A couple of stars from TV’s “Chuck” and “Smash” will soon be dating on Broadway.

Producers said Monday that Zachary Levi and Krysta Rodriguez will headline the new romantic musical comedy “First Date” by “Gossip Girl” writer Austin Winsberg.

The music and lyrics are by Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner.

“First Date” centers on an uptight young investment banker who meets a serial-dater at a local bistro. A chorus of diners become various characters — family members, clergy and old lovers.

The show will be seen at The Longacre Theatre beginning July 9 with an opening set for Aug. 8.

The rest of the cast includes Sara Chase (”Arrested Development”), Kristoffer Cusick (”Wicked”), Blake Hammond (”Sister Act”), Kate Loprest (”Boardwalk Empire,” and Vicki Noon (”Wicked”).

The show, co-produced by The 5th Avenue Theatre, played at A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle last year. It will be directed by Bill Berry, the producing director of The 5th Avenue Theatre.

Levi, who will be in the film “Thor: The Dark World,” follows fellow “Chuck” alum Yvonne Strahovski to make his Broadway debut. She made a strong impression in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Clifford Odets’ ”Golden Boy.”

Rodriguez, who plays Ana Vargas on “Smash,” was last on Broadway in “The Addams Family,” originating the role of Wednesday Addams alongside Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth. She also was in the original Broadway casts of “In the Heights,” ‘’Spring Awakening” and “Good Vibrations.” [SOURCE]

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Credit: Scott Porter

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It’s rare enough to get the chance to get cast as a nearly 50-year-old mainstay of the Marvel Universe once, let alone get a second chance, but that’s what happened to actor Zachary Levi. The Chuck star and avowed fanboy was originally cast as Fandral, the most swashbuckling member of the Asgardian adventurers known as the Warriors Three and close personal friend of the Thunder God himself in 2011’s Thor, but schedule conflicts with his then-in-production TV series required him to give up the gig to Josh Dallas. For the sequel, Dallas’ own commitments to his hit series Once Upon a Time left him unable to reprise the part clearing the way for Levi to finally cross the Rainbow Bridge and assume the mantle of role he’s been dying to play.

“I loved that he’s dashing!” Levi exclaims. “I mean, literally: he’s Fandral the Dashing. He’s charming and kind of Errol Flynn-ish and good with a rapier – just incredibly confident and just stares fear and death in the face and kind of laughs at it and says, ‘Oh, it will be all right. Everything will be all right, I’m sure.’”

With the sequel upping the ante on the spectacle by further exploring the realm of the Norse gods (with Alan Taylor in the directors’ chair, a veteran of fantasy world-building from his tenure helming HBO’s Game of Thrones), Levi says the landscape Fandral will be cutting a swash through made his jaw drop. “It’s amazing, man,” he says. “I mean, some sets were so huge. It was like Cecil B. DeMille Ten Commandments scale. And then, of course, a lot of cool green screen and special effects and things, there was also a lot of practical stuff. You’ll maybe see me riding a horse and swinging a sword and kicking some butt – and I’m completely blonde. I’m very blonde in the movie!”

One of the most vital facets of Fandral for Levi was establishing an instant camaraderie with the other tightly bonded members of the Warriors Three – Ray Stevenson’s larger-than-life Volstagg and Tadanobu Asano’s taciturn Hogun, as well as their warrior-goddess pal Sif played by Jaimie Alexander. He says the chemistry came “very immediately – Everybody welcomed me with open arms, even though they had worked with Josh in the first one. They knew the situation and everything and they were very cool.”

Harder to master has been Fandral’s all-important warrior skills, he admits, even with a wide variety of fight and weapons training during his stint on Chuck. Learning his character’s specific style of horsemanship was especially tricky, he says, “because I was more used to riding Western. That was the only type of horseback riding I’d ridden, but they really wanted me to ride English/Spanish style, which is very, very different. So that took a little while just to kind of get that down, but then I felt like I did pretty good. I hope I did – I don’t know! You can be the judge of that when you see the movie.”

Even before playing a god on screen, Levi’s had a taste of the deity treatment when he’s visited Comic-Con: he’s long been a beloved presence there, largely because of his palpable appreciation for the fans, and he says he can’t wait to return as a bona fide Marvel good guy.

“I love Comic-Con because it’s a real place and people get to be real and get to be themselves, and I get to be myself,” he says. “So I do appreciate the love that I get there, but I also appreciate the realness of it. And it’s kind of where Hollywood gets to go to just let their hair down and just geek out and be like, ‘Yeah, man – what are YOU nerdy about?’” [SOURCE]

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