Captain Awesome is in danger of becoming Captain Deadasadoornail if this latest Chuck casting scoop is any indication: Ex-Law & Order ADA Angie Harmon has signed on to guest star in this season’s fourth episode as Sydney, a spy for the Ring who wants to whack Ryan McPartlin’s awe-obsessed alter ego.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it three times in the past week: NBC, please don’t make us wait until March for new Chuck episodes. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll even forgive you for Knight Rider. And Coupling. Just name your price.

Old Thai Woman - 55 to 70, must be able to speak Thai and English…Fun CO-STAR

OK, here are some facts about the season premiere of “Chuck” and some overall themes for the new season. Check out now if you don’t want to know:

*The title of the season premiere is “Chuck vs. the Pink Slip” and it was written by Fedak and Matt Miller.

*On Wednesday, the day before shooting began on Season 3, Zachary Levi showed up at the NBC party at the TCA press tour with a full-on Old Testament beard. You may think he had to shave it Thursday morning before he began work on “Pink Slip.” No, he did not. The beard has been worked in to the season premiere; it’ll appear for at least part of the episode.

*Levi’s wardrobe for the episode included an old grey T-shirt, a bathrobe, a baseball cap and sunglasses. The phrase “vagrant Serpico” was used by one character to describe his look.

*The Buy More is still part of Season 3. But it was a very different place, much more locked down and tidied up, and on all the flat screens in the store, a very ominous film loop was playing: a black and white clip of Joseph Stalin reviewing troops in Red Square. Dun-dun-dun!

*The reason for the grim mood in the Buy More? The reign of terror implemented by Emmett Milbarge. Yes, Tony Hale, who plays Milbarge, will once again recur in Season 3. And as we know, he’s not the “see no evil” manager that Big Mike was. His office is now a much darker, more ominous place, dominated by a giant executive chair and a large “Buy-Moria” flag.

*Big Mike (Mark Christopher Lawrence), the store’s former manager, is still in “purgatory/Hell” on the Buy More sales floor, according to Fedak.

*This is a factoid from the Comic-Con interview, but I thought it was worth mentioning again: Morgan and Chuck are roommates as Season 3 begins.

*I interviewed Adam Baldwin for a separate piece that will run in advance of the new season, and he said that though there’s nothing concrete worked out just yet, the idea of Casey getting a love interest at some point had been bandied about.

*The set of the Orange Orange was in use on Thursday.

*The set of the Castle, the spy headquarters, was in use on Thursday. And it is going to be expanded in Season 3. “You could call it a palace now,” Levi joked.

*Fedak said there are still plans to keep John Casey (Adam Baldwin) in the orbit of the Buy More crew, given that there is so much comedy to be mined from his irritation with the store’s staff. “It’s a lot of fun to have him in that world as the straight man, and it’s great to get his perspective on the Buy More madness,” Fedak said. “John Casey’s been out there for 20 years saving America, now he realizes just what he’s been saving. So it’s tough for him. But this year we’d like to get him in the Buy More even more.”

*How Subway, the “Chuck” advertiser whom fans patronized in an effort to get a new season for the show, will be worked into the new season has not quite been figured out.

*As mentioned in that Comic-Con piece, Chuck’s new abilities, which were glimpsed at the end of Season 2, will not work perfectly in Season 3. The idea in Season 3 is to have Casey and Sarah act not just as Chuck’s protectors but as his “senseis,” or teachers who will help him use his powers effectively. “They’re training him to be the master spy, and their relationships are maturing that way,” Fedak said.

*There are also plans to “deepen the spy characters” to find out, for example, how a soldier like Casey ended up becoming a spy. And we’d also find out more about what Sarah and Casey have done in their espionage careers. “Spies are people who go to other countries and commit criminal acts. So with Casey and Sarah, it’s always interesting to see what they’ve done in their past, and find out how grey or interesting or duplicitous they’ve been,” Fedak said.

*Fedak said specifically that I should say he refused to comment in any way on the Cheese Balls.

