SAN DIEGO “" When Blast spoke with “Chuck” co-creator Chris Fedak last, he and Josh Schwartz were pumping up their game-changing second season finale, which they felt would ensure NBC to give them the greenlight for a third season. Well, their finale was gamechanging, and they got their third season, but Fedak wasn’t spilling the beans. Even having just come from a packed “Chuck” Comic-Con panel where Vik Sahay and Scott Krinsky performed “Fat-Bottom Girls” as their onscreen band, Jeffster, wasn’t enough to give us the details on season three.

On how much of season three is planned:

We know how, like last year, when we sat down to talk about [the season two finale], we knew our ending. I know my ending for the third season as well. So in some ways we go back and we build to that point of where we want to be. And it’s going to be super big and it’s going to be super exciting. We use super. I like super stuff. So we kind of know where we’re going. So right now the writers are half way through the season from a script-writing perspective, and then production will start; we’ll slow down.

On what season three will be about:

Chuck now has these abilities. How does he master them? Because it didn’t come with a manual “" or maybe it did and we haven’t seen it yet. And he has Sarah and Casey, not only there to protect him, but also to be the sensai, to help him master these skills. This is like the super hero story told in a little bit of slow motion. ["¦] [Season three]‘s not going to so much veer away [from previous seasons], it’s going to evolve. For a story about a guy like Chuck, essentially you want to watch him get better at being a spy. You want to watch him master some skills, to be the guy who’s not just waiting in the car. And I think that that’s very much where the show is going. So it’s not much veering, but like an evolution. It should feel like this is where we want to go.

On whether the Buy More will be in season three:

The Buy More will still be an integral part of the “Chuck” story. We’re not losing the Buy More: it’s our most expensive set. We’ll definitely be going back there. We’ve always found that our cast is wonderful, and we want to see Chuck in that world almost as much as we want to see Chuck in the spy world.

On whether Tony Hale will return:

Tony Hale is going to be a part of season three. And he’s, umm”¦ umm”¦ That’s all I’ll say.

On the length of season three:

Right now we have an order for 13 episodes. NBC can extend that order like they did last season. If they decide to put us on after the Winter Olympics we could go longer. And there’s always a chance, because schedules aren’t written in stone, that they could move us up and have us come on earlier. “¦ We do have a hurry-up office, yes. We start production in a week and a half, so we’re getting close.

On guest stars:

Last year when we started thinking about guest stars, thinking about the Michael Clarke Duncan’s and, you know, there was a lot of like crazy names out there. So this year, we’ve got this enormous list of just like all the people we love; you know, all our favorite actors, so we’ll go through it and figure it out. But we haven’t cast anyone yet but we’re circling the block. It’s not “Love Boat” but still. I love ideas. If there’s somebody you think should be on the show, you know … I think President Obama would be fantastic. However, someone who is an actor and somewhat available to the show, I don’t know. My “Star Trek” nerdiness means I would love Shatner. That would be fantastic. I don’t know. There’s so many people I think would be great for our show.

On Chuck kicking ass:

Zach (Levi) has been looking forward to kicking some ass for quite some time. I remember on the pilot explaining to him, “You know you don’t get to carry the gun, right?” and he was quite upset. We had many conversations. So he was super excited to have those abilities.

Blast talked with “Chuck” co-creator Chris Fedak about what season two has in store, who will be coming to the show, and just how long it will take for the big secrets in the Chuck-iverse to be revealed:

BLAST: How is shooting for “Chuck” going?

CF: It’s going well; we’re shooting episode 2.09. So we’re nine episodes in and we’re currently writing episode 13. It’s going really, really well.

BLAST: This is the first [show] you’ve done, right? Can you maybe tell me a little bit about that?

CF: Yeah, before this I was working at the film archive for the Motion Picture Film Academy. Then I was also writing features on the side, and I had a feature in development, but by hook or by crook I couldn’t show it to anyone as a spec, but I could show it to TV people, because TV feature people don’t talk. So Josh read it and really dug it, and we went to school together so we started talking about TV shows we liked to see. That’s where “Chuck” came from.

BLAST: The first time I saw the whole Buy More parody off of Best Buy, I couldn’t get over that. I thought it was so funny. ["Chuck"] definitely has those elements, like when Chuck and Bryce are talking in Klingon. It definitely has that funny, more-comedy-than-comedy element to it.

