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http://theedge.bostonherald.com/tvNews/view.bg?articleid=179653

Brain-teaser: Zachary Quinto relishes playing a sicko on NBC’stuff ‘Heroes’By Amy Amatangelo
Monday, January 29, 2007

No one can accuse Zachary Quinto of being typecast.

Before playing the brain-eating Sylar on NBC’s “Heroes”, he was Tori Spelling’s fabulous friend Sasan on VH1’s “So noTORIous.” He got his first big break as CTU operative Adam Kaufman on the third season of Fox’s “24.”

“I’ve worked long and hard to learn my craft in a way that allows me to go from one thing to another,” Quinto said. “But the unfortunate reality of Los Angeles and Hollywood is oftentimes people see you as one thing, and then they get that image stuck in their heads and they don’t really expand beyond it. That’s why it’s such a breath of fresh air to be working with people who can see the stuff I’ve done in the past and allow it to enhance their awareness of what I’m capable of.”

But how does a self-described nice guy play one of TV’s sickest baddies?

“I connect to a lot about him, actually,” he said. “I think there are parts of this character in everybody. This kind of hunger, this kind of need for validation and attention is in everybody. And it’s a real opportunity to explore that part of myself.”

The Pittsburgh native studied acting at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University and lived in New York before moving to Los Angeles. Now, in his most high-profile role to date, he’s an eight-year overnight success story.

“Nothing else could even come close to fulfilling me as much as acting does,” he said. “And I think that’s a really important thing because if you can imagine yourself doing something else, you should do something else. You really should. Because it’s not an easy life. It’s really hard. There’s a lot of struggle. You come up against a lot of your own demons. This town particularly can feed those demons if you let it. You have to have blind faith.”

Quinto hopes that after the hype around the series dies down, fans will explore the meaning behind “Heroes.”

“The thing that drew me to the show in the first place more than anything else is the fact that I really feel the message of this show is important right now. People are awakening to their own power to stop evil in the world. We need to change the world, or we’re not going to be around to enjoy the next installment of ‘Heroes.’ ”
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http://www.theolympian.com/105/story/62848.html

Takei breaks new ground in 'Heroes'

Ellen Gray
Philadelphia Daily News

NBC'S "Heroes" is about to send "Star Trek's" George Takei where he, at least, has never gone before.

When the deep-voiced actor known to millions as "Mr. Sulu" turns up today as the father of Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka), he'll apparently be speaking Japanese, and only Japanese.
"You know, I've made speeches in Japan, I've received a decoration from the emperor of Japan - the Order of the Rising Sun - which I accepted in Japanese, but I have never worked in Japanese," said Takei, 69, earlier this month during an NBC party in Pasadena, Calif.

"And here I am, doing prime-time television, popular television, in Japanese. I haven't, you know, worked in Japan in Japanese. And here I am in the United States, working in Japanese with English subtitles. So that's a delight. But it's also a challenge, because it is not my first language," said Takei, who was born in Los Angeles but spent much of World War II confined with his family in internment camps for Japanese-Americans.

Language wasn't the only challenge.

"Heroes" creator Tim Kring appears to operate on a need-to-know basis with his actors, and Takei, who had filmed three episodes by mid-January and described his commitment to the show as "open-ended," said he's learning about his character a little bit at a time.

"I go from script to script," he said.

What he knows:

"I'm a powerful industrialist. We come from a very distinguished family, an old-line family. I was brought up that way, and I thought I would bring up my son that way, but I'm discovering that there are strange things happening."

Beyond that, "I really don't know who my character is, and why my character does what he does, and what his motivations are and where he's going, because with each new script, I make new discoveries. And is he good, or is he bad, is he domineering or is he being told to behave that way? I mean, there's so many ambiguous things about it," Takei said.

Oka, whose character grew up watching "Star Trek," has said he'd like to see some acknowledgment of the Sulu connection on "Heroes," and Takei agrees.

"He should at least 'Papa, you look like Sulu,' " he said.

