Oh, what Heroic goodness!
The entire cast showed up to the Paley Festival's Heroes night, and let me tell you, having all those superheroes in one place is almost too much deliciousness to bear—especially when they're all dishing out hugs and kisses and compliments. (Yeee! How does a cast so scorchingly hot stay so cool?!)
Of course, since this is the hottest dang show on television right now, we had much to discuss, and you can see some of it in the video clip on this page. (Since there were 12 interviews altogether—and all of them good—I'll also be sharing more with you in the coming weeks to tide you over while we wait for the show's Apr. 23 return.)
As for what happened inside the panel Q&A with fans, here's what we learned:
Masi Okay! Masi Oka told us he connected with Hiro immediately, saying, "Hiro Nakamura was a guy I could totally relate to. He had to be fluent in Japanese, comedic and have ample experience in American television. I'm like, this is such a niche role—if not this, what else am I going to get?"
Education of Little Tree: Masi also spilled that he invented Hiro's "Yatta!" exclamation, but not before muddling through some mixed-up Japanglish. He told us, "When I was going through the script, the first time Hiro's successful, he says bonsai, and it was so hard for me to grasp that, because the word bonsai in Japanese means little tree. Little tree? I was trying to wrap my head around it, and finally I realized, Oh, he's trying to say banzai! Later, on set, I was like, I don't want to be a diva and change your words, but, uh…I don't think you want me to say little tree...[And] banzai usually has either a wartime connotation or [it's something you say] when you're really drunk. So, I asked Tim if I could change it, and he said 'Go to town,' and I [said] 'Yatta!' and that became one of Hiro's things."
Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Adrian Pasdar came up with Nathan Petrelli's hot-feet landing when he first hit the deck after his flying out of the clutches of HRG and the Haitian. Adrian told us, "The first time I did it out in the desert I did land like that, and the director looked at me like, What are you doing?! And I said, 'I don't have superfeet.' [Furthermore,] it would be cold up there, and I wanted to have bugs in my teeth. They said no to that, but I got away with the feet skidding on the ground...You want to counter the unbelievability aspect of it—the superhero aspect of it—with the reality of it."
Prime Ribbing: Hayden Panettiere said of her oh so resilient character Claire Bennet, "My character's like a meat: She gets stir-fried, filleted and broiled."
Character Issues: Someone asked Tim Kring how he came up with the superpowers he wanted to be featured on the show, and Tim said, "I came at [the superpowers] from the idea of character. I thought of the characters first, and then backed into what I thought their power would be...For instance, the Niki Sanders character. I wanted a story about a single mother who was stretched really thin...And I literally started thinking about that power—that power was originally being two places at the same time and this idea of a doppelgänger character. That's sort of a classic example of how I backed into the characters. Masi's character...when we first meet him he's in a sea of cubicles that seems to go on forever, and I thought an interesting power for someone [living] a life they didn't want was the ability to transport themselves out of that somehow, which led me to the idea of teleportation."
Sylar's on the Move! Another fan inquired about the whereabouts of Sylar, aka Zachary Quinto. After a couple of jokes from the other castmembers about how Sylar likes to stay elusive, Hayden volunteered, "He's moving houses, and he has to get everything packed by Monday," to which Greg Grunberg quipped, "He asked us all for help, and we were like, Sorry, man...We got a panel!" Score 1 for the fans; 0 for Sylar. Boo-yah.
—Additional reporting by Jennifer Godwin