During last week’s Chuck panel at Comic-Con, fans had one question in mind:

Will Chuck and Sarah ever get together?!?

“You know what they say?” said cocreator and executive producer Josh Schwartz. “Two steps forward, three steps back. The dance shall continue.”

At least Schwartz shed some light on how that dance might be performed on season three. He told E! News: “We do have two major new arcs on the show. One is a potential love interest for Chuck, and the other is a potential love interest for Sarah.”

Sounds both intriguing and frustrating. Why can’t these two just hook up for good? Partly because Sarah isn’t happy about certain developments, star Yvonne Strahovski said.

“There are going to be a lot more complications between Chuck and Sarah, now that he’s downloaded his new intersect into his brain. I think that Sarah is going to be a little upset.”

During the annual festival in San Diego, Schwartz added that Chuck and Sarah will go through “something very emotional and traumatic,” but “it’s going to be very, very good.”

Cocreator Chris Pedak chimed in with: “It’ll be cool. It’ll be deep, and it’ll have a lasting affect on the show.”

Okay. Fine. Consider us in for season three.

[JAVIER] 35-45. Latin. Amazing body, cut with muscles. Menacing. He’s a bad-ass assassin. Think Javier Bardem. GUEST STAR

[YURI] 35-45, male, the scariest of all scary Russian spies. Will need to have an authentic Russian accent but also be able to lose it when needed. ONE-DAY GUEST STAR

[GILLES] 32, incredibly handsome man. French / Mediterranean, fit and tan. CO-STAR




Source: SpoilerTV

What a timely bit of news to hit this week. We just watched “Chuck vs. the Wookie” on Chuck Me Monday, and now Chuck writer/producer Ali Adler announces that, “Carina the super sexy superagent will be making an appearance in Season 3!”

The Chuck writers have been at work on season 3 for a couple of weeks now, but this is the first confirmed piece of news to escape into the Interwebz. So what do you think? Are you looking forward to the return of Carina (Mini Anden) as Sarah’s sometime partner (and keeper of a certain secret involving Casey and Prague)?

In the same tone to Chris Fedak’s statement that “Chuck” may be released earlier than scheduled, Lester’s depicter Vik Sahay confirmed that despite being put in midseason 2010, the cast and the crew will be back working as early as this August. “We will be ready to come back whenever we’re asked to come back,” Sahay said in an interview with TVGuide. “And that’s good to know.”

Not only that, Sahay also shared another good news when he said that the order NBC put may extend beyond 13 episodes if the third season continually shows a strong rating. “That’s the hope,” Sahay crossed his finger. “(NBC boss Ben Silverman) said he’ll push us into the summer with a back nine (order), so we’re planning on making the shows that good.”

In the mean time, “Chuck” is still scheduled to enter every Mondays at 8/7c in March 2010 after the Winter Olympics. Fedak revealed a plan to do a webseries to keep fans craving for the geeky action.

At the end of the second season, Chuck accidentally downloaded a new skill into his brain. “I know kung fu,” he said. About how it would translate on the third season, Sahay shared what he knows, saying “…(Chuck’s new ability) is going to make things hilarious… and wild.”

The creators of NBC’s Chuck aren’t about to let the audience forget about the show during its long hiatus until midseason—they’re planning some kind of Web presence, said Chuck executive producer and co-creator Chris Fedak.

“We’re talking to NBC now about what is going to be the super-clever idea to kind of bridge that time. It is going to be something on the Internet to keep fan awareness alive and remind people about the show,” Fedak told SCI FI Wire in an exclusive phone interview.

Fedak added that Chuck, which was picked up for midseason by NBC, may appear sooner than the expected March 2010.

Chuck is set to air in its same timeslot, on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT. That’s good news for fans who lobbied NBC and key sponsor Subway for the show’s renewal. But with Chuck’s third season planned to premiere in March 2010, that’s a very long wait. “We’re excited to launch after the Winter Olympics and to launch also with NBC’s other new show [Day One]. But schedules aren’t written in stone for a reason. So you never know. Maybe you’ll see us sooner than that,” Fedak said.