Oka, who earlier this month had so far worked only a day or two with Takei, nevertheless does a dead-on impression of the actor, whom he described as "an iconic figure."

"Offscreen, he would tell the old stories," Oka said, lowering his voice to mimic Takei's sonorous tones: "'Back in my day, we used to use camels for transportation."'

Oka's Hiro won't be the only character we'll see Takei with in the coming weeks.

"My last scene was with Horned Rimmed Glasses. Yesterday, as a matter of fact," said Takei, alluding to the nickname of the mysterious character played by Jack Coleman, whose own role in the series so far has been the very definition of ambiguous.

"As I said, all my scenes are in Japanese. That poor guy. He said, 'I'm the deer. There's the headlights,' " Takei said, laughing. "But he did a great job. It was very accented," but understandable.

"He's speaking in Japanese. He memorized it all phonetically," he said.

So Horned Rimmed Glasses speaks Japanese? Hmm ...

Other than that he wouldn't mind having a role, Takei only knows what he's heard about "Star Trek XI," a project from "Lost" co-creator J.J. Abrams. (Some reports suggest the new film could be a prequel to the original series.)

"What would Capt. Sulu be doing a few years after ... 'Star Trek VI'? ... Fans would like to know," he said, laughing.

These days, Takei probably spends as much time talking about gay rights as he does about "Star Trek," after deciding to open up about his personal life for the first time in 2005.

"You know, I've been out, with, certainly family and friends, and my 'Star Trek' colleagues, for many, many years," he said. "The only thing I had not done is talk to the press" about it, something that changed when California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a same-sex marriage bill.

Until the veto, "I thought surely ... my partner and I were going to be able to get married," he said. "When he played to the narrowest, most reactionary segment of his conservative base and vetoed, I felt I needed to speak out. And for me to do that, my voice needed to be authentic. And so I spoke to you guys for the first time."

And, no, it doesn't appear to have hurt his career, which now includes recurring appearances on "The Howard Stern Show."

"I do think there's more interest in me" since his public coming-out, Takei said. "When you get a lot of press, the industry gets more interested."

on tv.
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http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNzYmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTcwNjUyNDImeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3
Mix picks: TV

Shows worth tuning in this week:

HEROES -- There are more dire situations for Hiro (Masi Oka), including the introduction of his father. Of course, Dad is no ordinary parental figure to us. Dad is played by George Takei, who was also Sulu in the original "Star Trek" series. Since "Heroes" launched in September, Hiro has emerged as a fan favorite. Besides the time with his father, Hiro has other surprises to face, producers say. "We have an episode coming up, episode 20, that's a very future-oriented episode that's going to really kind of answer a lot of questions," says "Heroes" creator Tim Kring, who adds the mysteries of the show will be wrapped up this season. "The idea behind the show was really about what happens to these characters and about their lives," he says. "While Season 1 ... foresees or prophesies this apocalyptic event, we will deal with that in Season 1, and Season 2 will have another story attached to it." (9 p.m. Monday, NBC)
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/4506574.html

THE HEROES BEHIND OUR HEROES
A soft landing for Heroes' Cabrera

At first glance, he's just another pretty face, albeit one that, for the longest time, he kept hidden by a beard. But there must be more to Santiago Cabrera than his good looks. Why else would he become a hero on Heroes?

As drug-addicted painter Isaac Mendez on NBC's hottest show, Cabrera is in some ways one of us. Only he can paint the future, of course, but, like us, he does not know what his paintings mean.

And in real life, he knows little more than we do about his future or the future of Heroes.

"In the beginning we all wanted to find out where our characters were going," he says. "Now I've not only come to realize the reality — that we're not going to find out things — but I'm having fun with it."

Born in Chile, Cabrera grew up in London, where he studied acting. He moved to Los Angeles only a year ago. Two months in, he landed Heroes.

"I feel lucky," he said, quickly adding that he's been an actor for eight years. "But this is new — I've never been in something so huge and that has gotten such a big reaction. That's exciting."

He was not an artist before he started playing one on TV. But he's beginning to show up on talk shows with paintings he's done.

