NerdHerd Forever: Vik Sahay Speaks About His Role On Chuck

It’s a long way from the hallowed hallways of Canterbury High School to the backrooms of an NBC drama – but it’s even further from the streets of India.

“Just before I did Chuck I did a movie called Amal,” notes actor Vik Sahay, who attended the drama program at the arts school in Ottawa.

“My role was a very dark, brooding, hardcore, heavy, heavy role. We shot that in India and I did a scene where I was weeping, bawling, guts spilled open on the streets of New Dehli. I got up and they were like, ‘cut,’ and I brushed the dirt off.

“Literally two months later I was on this crackling NBC studio lot. It was insane, the culture shock going on to that big, bright comedy.”

He’s talking about the role of Lester Patel, part of the Nerd Herd that works at Buy More (a.k.a. Buymoria, a thinly disguised Best Buy) on the comedy Chuck.

In brief, Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) accidentally downloaded top secret government information directly into his brain, and now some agents want to protect him while others want to kill him. Plus, he has to make quota.

Sahay admits that Lester wasn’t his first choice.

“I ran basically the gauntlet that is the audition process and the weird thing about it is that I actually read for a different role, for the role of Morgan [Chuck’s best friend].

“It’s like five different auditions, increasingly more people in the audition room, like the last two auditions are at the studio, then at the network and it’s like 40 to 50 executives in the room, literally sitting next to you as you’re trying to do the scene.”

In what I will soon learn is his typical deadpan style, Sahay remarks, “Anyhow, the guy who plays Morgan [Joshua Gomez] got the role.”

At the time, he was less sanguine.

“Horror, heartbreak, howling at the moon, weeping.”

At “weeping,” Sahay makes the universal teenage motion of excessive crying: he holds his hand in front of his face, fingertips pointed toward his forehead and sharply drops his hand to his throat.

“Then a couple of days later they called and said, ‘we’re going to offer you this role of Lester.’ And it was like two words in the pilot. It was insane. I was like, no, why would I want to do this?

“And then they were like, ‘you should do this.’ I just started improvising and they wrote it into the first episode, second episode, inch by inch, inch by inch, to where we are today.”

The show has brought him into close contact with two mainstays of cult television: Josh Schwartz (creator of The OC and Gossip Girl) and Tony Hale (Buster Bluth in Arrested Development).

“The funny thing about being a fan of Josh Schwartz is that the guy is a wunderkind. It’s not like you could be a fan of Josh Schwartz and know what you’re getting into with Chuck, like it’s so vastly different.”

And Hale?

“He’s boring, he’s not a talented guy. Mean, that’s right, mean, and cruel and boring,” he laughs.

“No, I think he’s a genius.  Like he’s a gen-i-us,” drawing out his syllables like a superfan. Which, in fact, he is.

“The weird thing for me shooting Chuck is that just over a year and a half ago I was sitting in my Toronto apartment, watching Arrested Development and going God, that guy’s brilliant. And now I’m hanging with him, working with him, being treated badly by him…It’s quite awe-inspiring.”

Sahay is now based in Los Angeles, where the show is filmed. While he says he hasn’t changed as an actor, his life certainly has.

“It’s hard to get a limo and it’s hard to hide in the club,” he says, deadpan once again.

But seriously folks.

“What’s changed is that the shows that I did [in Canada] just didn’t have the kind of exposure and financing and all that stuff.

“You go places and you’re recognized a lot more, it’s both overwhelming and amazing.”

And we’ll be seeing more of Sahay soon. While he’s coy about the roles being offered, he insists they’re out there.

“There are things that I don’t really want to say yet because they’re not locked, locked down but there’s some things coming up that would be a dream to shoot.”

Chuck airs Monday at 8pm on Citytv.

Check out full episodes of Chuck for free online

Image courtesy NBC.com