One thing the producers will be faced with in the new season is a smaller budget. “Across the board in television this year there’s been a contraction in regard that every show has had to find ways to lower their budgets,” he said. “And then [creator] Josh [Schwartz] and I, we have a really an excellent production department here at Chuck, and we’ve made changes to the show. But essentially we’re committed to delivering a show like the show last year, and the changes we’re making will not impact the quality of the show. We’ve also, after two seasons of making the show, we’ve gotten better at it, just from a production perspective, and we find the efficiencies and just learning how we tell our stories.”

Another factor will be the presence of Subway in the show in some way, thanks to NBC’s deal with the sandwich chain. How will that presence work? “We’re still in the early stages of figuring that out,” Fedak said.

The show will resume production this summer. “We’re actually just getting back up and running with our writers,” Fedak said. “So I am knee-deep in the writers’ room, working on story, kind of cutting into how we’re going to tell this epic season of Chuck. … We have some really fun, super-exciting stories up on the board, and we can’t wait to tell them.”

Asked about specifics, Fedak isn’t too forthcoming. “You’re getting nothing out of me,” he said, adding: “Do you know what Schwartz would do to me if I give you anything? Mum is the word at the moment.”

Maybe just a tiny, little detail? What about the teaser from a recent interview with Schwartz that there might be a romantic interest who would come between Sarah and Chuck? “Crickets. That’s what you get from me. You’re getting crickets on this one,” Fedak said.

The one thing that isn’t a secret is that the producers plan for the entire cast to return, he said. As for adding new characters, “We will be, but you’re not going to get that out of me, I don’t think,” he said.

Expect a more physical Chuck (Zachary Levi), considering that he acquired new kung fu abilities after downloading the new Intersect. “Absolutely. Get ready for excitement,” Fedak said. “And we also look forward to deepening the mythology of the show, learning more about our characters and, most importantly, having fun.”

As for the possible romance between Chuck and Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski)? “In the interest of vagueness, I will say that this new upcoming season of Chuck will not be lacking in romance,” Fedak said.

The cagey Chuck creator did have more to say when it came to discussing the season-two finale, “Chuck vs. the Ring,” however. “We were very proud,” he said. “We were very proud of our entire season, but we were really excited to tell the story and that we knew where we were going, and we knew we had this big, epic finale. All the writers and producers, everyone involved in the show, we knew we weren’t going to leave anything on the table for the fans of the show. We knew that essentially there would be a point in time during the final episode where everything but the kitchen sink, and maybe even the kitchen sink itself, would fly through a frame … and you would see the Chuck show at its best.” Fedak gives plenty of credit for the episode to director Robert Duncan McNeill (Lt. Tom Paris of Star Trek: Voyager fame).

For Fedak, there was one specific moment that resonated with him, and it came during a table reading. “I sat down at the table with the cast of that episode, and I just shook my head,” he said. “I felt like, for that episode, we hired most of Hollywood. I had Bruce Boxleitner, Morgan Fairchild, Scott Bakula, Chevy Chase and our cast. I mean, our fantastic, wonderful cast, and Matt Bomer as well, and I immediately demanded that we have a photograph taken, because it’s something that, actually, … [I knew] this would be one of my favorite moments, this cast read-through. And they killed. They were wonderful. They were wonderful just reading the script, and they were just as wonderful on screen. Allison Adler and I wrote that script, and it was a really wonderful kind of moment to see the Actors’ Studio version of our story before we filmed it.”

Fedak added: “I’d just like to say, and this is more like a general thing, that we’re just so thankful to our fans for all the support that they’ve shown. It has been … it was incredibly important to the show, to the show’s return, their energy and excitement. And the other thing, too, is that critics and journalists have been just so helpful and supportive for the show. It just seems like we needed every arrow in our quiver, and you guys were there for us.” Chuck
will return on NBC after the Olympics in March.

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