He also talks about his UCB days, the end of The Office and we ask him to choose between acting or music. Here’s what he said.
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You may know Ed Helms from that teeny tiny TV show The Office or the blockbuster Hangover trilogy. Now he's playing a minuscule human in the Yahoo web series Tiny Commando and has three movies on the horizon. The comedian and banjo extraordinaire talked to BuzzFeed about the Mumford and Sons music video he did which turned into a viral sensation, his new web show and the biggest question of all — when's the last time he fell off a bike?
How did you come up with the idea for Tiny Commando?
Ed Helms: Well, the genesis for the show is very simple. I always loved playing with radio-controlled toys, cars, helicopters, boats, you name it. And really part of the fun in that is the fantasy that maybe there's somebody in there, actually operating these things. And that maybe there's a tiny person. I also have always been into action figures and building little models and whatnot, and there's something about miniaturization that's so captivating. It's why we love dollhouses and little Tonka trucks. There's something about miniaturizations that just captures the imagination. I also love action movies and big Jerry Bruckheimer–type things, so the idea of combining those two things and just doing these giant set pieces on a tiny scale seems so intrinsically silly to me that it had to be done.
How did you choose Zachary Levi for the part?
EH: We needed that commando character, and Zach is the perfect combination of a dashing, superhero, physical type, along with being an amazing comedian. I loved his work on Chuck and we've met a bunch of times over the years, and he's just an awesome guy. And I thought he'd be really fun to work with and just the perfect type for the role, so I just called him up and twisted his arm and he relented. No — he got it right away and saw the fun in it, and was on board.
In the first episode, the twist ending was that your character is tiny also, and he's got this evil accent. Who did you base him off of?
EH: It's probably two parts Scarface — Al Pacino Scarface — and one part Don Johnson from Miami Vice.
