One of the biggest surprise hit shows of last year was Heroes on NBC. It was a show about ordinary people, like you or me, learning that they have extraordinary abilities. You might even call these people “superheroes”. As we have learned and will continue to learn, though, some of these people may not be “heroes” after all. They may use their new abilities for evil.
The much anticipated premiere of the second chapter and second season of Heroes is just one week away. It all starts on Monday, Septemer 24 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. But before all the action on TV starts, here at Prime Time Pulse we have a way to get you all warmed up for the new season. Your Internet “Heroes”, Murtz Jaffer and myself, interviewed seven stars from the show, both old and new. Starting today and lasting a week until the second season premiere of Heroes we will bring you one interview a day.
My first interview was with a new star on Heroes, Nick D’Agosto. This season he will have a recurring role as Claire’s boyfriend, West. So you might say in some ways he has the best new character of them all. While his character is still quite a mystery on the show, and really which character isn’t a mystery, it will certainly add another interestin dynamic to Claire’s story. Before he got on Heroes, he made his debut in the 1999 movie, Election, starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. Here is how my interview with Nick went down…
Josh Clinton: Hey Nick.
Nick D’Agosto: Hey Josh, how are you?
JC: I’m doing good. Yourself?
ND: I’m good as well.
JC: Great. So how excited are you to be on Heroes?
ND: Oh, I’m thrilled. I’ve done a bunch of pilots, but none of them have gone through. So this is the first time for me to be part of a show consistently. I get to go into work and keep having full episodes and get do a little something. Being on a show like Heroes, which hands-down couldn’t be a better show. It’s so much fun and it’s such a cool concept, and it’s been great.
JC: Did you watch the show last season?
ND: Yeah, well I have watched the entire season. I didn’t stay with it the entire time. There are not many shows that I watch. I watched a little bit of it with my friends last year, and I always thought it was cool. But before I started working on the show, I watched the entire seasn. I’ve always been a comic and a science-fiction fan, and it’s really exciting to be part of it.
JC: Right. How did you get involved with the show? Did your agent get you an audition?
ND: Yeah man, just like anything. I got an audition from my agent. I went in for it and at the time they said they didn’t know how long it would be around, maybe just a couple of episodes. I went in and did it and felt really good coming out of the audition. Thankfully a couple of days later I got the part and the part has grown to be bigger than I thought it would be.
JC: How many episodes are you going to be in this season?
ND: Right now, I’m not totally sure. But right now we are filming the ninth episode and I’m in seven of the first nine episodes. I’ll be in some more, but I’m not sure how long I will be around.
JC: That’s cool. So what interested you about the character when you first went in to audition for it?
ND: That’s a great question. I really like how he was dark and mysterious. They only gave me a couple of scenes. They don’t tell you much, because Heroes doesn’t want to tell people much about the show since it’s so much about surprises. So they told me a little bit, and I didn’t even know at that time if I was going to have a superpower or not. Then, I got into the audition and they talked to me about it a little bit more. Basically, he was very mysterious and very direct and a kinda a smartass. But ultimately he was a really intelligent guy. So I could be a little bit dark and intelligent too, and I thought that was cool.
JC: Yeah. Your character’s name is West, correct?
ND: Yeah, West.
JC: Does he go to school with Claire?
ND: Um, I mean I don’t want to say much about him because the opening will explain it. But yeah, they do meet in high school.
JC: What’s it like working with Hayden Panettiere?
ND: It’s great man. She is extremely talented young woman and she’s been a lot of fun. I think our scenes turned out really well.
JC: Yeah. Going back to your superpower. I have heard rumors about what your superpower is and I have a good idea what it is.
ND: Oh yeah. Do me a favor, I don’t know who talks about it or whatever, but I can’t really say. The rumors are probably floating out there and if you want to go take a stab at it, then that’s cool but I can’t really say anything.
JC: Yeah, I have heard that’s the like the “ultimate superpower” that everyone wants to have.
ND: Yeah, I mean it’s cool. It’s been great. That’s what I can say. It’s been very fun. But just for right now, since the show hasn’t started airing yet, I can’t really say much more about it.
JC: Alright, fair enough. Is it hard to join a show that has an established cast already?
ND: That’s a good question too man. Honestly, everyone has been really nice to me. It is a little bit awkward at first, because you know everyone has been with each other for a year already. So when you walk on and your a new actor, you don’t really know how long you will be on the show. So everyone has been extremely nice, but you also want to be very careful and considerate when you walk into other people’s space. They have a great thing going on and you want to make sure you glid into it as gracefully as possible.
JC: Right. Were there any actors that are on the show that you were fans of before coming to Heroes yourself?
