"Get Smart's" Techie Duo: Masi Oka and Nate Torrence
You know adorable Masi Oka as Hiro Nakamura on the popular series "Heroes" and funny Nate Torrence is a familiar face from many TV guest star roles and he'll be seen soon with Kate Hudson in My Best Friend's Girl and in the romantic comedy She's Out of My League. In the action comedy Get Smart, the duo play Bruce and Lloyd, two techie gadget-inventors for the superspy outfit CONTROL, providing all the latest electronic spyware for Steve Carell's Maxwell Smart and Anne Hathaway's Agent 99.
The guys also continue their characters in a cool DVD called Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control out July 1st that sends the boys on their own parallel adventure. We wanted to know all about the DVD, what new gadgets the characters might invent and what's up for Masi on "Heroes". We cornered the guys in Beverly Hills and started prying for secrets!
TeenHollywood: Masi, this is the first major movie you've done since your "Heroes" [break]. What sort of offers were you getting and why choose this one?
Masi: I was in a very fortunate position to have a couple of offers but this was just a great film. I personally never saw the original series but it had great talent attached already. Steve Carell was one of my big idols growing up and Alan Arkin. Having grown up in the Second City family, these guys were the people I worshiped and I knew I really wanted to work with them. For me, it was a pretty easy choice. If I could only to one, this was the one I really wanted to do and I was just very fortunate that the producers gave us a opportunity to work.
TeenHollywood: You could only do one film on your hiatus, your break?
Masi: Yeah, because of scheduling conflicts, nothing just seemed to work out and "Heroes" was running long as well so even doing Get Smart was a big scheduling nightmare and thanks to our producers and the producer of Get Smart, we were able to work it out.
TeenHollywood: What was it like working with Steve Carell on this?
Masi: Amazing. As I said, he's one of the main reasons to work on this film. Most comedic stars, when they are in a film, they want all the laughs and it should be about them but Steve is one of the most generous people I've ever worked with. He's all about the funny but also making everyone else funny as well and that's something I really admired and I learned so much from him especially in the way he improvs and the way he works with everyone. I think that's a testimony to not only Steve's talent but his character as an actor. I hope everyone gets an opportunity to work with a great comedic star like him because not all comedic stars are that generous.
Nate: And just a good leader. Sometimes you get on projects and your leads just want to go back to their trailer and that's okay but I felt like Steve, specifically for me, every time we were working together, he really wanted everyone involved and he would talk so much about the troupe aspect of it and that's exactly how you felt with him, like he was always trying to make everyone comfortable. That's an amazing thing to feel in this business where you have a guy, he's the lead and I'm totally hanging out with him and everyone was like that. Dwayne [the Rock Johnson] was like that. It was cool.
Masi: Yeah, everybody was.
TeenHollywood: Masi you have changed the image of the Japanese actor because usually, the image is stoic, not particularly funny. Are you just funny by nature?
Masi: I don't know. Everyone who knows me in real life, I'm not that funny in real life [laughs] so I'm glad I could act that way on screen and show otherwise. It's not intentional but I've grown up loving comedy and all these comedic greats. In America especially, they don't have as many Asian-American roles and I think comedy is a great equalizer. With comedy there is a built-in comedic distance where you laugh with the characters, laugh with the situations versus when it's a drama, it's kind of hard.
TeenHollywood: Why?
Masi: Because you are asking someone to empathize with the character immediately. When the audience sees someone who doesn't look like them immediately, it's hard for them to delve into that person. So, for [Japanese] it's kind of easy to delve into the comedy side because there's not as much 'prejudice' and there is that built-in comedic distance that we're allowed to utilize. If we can change images, that's fantastic but that's not particularly my intention. I'm just blessed to be working and have fun and I love comedy so I guess YAY!! [laughter]
TeenHollywood: Nate, there are plans to spin off your characters into several projects; one is this DVD. Can you talk about that?
Nate: It's a fun little movie and kind of cool. It's basically focusing on what we're doing when Max and 99 take off on their mission. We have our own mission. It's unique as far as it being an industry first where you're going to have all these characters going on in the box office and ten days later, you get to staple on and watch these different characters work in their own little settings. We have our own office and where we go to make all of our inventions and things like that so it's kind of cool. I'm really excited. I think it has a good future.
TeenHollywood: Was it scheduled to shoot the same time while Get Smart was filming?
Nate: It was scheduled. It almost was and then we ended up about a month or so later but we took a lot of the same sets and worked on those.
Masi: Originally, it was supposed to be all improvised while we were shooting like behind-the-scenes. They were going to shoot DVD footage of us goofing off and really do a 'meanwhile, back in the green room is da, da, da'. But it's a really smart business plan and an industry first.
TeenHollywood: What was the budget on it?
Nate: One billion dollars [laughter]. It was amazing.
TeenHollywood: Who else from the film is in it?
Masi: Terry Crews is in it. There are a lot more cameos from the original film that we're not allowed to talk about, that are top secret.
TeenHollywood: Masi, your participation on "Heroes" requires you to maintain a certain amount of secrecy. Can you contrast what that's like compared with being on a project like this?
Masi: The challenges of course [on "Heroes"], are you read a script and you really want to share with everyone because it's such an exciting project and story that you want to tell the world but, at the same time, I don't think they really want to know. You tell the fans, 'well, I could tell you everything but it's just gonna ruin it'. With these movie things, I don't remember what we shot because it was like a year and a half ago. Fortunately, my memory is already gone so when they ask me what it was about, it's like 'uh, I don't remember'. My memory fades.
TeenHollywood: What was it like to go back to "Heroes" for the new season?
Masi: It's been great. It's fantastic to see all the crew. It's going back to a family, to have that great repertory of people who are on the same wavelength. Because the Writer's Strike hit a lot of the crew members hard and they had nothing really to gain from a strike, it was just great to see all of them back working and it was great to retain everybody too because we thought we would lose a lot of people. That's been the great thing; to see all my crew members, my castmates, all my brothers and sisters. We're already shooting. We're going from May to March, twenty-five episodes straight.
TeenHollywood: Whew! You guys have lots of cool gadgets in the feature film. Is there any cool gadgetry in the DVD?
Masi: Oh yeah.
Nate: A huge chunk of it is us coming up with new gadgets.
Masi: We have an OCT. We have a ...
Nate: Optical Camouflage Technology.
Masi: Oh, the whole idea is to use the secret codes! [scolding him] Lloyd, Lloyd, Lloyd.
Nate: Oh yeah.
Masi: We have OCT, ASNF, right. AFD.
Nate: Anti-Follicular Device.
Masi: You did it again!
Nate: I've got to.
Masi: There will be a lot of gadgets.
Nate: Very gadget-heavy, gadget-friendly flick.
Masi: We're gadget people.
TeenHollywood: Masi, is there any type of role that you would like to play that you've never gotten to? Like an evil villain?
Masi: Humm, evil villain. There are definitely a couple of things and we're, fortunately in a kind of development stage with them. I can't really talk about it right now. Sorry.
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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.