CF: Yeah, that’s the fun of the show for us. There are those moments where the show has high concept action; in each episode we try to come up with something we haven’t seen before, or if we have seen it before, we put some sort of twist or turn on it. And then on the other side of the coin there is the Buy More story. It’s like Chuck’s story with his sister Ellie and Captain Awesome. Those stories are just as important; the heart-warming stuff at home or the high comedy at the Buy More. It’s really fun to make the show because there are so many things that just put a smile on the face as we’re doing it.

BLAST: So what part of the show is you and what part of the show is Josh, because Josh’s other projects; “The OC” and “Gossip Girl”, have a very, very different feel than “Chuck” does.

CF: It’s our work together. We co-wrote the pilot, and I think it’s very much a matching of our sensibilities. Before working on “Chuck,” I was writing what most people would consider action stuff, and Josh’s stuff shows he can write action, but he’s also been very successful with the comedy and soap opera stuff with “The OC” and “Gossip Girl.” I think that the show “Chuck” is definitely comes from the imaginings of two guys who grew up in the 80s and watched a whole lot of Spielberg movies, a lot of Joe Dante movies [...]. Sometimes when we thing about the show and the stuff that we want to include, we’ll say it’s on the cutting edge of 1984. It’s very much the product of that 80s psych, and Josh and I both think in the same TV and movies. Sometimes there’s just the ideal cop in the room, and we all know what we’re tapping into. We’re tapping into some music video that we all watched way too many times or a TV show that we were obsessed with when we were 13. Sometimes there’s an episode which is like one person’s obsession more than everybody else. We’ve got a really exciting episode coming up which is based on old Atari video games. That was very much the writer who is working on this sort of disgrace, and we all kind of dug it because it’s like “Oh, that’s half the stuff we were obsessed with as kids.” When it comes to the physical production of “Chuck,” Josh is a fantastic show runner. With all his experience from “The OC”, he knows how to run a television show, so it’s a real learning process for myself just to go from writing scripts to actually in television, it’s such an involved process. The writers are involved not only in the writing of it, but also in the casting, the producing, and then the editing of the show; you’re there all along the way. So then as a producer, I’ve learned an incredible amount in just the last two years. It’s like the best master class anyone could have. I suggest that everyone get their own television show. Josh has been a great partner in that.

BLAST: You guys kind of got cut off partway through your first season because of the strike. How many episodes are you going for this season?

CF: The expectation of probably 20 could kind of change more or less partway through the season. We’re currently working on our first 13 episodes, with the expectation that we’ll get a back nine from NBC, which is the way it usually works in television; if you make 13 episodes, then they’ll order nine more. We’ve designed the season very much around the lines of taking the 22 episodes, and then if NBC decides maybe even more, who knows. In our first season, we made 13 episodes, and we had just kind of gotten to the realization that people were really digging the show and we had found a really nice audience and we were building. It was around episode six of our first season that we really got into the “Chuck” back story and we realized that people were truly interested in the mythology of the show. They wanted to know about more about Chuck, where he comes from, why Bryce sent him the Intersect’s secrets. We were just really digging into that mystery when, unfortunately, the writers’ strike hit. Then we had to kind of close up shop. After the strike was over, NBC decided to give us a second season as opposed to nine more episodes. What we essentially did was take most of the concepts we wanted to get into in the back nine and turn that into the beginning of the second season. Of course you have to massage everything when you do that because essentially a season is kind of like a giant book with each episode being a chapter. We’ve gone back and our first episode we’re definitely re-launching the show, so that if a person didn’t watch those first 13 episodes, they can kind of get back into the show very quickly, or understand the show very quickly. We had a lot of great ideas that we were very excited about, and now we’re looking forward to getting into them. I think that when Josh and I first came up with the show, we were very much thinking about stand alone episodes, kind of like a show from the 60s, 70s, or 80s. It would be a mystery of the week or an action show of the week. And you would have a villain come in and tell a little mini action-comedy story, but we realized that people really liked the mythology, and I think that people have been primed with shows like “Lost” and “The X-Files”, expect mythology. It was exciting for us; it was like “Oh, people want to know more. They want to have recurring villains and they want to have a greater sense of the mythology and a greater sense of the mystery.” We loved to oblige them in the second season.

BLAST: Is this going to have a more direct plot? Is there going to be an actual nemesis, more so than Bryce, that’s going to be introduced?

