Dean Devlin previews the LEVERAGE finale!

LEVERAGE ends its 2nd season tonight with the second half of a two part finale, directed by Dean Devlin.  I had the chance to be involved in a conference call with him last week, and he had some great info about what might happen in the episodes to come!

So I wanted to ask you, the [last] “Three Strikes Job” episode…it had a lot of twists and turns on its own and almost would have been a pretty satisfying ending on its own but then I see the preview for the second part and it looks like things get even more intense within the group.  So what can you tell me about what the team is going to face during the season finale?
Well you know the theme of the whole second season was really about identity, in other words you know before the season – before season 1 began, these were all loners who all worked by themselves, who didn’t really have a sense of family.  In season 1, they had come together but the question was could they hold themselves together?

And in season 2 really the question became well, if they’re not who they used to be before they got together, who are they now?  And so the real exploration in this next episode is the culmination of these stories and a discovery really of who they are in relationship to each other, in who they’re going to be going forward.

You know in this season Sophie had to leave the team to find out who she was.  Nate is trying to redefine himself and he’s – obviously he’s had struggles as he’s fallen off the wagon and trying to understand who he is.  So this will all culminate in next week’s episode.

I was wondering if you could talk about the decision to have Sophie as such an active participant in the back half of the season.  A lot of shows that I know would just kind of say oh, this character has gone off somewhere and never refer to them again, but you know she keeps coming up and she has these really pivotal plot moments with Nate.  So can you talk about you know how you approached her absence and how you decided to work it that way?
Well you know this was the necessity being the mother of invention, so as Gina’s pregnancy came out, we didn’t want to just move her off the show.  We really wanted to try to keep her there as much as possible.  But we had made the decision that it wasn’t good for the character for her to have a child, so we needed to work around her pregnancy.

But she’s such an important part of the show that we didn’t want to have her leave the show entirely so we tried to find ways to keep her involved in a meaningful way and yet still try to work around the pregnancy.

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LEVERAGE Summer Finale tonight!

Check out a sneak peak from tonight’s all new LEVERAGE summer finale!  Don’t worry folks, it comes back in the winter-time with all new capers!

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Who’s excited?

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The Hacker (Aldis Hodge) talks LEVERAGE

In my quest to talk to as many people from LEVERAGE as possible, I hit actor number three, Aldis Hodge, late last week, to reflect on the episode where he killed it as the conspiracy theorist without a stylist, and to talk about what’s coming up, what con is his favorite, and why you all should be watching!

I just want to say first off, LEVERAGE has quickly become one of my favorite shows on TV, and I try to get everyone that I know to watch it.  And everyone that I know who is watching it, is loving it!
That’s cool, thank you!

Why originally, when it all started, how did you get involved, why did this character draw you in?  Talk a little about that!
What drew me to the character was the fact that I was going to be having an awesome job! A lot of it was the fact that this character, I didn’t oppose this character in any way.  Immediate attraction there.  I had a good time doing it, I got the job.  It turned out to be great, working with the writers.  They give me a lot of creative space, and freedom to do what it is that I do, such as improv-ing and helping to build on the character.  If there’s something else to throw in, to give it a little flava, I don’t feel stifled by it.  I don’t feel like, I gotta play one note, this entire run of LEVERAGE.  They allow me to go wherever my mind tells me to go, and as an actor, that’s the most that I could really ask, in terms of doing a job.  That’s all that I am.  As an actor, I’m nothing but creative energy on the screen, and I’m trying to let that flourish as much as possible.

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Christian Kane talks LEVERAGE

Everyone knows by now that LEVERAGE is one of my favorite shows, since I mention it at least once an update these days.  Well, it’s one of Christian Kane’s favorite shows, too, and not just because he stars as Eliot “The Hitter” Spencer.  He has a genuine love for these characters and thinks you should, too.

I had a chance to spend some time chatting with Christian last week about why he got involved, what’s coming up on tonight’s episode, and his “little” music career that’s skyrocketing!

I want to start off by saying that I love this show, I’m in love with this show, can’t talk about it enough.
That’s awesome.  With MyTakeOnTV it could have gone the other way  [laughs].

I’m interested, and I always ask this first – what drew you to the character of Eliot?
There’s there thing, and I’ll give you the B and C – the B and C is definitely Dean Devlin and John Rogers.  These are good guys to work with.  It’s tough for me to come out of a series like ANGEL with Joss Whedon, who writes for the actor and writes in a way that it’s all fantasy and it’s a kid’s dream to be a part of that show, and it’s really tough to do a series after that, whenever you’re having so much fun playing around on cables, and blowing stuff up, and dealing with demons and angels and all that stuff.  I’ve done it.  So when you’re a kid, and you’re praying for something like to happen to you, one of the guys you want to work with, obviously, is Dean Devlin – INDEPENDENCE DAY, THE PATRIOT, all that stuff.  I’m living the dream right now, just off those two guys  alone.  To have a writer like Joss Whedon write for you for so long on ANGEL, which was such a great character.  John Rogers has done exactly the same thing.  That’s very rare in television.  And then A, I’m going back to the little kid with his hands in air, praying to be an actor.  This is the role that I used to pray to God for, that I could play.  I’m living the dream, man.  As soon as I saw the fact that Eliot was Eliot, it’s like, ‘you’ve gotta be kidding, I can’t believe I got this job.  Their are so many people that would die to play this role.’  And I’m sitting there doing it

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LEVERAGE premieres tonight!

