9
February
2010
Australian actress Yvonne Strahovski has crossed the Pacific to find success as Agent Sarah Walker on Chuck. Since the pilot, she’s locked horns with evil spies, locked lips with Chuck Bartowski, and donned countless undercover outfits of varying degrees of amazingness. I spoke to Strahovski—with her unSarah-ish, but incredibly cute Aussie accent—about what’s next for her character, and the spy who loves her.
TV.com: We recently saw a flashback to a very different Sarah, from the beginning of Season 1. Can you talk about how Sarah has grown since then, and how she continues to grow?
Yvonne Strahovski: When she first started, she was really focused on her work and being a CIA agent. But I guess meeting Chuck Bartowski has really kind of rocked her boat. She’s grown to like him and love him, so much that she questions her own trajectory in life and the professional versus the personal. And this season, especially, Season 3, she’s breaking down her walls that she’s kept up for so long. I think she’s showing a little bit more emotion, which is really fun for me.
How much control do you have over Sarah? Do the writers ever consult you about big changes with the character?
No, they just kind of write away. We don’t really ever know in advance what’s going to happen, so it’s a surprise to us all when we open the scripts up and read them. But I love where it’s going this season. I think it’s really exciting.
The whole Chuck and Sarah thing has been going on since the first episode. Do you ever worry about the relationship becoming stale or predictable?
So much happens in every episode that we have a lot to work with, between the spy life and the Buy More life and then the family life, there’s always something new to bounce off of. Especially this season—I mean, we’ve all seen what happened in the first couple of episodes and the whole Prague situation and everything. There’s going to be a few more surprises along the way like that. I certainly was very surprised when I read a couple of the scripts. I didn’t know it was going to go in that direction, or how things would unfold.
Well, it does seem like there’s a bit of a love square brewing between Chuck, Sarah, Shaw, and Hannah. Can you tell us anything about the romantic drama coming up?
Oh, there’s always more romantic drama. [laughs] You know, it unfolds, of course, a little bit more. We get to find out a little bit more about each of the characters. And the new ones, especially.
There has been talk of an episode dealing specifically with Sarah’s past. Will we learn more about her backstory?
There will be a couple little things that you find out this season.
Like her real name?
I don’t know. I hope so. [laughs]
Sarah has had some really great fight scenes throughout the series. Could you talk about what goes into filming those scenes, and if we can look forward to more big fight scenes this season?
Let me honestly say that the best is yet to come. I get really excited when we have to do fight scenes. It’s nice that this season Zac [Levi] is getting more involved with them as well, now that he has this whole new Intersect in his head. We do a lot of it ourselves, which is great for us. There’s stuff that’s a little more complicated this season.
Chuck airs Mondays at 8pm on NBC.
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