"I've been painting since the pilot. I've learned to play with colors more, and I'm stretching my own canvases now. Now when I have to paint (on the show), it feels really natural. I'm pretty good at copying."
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http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149192901039&path=rss

NETWORK SAVIOR: NBC executives are flying high over Heroes
By Scott Collins

LOS ANGELES TIMES
TV insiders like to say that one hit can turn around an entire network. That may be overstating the case, but NBC executives seem to be walking around their pods these days with more spring in their heels and fewer frozen, tense smiles. And it's not hard to guess why.

Heroes (Mondays at 9 p.m.) was the prize at the bottom of NBC's Crackerjack box this past fall. A kind of X-Men for prime time, the comic-book drama about everyday superheroes has become the breakout hit that the network was praying for after a couple of horrendous seasons. Along with Sunday football, Heroes is responsible for a ratings surge that has teleported the network from last place into a three-way tie with ABC and CBS for No. 1 in young-adult viewers this season.

NBC was widely expected to do better this year, but this wasn't exactly the path to restoration that pundits predicted. If NBC bet on any new show this season, it was Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a costly inside peek behind the curtain at a late-night sketch comedy. But Studio 60 has generated polarized critical opinion and lackluster ratings, while Heroes is sucking all the oxygen from the room. And Heroes hails from NBC Universal Television Studio, the smaller, in-house unit that jockeys for clout, respect and talent alongside far better-provisioned competitors.

All this has given Angela Bromstad an especially broad smile. Bromstad is the president of the NBC studio and the person, her staff is happy to remind anyone who asks, who put into motion the machinery that eventually got Heroes on the air. She's the one who, with subordinates, took the 45-minute pitch from creator Tim Kring, pronouncing it "engrossing," and the one who excitedly read the first script before getting out of bed one morning. Now she sees Heroes as evidence of a full-feathered, peacock-ian renaissance, something that's "helped turn the tide at NBC."

"When I came in" - that is, started at NBC - "ER had just happened," Bromstad said earlier this month, fresh from talking up the virtues of NBC's television operations to CEO Jeffrey Immelt and other top General Electric executives at the company's annual "global leadership" meeting in Boca Raton, Fla. (NBC Universal is a unit of GE.) "I thought, 'That must be incredible, to be there at the beginning and be part of a big hit like that.'"

Heroes, of course, hasn't quite scaled ER-like heights yet; the former is, after all, only midway through its first season. But Bromstad's message was unmistakable. She wants it known that NBC's in-house studio, once known for such bombs as Surface and Hidden Hills, can deliver big, generation-defining hits. In addition to Heroes, NBC's studio has found two critically acclaimed comedies with The Office and 30 Rock.

Whether the studio succeeds will have big implications for NBC and for prime-time TV generally. Unlike Warner Bros. Television or 20th Century Fox Television, the studio makes few projects for non-NBC networks (Fox's House is an exception), which Bromstad said was an inevitable result of the "vertical integration" that swept the TV business in the past 10 years, in which every network has a sister studio. So to a certain degree, NBC's attempt to return to its glory days will depend on the ability of Bromstad & Co. to excavate more shows like Heroes.

Competitors argue that the success of Heroes was nothing more than a happy accident; NBC clearly expected Studio 60 to be its big hit. Moreover, they say, Bromstad, despite her close relationship with NBC Universal Television boss Jeff Zucker, has relatively little autonomy within the company's top-heavy management structure.

David Nevins, the president of Imagine Television, which produces the football drama Friday Night Lights with NBC, said that the studio has offered unstinting support for that show, despite low ratings. "The show has been incredibly well-produced, ahead of schedule and under budget," Nevins said. "The studio has always known what they were going after."

Yes, but what they were really after was a hit the size of Heroes. And now they've got it.

Nevins isn't alone in perceiving an NBC "rising tide" that's lifting more than just executive spirits.

"I feel like the dynamic at NBC has really changed from 'Who's the next president going to be?' to 'They're finally doing something right,'" he said. "And they're being rewarded for it by the audience."