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  June 22, 2009

  Interview with LotsofInterviews.com

  Excerpt:

  On the 22nd of June 2009 LotsofInterviews.com conducted a interview with Greg Grunberg, who plays Matt Parkman on "Heroes". We talk about his friendship with director J. J. Abrams, the last and next series of "Heroes", his cameos in "LOST" and "Star Trek", his "Yowza" i-pod app, his "Band from TV" and his charity work. LotsofInterviews.com would like to thank Mr Grunberg for his time.
  
  You have been friends with J. J. Abrams since you were kids but how exactly do you know each other?
  
  Well just that way, since we were three. We met at elementary school and you know my dad jokes that even back then he knew that J. J. was going to be who he is today. It’s just one of those things where we became fast friends and how he’s like a brother to me, he’s the greatest guy ever.
  
  It shows how highly he values you as an actor mixing his personal life with his professional.
  
  Yeah I mean it’s a tough thing to do. If you hire somebody you have to be willing to fire them [laughter] and he and I have just always said “as best we can we’re going to try work together” and so far it’s worked out. You know doing Heroes is kind of the first big TV project that I’ve done without J. J. and I got very very fortunate that the people that I’m working with are of that same calibre so it’s been a really great experience.
  
  In the last series of Heroes you play a darker version of your character, was it a good change for you getting to play a darker part?
  
  Yeah I love mixing it up I love the idea of doing something that people would not expect me to do; it makes it more interesting and I tend to play you know people that are number one hopefully very relatable and number two are characters that no matter what he does he’s always going to be the good guy and it’s a blessing and a curse at the same time but if you can play it the right way, if the right role comes along or in “5 years gone” that episode where I went around killing everyone it was like “what is he doing?”, it makes for a very interesting  storyline when the characters doing something against his type.
  
  

  I do think that’s what makes your character so good that he is  so relatable. You could see yourself living next door to him.
  Yeah, well thank you, I mean that’s the best compliment I could get. They certainly write the character that way and I try to play it as   real as possible and you know the flip-side of that is I’ve got this   power where I tilt my head [laughter]. If you and I were in the same  room and I did that you would probably make reference to it so it’s a tricky kind of combination to do that and make it seem as real as possible.
  
  You spent most of your time last series working with Brea Grant. Do you think you will miss working with her?
  
  Yeah I thought we had great chemistry, I love Brea I think she’s amazingly talented, and she is an example, and we’ve had this a number of times on the show, we get these great actors that come on and they have a great presence and he just haven’t locked them in on a contract yet so they go somewhere else to do something on a regular basis and unfortunately we just have to let them go because we haven’t signed them. Some people we do sign and Brea’s one of those that I wish they had of locked in and I just love her, I love working with her. I’m happy that Lisa Lackey back though too because I love working with her and I love having the wife and kid relationship on the show.
  
  Do you think your character is going to be one of the ones seeking redemption in the next series as it is titled “redemption”?
  
  I think so. I think there’s defiantly redemption there and I think there’s regret, there’s defiantly going to be a lot of regret and even the very last shot of me in the last series is when you see Parkman standing over Sylar’s body and he defiantly regrets what he’s just done. And so if things go wrong they’re going to turn to Parkman to try and fix what he’s done even though he begrudgingly did it.

  You’ve also had a small part in LOST as the pilot; do you know  if there are any plans for you to turn in the final series?
  

  I would love it. I don’t know if they have any plans for me but it would be so great to come back and you know to let people know exactly what happened in the cockpit when the plane  came down. I think that would be a really cool kind of flash-back.  I let them know if they do want me to come back then I’m
  available and hopefully it will work out schedule wise but they  haven’t mentioned anything specific yet..
  
  You also had a small part in the new Star Trek film but your voice only appeared due to some scheduling conflicts?
  
  Yeah I was suppose to have a bigger role in the movie and I was filming a movie that I co-wrote with Lawrence Trilling and produced and stared in called “Group Sex”  that is hopefully going to be coming out soon, we’re finalising a distribution deal but if was a really tough thing to do. When you’re doing a low budget movie locations are key and everything has to be locked in stone so I couldn’t do both but J. J. again was just so sweet and said “I want you to do something in this movie” so I ended up doing the voice of the step-dad.
  
  
  You also have a project called Yowza that just launched quite recently?
  
  Yeah it’s an awesome, free i-phone and i-pod touch application. It was born about 10 months ago, we try and save money where we can, especially in these times now, and we’re trying to teach our kids to be frugal and good with money. Meanwhile we don’t have time to cut coupons, we don’t have time to look for the best offers in the paper and we always forget the paper coupons when we need them so it was just kinda born out of that and just the fact that I luuuuuuve the i-phone and I live by all these applications. And I met these two guys, August Trometer and Rick Yaeger and they are kinda Rockstars in the app world and we started talking about doing something like Yowza and they loved the idea and 10 months later it was born and we’re about a month in and we’re getting a lot of retailers onboard. It’s a free download, people can just download it and know that they have hundreds of great offers with them all the time.

  Read the entire interview at LotsOfInterviews.com

  Source: LotsofInterviews.com

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