Interview:Greg Grunberg

You have been friends with J. J. Abrams since you were kids but

how exactly do you know each other?

Well just that way, since we were three. We met at elementary school and you know my dad jokes that even back then he knew that J. J. was going to be who he is today. It’s just one of those things where we became fast friends and how he’s like a brother to me, he’s the greatest guy ever.

Really you’ve been involved in every project in his career haven’t you?

Yeah that’s kinda what we’ve always said we’ve wanted to do was work together as much as we possibly can. As an actor it’s harder to choose the people you want to work with, you really have to hope that they want to work with you on the producing and the directing level and he’s just been so sweet you know to want to work with me.

It shows how highly he values you as an actor mixing his personal life with his professional.

Yeah I mean it’s a tough thing to do. If you hire somebody you have to be willing to fire them [laughter] and he and I have just always said “as best we can we’re going to try work together” and so far it’s worked out. You know doing Heroes is kind of the first big TV project that I’ve done without J. J. and I got very very fortunate that the people that I’m working with are of that same calibre so it’s been a really great experience.

In the last series of Heroes you play a darker version of your character, was it a good change for you getting to play a darker part?

Yeah I love mixing it up I love the idea of doing something that people would not expect me to do; it makes it more interesting and I tend to play you know people that are number one hopefully very relatable and number two are characters that no matter what he does he’s always going to be the good guy and it’s a blessing and a curse at the same time but if you can play it the right way, if the right role comes along or in

  “5 years gone” that episode where I went around killing everyone it

  was like “what is he doing?”, it makes for a very interesting

  storyline when the characters doing something against his type.

  I do think that’s what makes your character so good that he is

  so relatable. You could see yourself living next door to him.

  Yeah, well thank you, I mean that’s the best compliment I could

  get. They certainly write the character that way and I try to play it as

  real as possible and you know the flip-side of that is I’ve got this

  power where I tilt my head [laughter]. If you and I were in the same

  room and I did that you would probably make reference to it so it’s

  a tricky kind of combination to do that and make it seem as real as

  possible.

  You spent most of your time last series working with Brea

  Grant. Do you think you will miss working with her?

Yeah I thought we had great chemistry, I love Brea I think she’s amazingly talented, and she is an example, and we’ve had this a number of times on the show, we get these great actors that come on and they have a great presence and he just haven’t locked them in on a contract yet so they go somewhere else to do something on a regular basis and unfortunately we just have to let them go because we haven’t signed them. Some people we do sign and Brea’s one of those that I wish they had of locked in and I just love her, I love working with her. I’m happy that Lisa Lackey back though too because I love working with her and I love having the wife and kid relationship on the show.