Zach Woods, from 'Silicon Valley,' 'The Office,' 'Avenue 5' and more

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's Zach Woods! You may know him best from NBC's The Office where he played the truly dreadful Gabe for three seasons. You've also seen his work as Jared Dunn on the HBO series Silicon Valley. He currently stars alongside Hugh Laurie on the TV show Avenue 5. It's airing now on HBO. Zach talks to Bullseye about what initially drew him to acting, his secret comedy life as a teen taking the train from Pennsylvania to New York and how his anxious personality helped him tap into his latest character's psyche. Plus, he'll share his favorite inspirational RuPaul quote with us. All that and more. Let's go!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:13.6	I'm Jesse Thorn, it's Bullseye.
0:23.0	It's a pretty simple premise, one that has served as the backbone for dozens of movies and
0:27.7	TV shows.
0:28.9	You get a spaceship, it leaves Earth, it gets lost, and then the people on board have to deal with the consequences.
0:36.7	That's basically the premise of Avenue 5, a new comedy on HBO.
0:41.7	It's a show set in a not-that-distant future.
0:45.7	Space Tourism is booming with cruises, and one of the cruise ships gets knocked off course.
0:51.7	A trip that was supposed to take eight weeks is now going to take three years.
0:57.7	Maybe longer.
0:58.7	It's also troubling that they can't figure out exactly how long it's going to take now.
1:03.7	So, what makes Avenue 5 special among all these lost-in-space shows?
1:09.7	Well, it was created by Armando Inuchi for one.
1:12.7	Inuchi creates comedies about people in power and the broken systems over which they preside.
1:18.7	In VEEP, in the loop, and the thick of it, that meant image-obsessed politicians and their handlers.
1:24.7	In his movie The Death of Stalin, it's the Politburo.
1:28.7	Scramble for power after a long time leader dies.
1:31.7	In Avenue 5, well, basically it's everyone.
1:35.7	The captain, played by Hugh Laurie, who literally doesn't know how his ship works.
1:40.7	The vain, stupid space cruise company owner, played by Josh Gad.
1:45.7	The entitled customers, who want free food credits to make up for the inconvenience of being lost in space.
1:53.7	All of it very human.
	...

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