Vik Sahay on Jeffster, geekiness & saving 'Chuck'

Lester could be considered a geek …
Oh come on now, that’s mean.

… I was wondering if that’s just you acting, or do you have geeky tendencies?
No, I have no geeky tendencies. I’m one of the coolest people in the room right now, which are me and a cat. … I hope in my personal life I am not at all like Lester.

You know, in terms of the geekiness of the computer world, I don’t share that with him. But I have my own obsessions and pursuits that I’m sure people would be like, “Oh my God, enough …”

Such as?
Well, never you mind. Never you mind. No, well, as an actor I can be pretty obsessive compulsive and I love talking about it. I think I’m an acting geek. I just love it so much that I’m a little bit obsessed with it. And so there’s that end of it. And I follow some sports kind of geekily—the UFC and tennis and stuff like that. In that world, yeah, I’m sure that I’ve made many an eye roll from people around me.

Lester is so funny. Did you come from a comedy background?
I did not, not at all. I come form a pure theater school background—Shakespeare and all the classics. I did a tiny bit of sketch stuff in high school; I played on an improv team in high school. But I know sketch comics and improv comics and stand-up comics, and I have so much respect for them that I would never even pretend that I knew anything about it …

Lester and the Nerd Herd have their own fans and followers—as does Yvonne Strahovski (Agent Sarah Walker) …
Of course, [laughs], that will never be usurped. We will never be able to take that power away.

There are a lot of people who quote your lines and follow you.
The quoting of the lines—that’s the writers …

But you guys deliver those lines.
Well, thanks man. Oh, shall we argue about this? No, that’s awesome, but the main thing happening on that set is that we’re just having a blast with each other and riffing. I’ll admit, I sometimes I go off on improve bits and riffs and jazzy kinds of things off people, but it’s just because there’s such an electric, hilarious back-and-forth between us even when the camera stops rolling. It’s just so fun; you’re just so willing to jump into it. I guess there’s some chemistry created.

So you guys are all friends outside of work?
Yeah, that’s the saddest, geekiest thing about us. On our off time we’re like, “Hey what are you doing? Let’s go hang out.” It’s not one of these sets where on-camera you see all these great friendships but off camera no one can stand each other. We actually get along incredibly well, sadly.

Apparently you don’t buy the saying that “comedy’s a serious business”?
That’s not the case here at all. We do take it seriously; we want it to be the best it can be, obviously. But more often then not it’s about cracking the other person up or ruining takes because that’s going on or that kind of thing. I mean, to me comedy is a serious thing and you do have to kind of find the music of it but it’s about having that lightness of spirit.

I have some questions people on Twitter wanted me to ask you.
If these are plot questions, you’re not going to get anything out of me. I don;t like to give things away.

We’ll see about that later. First Twitter questions: Will Lester ever get a girlfriend?
Ohhh, well. I mean, that girl, whoever that girl is who becomes Lester’s girlfriend is either got to be the most in-cre-di-ble, generous, patient, Mother Theresa-esque woman, or someone who is also insane.

So will he ever get a girlfriend? Well, I don’t know if he’s the kind of guy who could ever keep a girlfriend. He would lose her or he’d always be climbing for the next best thing.

She probably also has to be a babe?
Well, obviously she’d have to be a babe. [Laughs.] Can Lester get a true babe, that’s the big question?

Will Lester ever figure out what Chuck (Zachary Levi, right in left photo) really is? Or is he smart enough to figure it out?
I think that there may be a possibility that that could happen. I think that, is he smart enough? Well, of course he is. Does he use his smarts the right way? Maybe not.

I think if that were to happen it would incite pure jealousy in Lester. It would mean nothing more than why wasn’t he the one chosen to have the Intersect in his head.

Which leads to the next question. Lester thinks he’s a superstar. Is he the most delusional between himself, Morgan and Jeff?
I think that Jeff and Morgan are not at all delusional. Jeff knows who he is and where his place is. I think Morgan is kind of the most, in a sense, grounded and can lean on friendship and is there for Chuck. So I guess the answer is yes, Lester fancies himself a superstar and he just does not have the nervous system to back it up.

He does get granted that status once in a while. He got the assistant managership or he gets to do the Jeffster stuff and he’s just not built for it, ultimately.

Lester does a lot of bad things. Why is he so morally questionable? What makes him tick?
Everybody would answer that question a different way. What I had to do, to get all geeky actorly about it, I have to feel him. I had to figure out what he wanted and then build around that his kind of insane inability to be in any kind of social context at all. Like he’s just so socially awkward and self-serving that it had to come from somewhere. I had my own little theories I built about his upbringing and who he is.

You know, what does he want? He wants to be respected, right? He wants what Chuck has—that effortless charm and likeability. He wants it so bad that the last thing he is is effortless. He’s effort-ful. [Laughs.]

Jeff (Scott Krinsky, left) and Lester (Vik Sahay) interview potential imployees via a Buy More "casting couch." NBC photos

Does he actually consider Jeff and the other Nerd Herders his friends?
I don’t think he considers the other guys friends. I think he feels their goodness sometimes, like sometimes Morgan will do something for him like inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner or fixing the marlin on Big Mike’s wall. And he’ll feel something that he won’t [understand.]

But with Jeff, I think that there is, deep down, a true friendship there. Lester himself may not be able to put those words to it but I think that they are [friends.] From everybody else he finds a kind of judgment, but with Jeff he finds a kind of benevolence really. Jeff kind of accepts him and actually likes him.