CF: Yeah, absolutely. We began to tease out the idea that there was an organization called Fulcrum in the first season, which is essentially like in “Three Days of the Condor” in the way he describes a CIA within the CIA. This mysterious organization is something we’re playing with now in the second season. Like, who exactly are these people and what do they want? A lot of shows have gone down this road and we are looking to tell it, but what’s our original “Chuck” take on that? I mean, they have operatives and people who are looking for Bryce Larkin because they believe that Bryce is the Intersect computer. But it’s like “What makes these people tick?” In our show, it’s like there’s always intermediates, there’s a lot of villains who are working for [Fulcrum], or working for people who don’t even know. Through this season, we’d like to get the audience excited about what is actually happening and what in our bigger, overarching mystery. What is their plan? There will be more of an organization as well as Bryce Larkin will [be involved]. Fulcrum is something we look forward to getting into.

BLAST: I’m taking from that that you might get into them very quickly in the first few episodes?

CF: Yes, you could say that. You could definitely say that. The show is started with a real bang this year. Our first episode is an epic. We’ve got amazing bits of action having to do with the re-launch of the new Intersect computer, Chuck thinking that he might be let go, that the government might be done with him, and he can go back to his old life. What does that mean for him and Sarah? I would say that our first three episodes are definitely an arch unto themselves; essentially getting us back into the show and dealing with the Sarah/ Chuck romance. They’re really romantic. There’s a lot of romance in the first three episodes, as well as a lot of slam-bang action.

BLAST: What about Bryce? I heard he’s going to be coming back a couple of times this season.

CF: Yeah, Matt Bomer is fantastic; we worked with him last season. He was also the first person to work on the pilot on our first day of shooting with the Intersect vault scene. Matt brought such a great energy to the show that it’s been a real great pleasure to work with him. He will be coming back to the show this year right now. And he comes back at a very unfortunate time for poor Charles Irving Bartowski.

BLAST: I feel like there are a lot of questions left in the “Chuck” mythology, even back to the Stanford days, because we didn’t get a quite clear explanation from Bryce’s perspective why he did what he did. How long is it going to take for those to get cleared up?

CF: Some of the mysteries are things that even Bryce doesn’t know the answers to. Those things will be addressed this season. But when you see Bryce, he won’t have all the answers for you. In other parts of the show, we will go back to Stanford, but maybe they won’t deal with Bryce. We’ll definitely be going back into each of our characters’ back stories and teasing out those things that lead to who they are personally but also to the mythology of the show; the Intersect super computer, Bryce Larkin, Fulcrum, and why Chuck was sent those secrets. I think that that’s definitely what will be answered by the end of the season.

BLAST: Can you tell me a little bit about Tony Hale joining the cast?

CF: Ah, Tony Hale; he’s great. And that goes to the Buy More side of the story. A lot of the time we talk about spy stuff on the show, but such great fun is in the works for the comedy side of things, inside the Buy More. Tony Hale will be joining the cast as Emmett Milbarge, the new assistant manager inside the Buy More. Emmett is a passive aggressive character, and sometimes overtly aggressive. And when he comes into the store, it’s like he lasers in on one Charles Irving Bartowski because he realizes these are two men cut from the same cloth; leaders, college men as well. Unfortunately Chuck is public enemy number one for Emmett Milbarge. We kind of saw Emmett as someone cut from the J. Edgar Hoover cloth by way of Mussolini. His presence in the store is a new challenge for Chuck. One of the things we love about the show is that the stakes inside the Buy More are sometimes as seemingly high as the stakes out there in the real world, with the intensity. When people go to their jobs, it’s the most important thing in their life. For Morgan and Jeff and Lester and Anna, Emmett Milbarge is their Fulcrum, is their evil nemesis. Tony is fantastic; he’s come in and he’s hilarious, and we’ve been really enjoying cutting his episodes.

BLAST: Are there any surprises you can let us know about in the first episode? Anything we can look forward to?

CF: Essentially by the end of the teaser; first episode, our entire show is turned on its head. It’s an exciting, amazing episode with a twist ending that hopefully no one in their right mind will see coming, except for the people that wrote it. Also, just in the upcoming episodes, we’ve got a lot of great cast members coming on. Tony Hale. We also have Melinda Clarke from “The OC” coming as Sasha Banacheck, KGB spy. We have John Larroquette on the show playing episode two, playing Roe Montgomery, the master seducer who will train Chuck Bartowski in how to seduce women. We also have Michael Clarke Duncan in the first episode; 2.01, starring as the villain of that one. In episode 2.04 we have Nicole Richie who is really funny. So we have a lot of really great guest stars coming on this year and it’s been a lot of fun to cut these people in and introduce them to our crazy world. The show really comes to life.

Blast got a chance to talk to Joshua Gomez who plays Morgan on the TV show “Chuck” and hear a little bit about the upcoming season from one of its actors. Here’s what we had to say:

BLAST: So how goes shooting?