ND: That’s a good question too. I had seen a lot of the actors in other places, but Hayden was probably the most visible out of all of them. Everyone is such a good actor, but they just haven’t had the chance to become stars yet. On Heroes, I guess I could say that Masi is really funny and he seems to be a favorite of everyone. I always really loved Adrian Pasdar’s stuff. I always thought he was extremely cool. Jack Coleman, who plays Claire’s dad, I thought he was always very cool. I also knew Zach Quinto from before, and he is fantastic as Skylar on this show. I really loved everyone, but those were some of my favorites from the first season. I mean Hayden is extremely great as well. She’s beautiful and extremely talented, and it was exciting to know that I would get to work with her.
JC: Yeah, and Hayden got started in acting when she was just a child too.
ND: Yeah, she’s a pro for sure. She has been acting for a long time.
JC: Before you got on Heroes, you were in a couple of movies. You made in your debut in Election, correct?
ND: Yeah, that’s where I got my break. I’m from Omaha, Nebraska and that is where Election was shot. That was very cool. I also just did a movie called Rocket Science that is finishing up its run in theaters right now. It won the “Best Director” award at the Sundance Film Festival last year. I had a really cool role in that.
JC: Is there like a major difference between filming a movie and a TV show or is it very similar with the exception of how long you have to film?
ND: It is different, but ultimately it is the same thing since you are doing film every way. But with a movie you have a lot of time to prepare because you know all of the scenes that you are going to be in, and you know all the things that are coming. So if you want to work on the first scene or the last scene, you can do that at any time. Plus, you get the full arc of the character. Once you have that, you can start filling in all the blanks. Like things that aren’t talked about in the script, you can take them and make them fit the way you want them to with your character. But with television writing, I’m always waiting to find out more about my character in the next script. So I don’t know really know where I end. A lot of times, I have to be told by the writers and ask them how I should play the part in each scene. They are always very helpful, but there are more question marks about which way your character is supposed to go and you have less time to prepare. But they are both really fun and great in their own way.
JC: Yeah, it sounds like it. The character you play on Heroes is basically 10 years younger than how old you really are in real life.
ND: Actually yeah. (Laughs) I try to avoid people saying that, but it’s true.
JC: Is it hard playing a younger character like that? To get into that mindset?
ND: That’s a good question too. But it’s not really, because I end up playing characters that are a bit more mature than those characters anyways. I don’t have to go like “what was I like when I was 19”, I have to be like “who am I now”. I really look like I’m 17, so they don’t look at me as being older so I just read it as how I feel right now. A lot of times I don’t get cast in roles where they want authentic 17-year-olds, because that’s not who I am really. But like my character in Rocket Science, he is very smart and very mature. Now my character in Heroes is very smart and not necessarily completely mature, but he’s very smart and very confident in himself. So those are both things that I can bring to the part with the little bit of age that I have.
JC: Yeah. Besides yourself, there are going to be a lot of new additions to the cast this year.
ND: Yeah, there is a good amount of them.
JC: Do you think that it’s risky to add all of these new characters to a show that was so successful last year? Like would it confuse things even more with too many people running around?
ND: You know, I think that you if you liked the first season you must really like that kind of show. Heroes is a very ambitious show and they are very adamant about not repeating themselves, and continually delivering storylines. So this new season is very ambitious and has completely new storylines. Certain characters you wouldn’t think would cross paths, cross paths and I think that is really exciting for the audience. I mean I get really excited when I read the script each week. I want to know what happens next, because crazy stuff happens all the time that I had know idea was going to happen. The writers are so smart and so savvy in this type of storytelling, I think it makes it more exciting to bring more people in, and hopefully the audience thinks so.
JC: Yeah. Why do you think Heroes has been so popular with everyone then?
ND: I think that it’s intelligent. It’s full of action and full of surprises, which I think people like to see in big-budget television. People like to see action, surprises, and conflict. I think we are in a time period right now where there is a renaissance for comics and science-fiction. So that is why things like Spiderman, Superman, and Batman, all of these remaking of enterprises have been really successful. As I have said my whole life, people are really falling in love with superpowers and the imagination of that world. I think it’s very imaginative, and what the writers of Heroes does is bring that imagination into reality that we can all believe. What would it actually be like if we could have superpowers and live a normal life. I think that’s really the great credit of this show.
JC: Right, very good. That’s all I have for you. Thanks for your time and good luck with the show.
ND: Alright, thanks so much.
– The second season of Heroes premieres on NBC in the U.S. on Monday, September 24 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
– The second season of Heroes premieres on the GLOBAL network in Canada on Monday, September 24 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