I think ultimately one of the things Lester is looking for is a soft place to land and kind of calm down and express whom he is. He gets that with Jeff, sadly, because also is wrapped in his own bizarre bubble.

Is that partly because Jeff could be the only guy more screwed up than Lester?
Well, that’s definitely a huge part of it. There’s no real competition there, but I think it’s also there because Jeff doesn’t really care about that and doesn’t compete for that and certainly doesn’t judge or try to take that away from Lester. In fact, Jeff ended up orchestrating the Jeffster moment for Lester.

Are you and Scott Krinsky friends outside of work?
I can’t stand the guy. Honestly I cannot stand the guy. [Laughs.] No, we are buddies. We are so different even off camera that acting with him and hanging out with him there’s just some kind of alchemy [or] chemistry that’s so hysterical and fun that to even chat with him and be around. We spend so much time together that by absolute fortune we actually really get along and have great times going out together and chatting. It’s really cool.

In the 3-D episode, did Scott really eat that sandwich?
He spent the day eating that sandwich again and again and again. I was like, “OK, let’s go to lunch.” And he said, “I don’t think so.” He really had to dig into that. I felt for him.

Are we ever going to city Lester and Jeff outside the Buy More?
I think it’s coming. At least I hope so. It would be really fun for me to see them out at a night at Benny’s, this obviously dive of a place they go to try to pick up chicks. That would be an episode that would be one of the seediest, weirdest, insane, funny nights out.

Is Benny’s a strip joint?
Well, I think that there are some, as he put it one time, “low-hanging fruit” there. That maybe means some form of dancer.

What do we not know about Lester that you do?
I think once and a while there have been references to his family. He’s said things like, during the Thanksgiving episode, “I’ve never had Thanksgiving. My parents were jet setting between Tel Aviv and Mumbai.”

The funny thing about all that is I kind of build my character around those ideas and then they’re kind of taken away because the show’s only so long. … There was a scene where he imagined how he himself was going to die and … he talked about being thrown from a yacht in the middle of the ocean with nothing but a knife and his Speedo and he treaded water for awhile then the dolphins attack. And Morgan goes, “Don’t you mean sharks?” And he goes, “No, no, I hate dolphins.”

Is it possible that Lester could be a Fulcrum agent?
Wow, that’s a very interesting question. I have mused upon that very idea in my head a couple of times. I don’t know; I don’t know. If we thought Chuck was initially a bumbling spy, the bumblingness of Lester would be endless. It would certainly be hysterical.

The thing about Lester is that there is a kind of darkness to him that could lend himself to that.

How did Jeffster come about?
Out of the blue. I kind of chatted off camera with the writers about how I thought he had a rock-star thing about him—his hair, the kind of watch he wears, a swagger and all that stuff—but that was way before this came about … One day we opened the script and there it was.

I went to New York Comic Con and listened to Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak and they put on a show. They are funny together.
I think that they are Chuck and Morgan. They’re so funny and so fun to be around.

Here’s another question from the Twitterverse: Is Sarah as dreamy in real life as she is on the small screen?
Sarah meaning Yvonne or Sarah meaning Sarah Lancaster [who play Ellie Bartowski]? Because they’re both in-cre-di-bly dreamy in real life. Like off-puttingly so, like they’re so beautiful.

How is it working with all the guest stars?
Oh man, I’m the kid from Toronto who a year-and-a-half ago was sitting in my little apartment watching 90 percent of these guest stars on TV. I mean, Tony Hill. Chevy Chase is a legend—and Scott Bakula. It’s so thrilling and overwhelming in a way. And then to meet them, they’re all just incredible people and just, they’re actors working on a scene and being brilliant. The kid in me is just—yeah, it’s incredible; it’s thrilling.

You’re from Toronto. How did you end up in a Buy More in Burbank?
The Mt. Everest climb known as the audition process. The difference between the L.A. audition process and the Toronto audition process is just gigantic. It’s a big five-pronged, bigger and bigger deal in L.A.

I actually read for the role of Morgan. So it came down to me and Josh [Gomez] for Morgan. Obviously I didn’t get that. I was upset and howling at the moon, weeping. Then they called and said, “Why don’t you come and play Lester.”

I was disappointed. Lester only had a couple of little bits in the pilot. But after being told, “You have no other choice. You have to do this. Who do you think you are that you would say no to anything?” I did it and the pilot was such electric fun that when it got picked up it was a dream come true. Based on that then I moved to Los Angeles to do the show.

They must have liked the little bit of Lester in the pilot enough to keep you around?
Yeah, I guess so. You said that, not me. But yeah, there was a chemistry with all of us that was just undeniable and I think they were like, “Let’s keep this gang.”

I know you are the king of no spoilers, but what’s coming up in the next few episodes?
Look, I would love to tell you. You don’t want to know. You don’t want me to tell you. You don’t want that. I had been hearing Josh Schwartz talk about a game-changer before I knew what was happening at the end of the season. I thought what could that be? When I read it and started shooting it, I thought, “Yes this is a game-changer.”

It’s amazing what happens. It would be so irresponsible not just because they don’t want me to tell you anything. But [it would be irresponsible] to you for me to tell what happens, so I’m going to tell you nothing.

I did read that Jeffster is coming back. Right?
You did? Yeah, yes, we make a return appearance.

“Chuck” is a bubble show. How do you feel about that? How are you guys handling that?
Obviously we are dying for this thing to come back. There’s no question about that. ... How do we feel about? I would say anxious and desirous and wanting and, you know, on pins and needles.

Look, if it doesn’t come back, it’s been one of the most glorious experiences of my life, but all I want is for it to come back.