re just with different backdrops. This backdrop just happens to be a world full of people that have abilities, or don’t have abilities, and how that juxtaposition works. Some people are very scared, some are intrigued. [For] some people, those abilities might go to their head, and they become very, very evil … or not. You could replace ability with money and all of a sudden you would be telling a lot of the same stories. It’s all about the human story.”
We don’t know too much about Levi’s character, Luke, but he did tell us that Luke is very different from his most famous role — Chuck Bartowski on Chuck.
“I would say that it’s definitely a departure for me, which is what I wanted to do. I loved being Chuck for five years. I don’t love always being referenced to, or connected to Chuck for the rest of my life or career. [It was] an easy thing to do, because to be honest, I wasn’t really acting in Chuck. I was kind of being myself most of the time. You want to stretch yourself and take on other roles. When I was first sitting down with Tim Kring [to talk] about the project, [I said] ‘I want to play somebody who’s darker, grittier, sexier, stronger … somebody who is very different than Chuck in every way,’ and this is where we ended up. There are definitely elements to this character that are anti-heroish. If Chuck is the hero than Luke is anti-heroish.
After watching some of the promos, I had a certain impression of Luke. Levi kind of hinted that I was on the right track in thinking that Luke believes he’s on a righteous path although others may refer to him as a villain.
“I don’t think that you’re too far off in that the motivation behind it. Any bad guy or villain, they believe in what they’re doing. It might be totally twisted, but they believe that’s the right course. Some of them are just sociopaths and they don’t really care about anything or anyone. You look at Magneto in the X-Men movies — especially when Fassbender’s playing him — and you go, ‘Yeah, I understand.’ To him it’s like, ‘No, sorry. We are the special race. We are these people that have these mutated powers. We can kill you and we probably should, because you’re going to try and kill us for the rest of our lives, and I don’t want to do that.’ And you go, ‘Okay, I see that side.’ I say all that to say that you’re on to something. [Luke] believes in certain things, but that doesn’t mean that they also don’t get challenged along the way.”
Watch Zachary Levi in the 2-hour premiere of Heroes Reborn, this Thursday, September 24 at 8/7c on NBC and at 8pm ET/PT on Global TV. And look out for our red carpet interviews with the cast from their world premiere at TIFF.
Photo Courtesy of NBC