JG: It goes well. We’re having a blast. It’s totally just a pleasure and so much fun to come to work and work on this set because it’s a great set. It’s a fun set.

BLAST: Does Morgan get to get into the action a little bit (in season two)? Maybe?

JG: He gets into his own action. He doesn’t go out in any of the Chuck world stuff as of yet, and I don’t know if he ever will, though I’m sure he’d love it, between you and I.

BLAST: I think we’d love it too.

JG: Yeah. Some of the action comes to him at the Buy More whether inadvertently, like he doesn’t know, or like the rest of the stuff gets mixed up at the Buy More. And then there’s a few things that are like things that are specifically centered around the “ËœB’ story and the Buy More and sort of Morgan and some enemies, but like Michael Strahan from the New York Giants, and he kind of plays a big jock guy or whatever and him and Morgan get into it. So he gets into his own trouble at the Buy More.

BLAST: What about him and Anna, because that kind of tapered off at the end of season one. Does that continue into season two?

JG: It does. Yeah, it definitely does. And so is the fun little romance. It’s pretty bizarre. She’s definitely the uh… she wears the pants, or leggings.

BLAST: The short skirts in the relationship?

JG: She wears the short skirts and leggings in the relationship. Yeah, so it’s pretty funny. Exactly. Everyone kind of wasn’t sure, well, what happened? And I think that was a lot to do with the strike. I think that those episodes weren’t as fleshed out as they could be because they only had to go off of the outline that they really had through whatever episode. I think that’s the reason why the last episodes are kind of like “Huh?” We are kind of where we left off where Morgan and Anna were at. There’s some fun stuff that happens between those two. It’s pretty cool.

BLAST: I was a little worried. I was like “Did I miss something in here?”

JG: Yeah, I think a lot of people felt that way. Exactly. When we first started to do little tests for the beginning of this season, that was one of the first questions. It was like “What the hell is going on with you and Anna; where did she go?” I think everyone was kind of like hoping that that wasn’t going away. So yeah, no, it’s good.

BLAST: What about Morgan and Ellie?

JG: Mmm, now we’re getting down to it. No, at this point I think it’s just he’s good with Anna and Ellie’s now engaged with Captain Awesome. But I think in Morgan’s brain, it’s just one of those childhood absolute infatuations, first love kind of deal, and she’ll always be that. I think he loves Anna, and I think all that’s cool, but I think that if Ellie was like “Hey, what’s up Morgan?” he might not hesitate. I think he’ll always love her in that young boy’s dream kind of thing. It’s very sweet and very childlike love.

BLAST: Especially in the first few episodes of the first season you definitely got that puppy dog sort of “Oh, you want to hang out?” type of thing.

JG: It’s less of that now between Morgan and Ellie. It’s almost brother and sister, and that’s exactly what it was. She was like big sister to both he and Chuck. So I think that there’s more of that now Anna’s around. I kind of get off her case a little bit. I think there’s still a sweetness between (Morgan and Ellie) that’s unspoken. It comes out here and there. But yeah, it’s good. Another great relationship.

BLAST: I heard Josh Schwartz talk at Comic-con and I believe he said that this season takes up pretty much right where the last season ended. Is that true?

JG: Yeah.

BLAST: Can you kind of set us up for where we’re going to be starting episode one?

JG: Basically the government has kind of constructed another working Intersect. So it does pick up where we left off which is that “Okay now what happens?” Is John Casey going to get the orders to, once the Intersect is completed and fully operational, now what do we do with Chuck kind of a deal. Is he going to have to be eliminated or quarantined? I think that’s where we kind of left off and that’s exactly where we pick up with season two. Literally I think it picks up with Chuck being held out of a building and while he’s hanging there the audience will get a little recap through his panicked words. There’s not much of a gap there. It’s sort of, if the Intersect is completed, what’s going to become of Chuck? And part of that is kind of good; part of it is Chuck going like “Oh my Lord, to be free of this thing.” But I think he thinks that if the Intersect is finished, he’s a free man. He can go back to his normal life. That’s where we’ll probably pick up from.

BLAST: At the beginning, right when Chuck did download the Intersect, there was some talk of removing it. That tapered away though, and they just used him as a tool. Does that come back in this whole “We have a new Intersect” conversation? Or is it basically just “You’re going to die”?

JG: Not so much of a removal. The removal I don’t think worked and it never really comes up again. I think it’s basically “We can’t have two Intersects”. We can’t have some guy walking around knowing all these things in his head because that’s still way too much of a (danger). It doesn’t come down to removal as much as removal of him completely.

