It's deja vu for Vik Sahay.
When Sahay was asked if he ever has experienced anything like the light-and-dark, stay-or-go, renew-or-cancel atmosphere of his current TV series Chuck, he didn't hesitate.
"This is Wonderland," the Canadian actor said.
Ah, good point.
"Same thing on This is Wonderland, every week we were going to be cancelled," said Sahay, who appeared in that dearly departed CBC series for two of its three seasons. "But (creator) George Walker was great about just going, 'Shut all that out and do the work.'
"It's similar here on Chuck. But you're right — you step out the doors and there is all the writing, petitions, campaigns."
Chuck, which airs Mondays on NBC and Citytv, is nearing the end of its third season. NBC has re-launched Chuck on multiple occasions as it struggles with this puzzle:
The critically favourable series should be bigger than it is. If it simply were lousy, it would have been gone a long time ago. The fans it has are intensely loyal. But how long does a network bank on a show getting bigger?
Chuck stars Zachary Levi as an electronics-store employee who has been dragged into the world of international espionage. Sahay plays fellow Buy More staffer Lester Patel, a member of the so-called Nerd Herd.
"I personally am at zero in terms of the tech stuff," said Sahay, a native of Ottawa who attended Concordia University in Montreal. "When I got the role I wanted to do some research and get inside this guy, so I went to the sort of Buy More equivalent in Toronto and tried to find an employee around whom I could create Lester. And I found some.
"They are not pleasant people. They are very arrogant about their knowledge and I was like, 'That's who Lester is going to be.' He fancies himself the superstar but he absolutely does not have the nervous system to back it up."
Speaking of nervous systems, Sahay said one of the biggest surprises about Chuck has been the formation of a Nerd Herd rock band — called Jeffster — that features Lester as the lead singer.
"That has been a horrifying, terrifying, insane element to Chuck that I did not expect," said Sahay, who recently has been filming the movie Afghan Luke and the Burgundy of Hash with director Mike Clattenburg (Trailer Park Boys) in Toronto.
Sahay doesn't get to vote on which songs he sings on Chuck, although he did pick the tune when Jeffster performed last year to a Beatles-esque reception (as one might expect) at Comic-Con.
"I picked that song very specifically — Fat Bottomed Girls by Queen," Sahay said. "But usually it never is based on whether I can sing it or not. That clearly is the case. Let's do Mary Had a Little Lamb."
Alas, life never is as simple as Mary Had a Little Lamb. The up-and-down existence of Chuck is proof of that.
But whatever the future holds, Vik Sahay's ability to connect with audiences remains as iron-clad as a Buy More extended warranty.
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