One of my favorite shows of the season, LEVERAGE, comes back  tonight with a fantastic episode. The team had all gone their separate ways by the end of the first season, and in a really random and perfect way, they get themselves back together and working together before Nate even realizes what hits him.  The chemistry of the cast speaks volumes, and it was so much fun to be back together with them.

Nate is now living over a bar in Boston, struggling with his decision to stay sober, and, though he would never admit it, he’s missing the team like crazy.  You can really see him light up when they get back to their old conning ways.  Sophie is still a terrible acting-actress, but a brilliant con-artist.  Parker, Hardison, Eliot, they’re all the same, and as funny as ever.  The hour itself went way too fast, and I can’t wait to see how the rest of the season goes!

Check out a sneak peek of tonight’s episode!

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Sam Anderson talks LEVERAGE and LOST

I recently had the chance to chat with the incomparable Sam Anderson, the character actor that you know from just about every TV show in the last 30 years.  He currently plays Bernard Nadler on LOST and is guest starring in an episode of LEVERAGE, airing tonight on TNT.  He plays a character who does some dastardly deeds, and ends up getting scammed by Nate and the team.  We spoke for over ten minutes, and he just seems like one of the most down to earth actors I’ve talked to in a long time.

Here is a little excerpt from the interview that is running over on partner site theTVAddict:

Tell me about your role on LEVERAGE. I’m loving this show and am so I’m excited to see you on it.
Sam Anderson: Oh, good, because I love it too. It’s very, very different from my role on LOST for sure. I play a very ruthless contractor, major contractor, who with my 2 sons, go into disaster areas, like Hurricane Katrina, offer to rebuild people’s houses or fix them or do whatever needs to be done, and never do the work. And when they refuse to pay, I remind them of their contract which has a lien on their property if they don’t pay, we take their property, we kick them out, and we move on.

What attracted you to this role?
Well, I love Dean Devlin. I love Tony Bill who is the director and it was so different from what I do on LOST that I just thought “Oh how much fun could this be?!” Also, just the underlying issue of that, even though there’s a lot of this that’s very funny. The underlying story is that there certainly are a lot of ruthless people in the world, and we’ve heard a lot about them in the news recently. I love seeing that. I love seeing that, even if it’s fiction, I love seeing them get their comeuppance.

Read the rest of the interview over at theTVAddict and let me know what you think!

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Must Watch Sunday: LEVERAGE

Be sure to tune into TNT’s latest dramatic offering tonight at 10 – LEVERAGE!  Starring Academy Award winner Timothy Hutton (who is so damn good in this show) and ANGEL’s Christian Kane, LEVERAGE is a high paced action adventure series with comedy and high stakes drama.  The official description from TNT is:

In LEVERAGE, Hutton plays former insurance investigator Nate Ford, a once-loyal corporate employee who had recovered millions of dollars in stolen goods for his employer. But when that employer denied his son’s insurance claims and allowed the boy to die, he realized he could no longer work for such an entity.

Out of work and descending into alcoholism, Ford is hired by an aeronautics executive to recover airplane designs the executive claims were stolen by a rival company. Helping him are four highly skilled team members: Parker (Beth Riesgraf – Alvin and the Chipmunks), an expert thief; Alec Hardison (Aldis Hodge – Friday Night Lights), a specialist in Internet and computer fraud; Eliot Spencer (Christian Kane – Into the West), a high-octane “retrieval specialist” who can take out a gang of henchmen without breaking a sweat; and Sophie Devereaux (Gina Bellman – Coupling), a grifter who could win awards for her acting skills during difficult scams. At first the newly formed team is hesitant to trust each other after so many years working alone but being double-crossed changes the dynamic, ultimately forcing them to unite. They emerge from the job realizing they are far better working together than apart. Once they discover they can trust each other the group targets their cons toward the richest, the greediest and the most unjust.

I loved every minute of the opening episode.  Hutton is brilliant, and Christian Kane’s Eliot (who just needs a friend) is great as a misunderstood thief.  I was never a big fan of Voodoo Tate on FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, but Aldis Hodge is playing such a great, different character in this show, that he easily stood out as one of my favorite things about the show.

Tune in tonight to the premiere, and catch episode two on Tuesday (the show’s real night) – let us know your take after the jump!

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