BLAST: Do we have any new characters? Maybe in the Buy More or new agents that are coming that might stay for a little bit longer or become more main?

JG: Yeah. Most of the characters that you’re probably familiar with in the first season become a little bit more present. Most of the Nerd Herd and obviously like Anna and Jeff and Lester and Big Mike and all those guys are recurring regulars or regulars or whatever. They’re going to be playing a little bit more of a role in the whole thing especially at the Buy More I think. And then of course Tony Hale comes on; Tony Hale from Arrested Development, who is just so much fun and such a cool dude and so funny. He comes on to play this really cool character called Emmett Milbarge who is brought in from corporate Buy More as an efficiency expert and as he spends more time at the Buy More you realize we are not friends. That’s the cool stuff. We had C.S. Lee played Harry Tang and he was great character for the Buy More and an adversary for Chuck and Morgan at the Buy More. Emmett’s that kind of character. This story is playing out much more like Morgan has… I hate to use the word “grown up,” because not quite yet, but he’s maturing and taking on a little more responsibility, he gets a little bit more responsibility, people are now coming to him. Chuck’s by now left the Buy More because I think the spy world is really starting to consume him a little bit more this season. At the Buy More, people like the Nerd Herd and the gang and stuff are turning to Morgan now and he does the best he can in his Morgan way, and so it usually leads to some fun times at the Buy More. And so Emmett becomes this really cool adversary for Morgan and the guys and Tony just fit right in and is just great right off the bat. It’s fun.

BLAST: What kind of character does Tony play? Is he channeling the whole “Buster” persona or is he going to be more along the lines of a serious [character]?

JG: Well, both. He’s definitely a new deal but he plays his character so well it’s easy to imagine that this is the guy that if he finds a piece of lint in his pocket he would blow a gasket. Emmett is this like ridiculously anal [character] and takes his job way too serious and the rest of us couldn’t take it any less serious, including Big Mike. You’ll definitely find some elements of [Buster], but I think it’s a whole new deal and a whole new character. It’s pretty funny. It’s pretty good stuff.

BLAST: So he’s the big new character; there’s no one else super surprising?

JG: He’s not until the fourth or fifth [episode] right now. He’s not in every episode. He doesn’t start the season off in the show but he eventually kind of comes in. As far as new characters though, nothing changes too much. As far as the spy world is concerned you still have Chuck, Casey, and Sarah, the three of them are sort of out there, so no one really gets added to that gang. A lot of cool guest stars though, a lot of people coming on board: Michael Clarke Duncan and there’s an episode where John Laroquette plays an ex-spy who has to come in and teach Chuck how to be more suave and how to seduce women and once again, a great premise, a great actor coming in. And him and Zack together are just great because they’re both so freaking cool. So yeah, you got a lot of cool guest stars, but the cast’s pretty much the same as it was like I said with the addition of some recurring like Tony Hale. That’s about it. That’s about it so far.

BLAST: What about the plot? Is there a more definite destination that we’re going towards? Is there going to be a nemesis introduced?

JG: What’s funny is that I tried to talk to the guys all the time, whether it be Josh Schwartz and mostly with Chris Fedak who I see a lot. I love trying to get answers out of them, the writing staff and stuff. But it’s like, they’ll give you little niblets. You know they have a plan. You know, they’ll pull out their Chuck bible and… I know they have their whole history ready to go. I think there’s going to be stuff they’re going to introduce, people they’re going to introduce, roads they’re going to go down, but I just don’t think they’re going to give it up to us. Every script that I get is the same as what you guys are going to be seeing every week, watching it. It’s just like “Okay, okay. Interesting, interesting.” I mean there’s a few things they’ll tell us in advance but as far as any big things like that where are we going to find out what really happened to Chuck’s parents or is his father alive and is he out there? I’m sure they have a map and a blueprint, but they sure as hell aren’t telling me.‚  But I’m sure whatever it is, it will be good. I think we’re shooting episode nine right now and there’s some kind of cool revelations and some cool things. And of course Bryce Larkin, who kind of is the nemesis, he’s popping in and out. There’s always Bryce lingering, kind of causing havoc, kind of helping Chuck and also hurting him at the same time. I would say that if there is a nemesis, it would still be Bryce Larkin. As far as anything new, again, perhaps, but I don’t know.

BLAST: Well once again, thanks for talking to us. We look forward to watching Morgan wreak havoc at the Buy More.

JG: [laughing] Well, you will. You will.