'Chuck' star now 'Geek Who Drinks'
'Chuck' star Zach Levi talks new trivia show 'Geeks Who Drink'
Some may balk at the term “geek,” but Zachary Levi embraces it. The former “Chuck” star hosts the Syfy show, “Geeks who Drink” featuring ... exactly what the title suggests. Levi joined us via satellite from Toronto to discuss his place in Geekdom, and no, he’s not a king at Comic-Con quite yet.
FOX411: Tell us about your new show.
Zachary Levi: “Geeks who Drink” is basically taking the most popular pub trivia circuit in the United States called “Geeks who Drink” and porting it to the television and allowing people at home to play along. It’s pop trivia you know -- movies, television, video games, comic books, science math – all that kind of stuff; stuff that’s accessible. Stuff that people at home could probably or potentially know all the answers to and we encourage them to have a cocktail or two when they’re doing it because why the hell not? It’s at 11pm on Syfy on Thursdays. It’s drinky time. I drink along with everybody. Be responsible!
FOX411: Why have you embraced your geek status? Has it hindered you in any way? Made you a king at Comic-Con?
Levi: King is a big title. I might say Barron or Duke. There’s a lot of royalty down at Comic-Con. They’ve been around for a long time. My whole life I’ve identified with nerd culture. I read comic books and played video games and I was in theater. I don’t know if you get nerdier than that being that spazzy kid who wanted to trod the boards being different characters. That’s probably the original Cosplay. I love musical theater. I’ve done a Broadway show and I look forward to going back and doing more, but what I love about nerd culture is it used to be very stereotypical because only niche groups of people were into those things but everyone’s into them now. Everyone knows video games. Everyone plays video games. Everyone knows “The Avengers” whether you read the comic books or not or know who Iron Man is, everybody does. I think the nerdy just means passionate.
FOX411: Fans are super excited for the reboot of the show “Heroes Reborn.” Any insider stuff you can give us?
Levi: I could get fired for this but there are a lot of panda bears. I really can’t tell you much. We come back on Thursday premiering on September 24th, which I believe is a Thursday at 8pm, and it’s a continuation of the original series. It’s five years after the original series ended. The world now knows there are people with abilities that creates a lot of fear, paranoia, inspiration; all kinds of stuff. Maybe some vigilantes. Maybe my character is a vigilante who feels it’s necessary to exterminate people with abilities. I don’t know. I cannot confirm or deny this.
FOX411: You’ve taken your love of geekdom and created The Nerd Machine, your company that has raised over $700,000 for the charity Operation Smile. Out of all the charities you could work with why did you get involved with that one?
bI had a lot of friends that had a charity of choice, and I really wanted one, so I was thinking about it a lot, praying about it a lot and over the course of one week I was inundated with commercials and billboards for Op Smile. I felt like that was God trying to give me a sign so I stopped, I evaluated, I looked at them as an organization and it just broke my heart. It broke my heart that there are kids in this world that don’t experience real true, deep joy because they’re afraid to even walk out of their front door and smile for fear of being pointed at, laughed at, considered a pariah, unclean, tainted in some of their villages. And one in ten of these children die by the way. It’s not just a superficial or cosmetic challenge. It’s actually a life or death thing for a lot of these kids.
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