Colin Hanks (The Good Guys)

We sit down again with Colin Hanks, star of THE GOOD GUYS on Fox.

SHAKEFIRE: Are you facing any new challenges this season that we'll get to see play out for your character?
COLIN HANKS: Oh, every week is a new challenge with The Good Guys.  Every week is a new crime that needs to be fought, so it's a lot of what you're used to and a few more surprises and things thrown in.

SF: We've seen you do a lot of comedy and drama, and in this show, you get to do both of them but tell us, how did you start off.  When you were a kid, were you a funny kid who leaned towards comedy?  Were you a serious kid mostly playing cops and robbers or what were you like at first?
CH: I'm really sort of more of a hambone more than anything else.  I think that's a whole lot more entertaining than being the silent brooding type.  So comedy was always really sort of the main go-to, cracking jokes.  Watched a lot of SNL and stuff growing up.  So, I think comedy's really sort of how I got started in terms of getting my own sense of taste and things of that nature. 

Comedy is the one aspect that I'm always very cognizant of, trying to keep things funny and keep things light, especially with our show.  We have to balance both quite a bit.  I sort of feel like sometimes that Jack is not able to be as funny as maybe he could be.  So, I'm always cognizant of that, trying to throw the funny in there.

SF: Occasionally, Jack gets to do the macho stuff too.  I mean, he has to kind of copy Dan and do the slides and the two guns and stuff like that.  Is that fun for you, when you play the action stuff? 
CH: I would argue that I do it just as much as Dan does.  I have the bruises to show for it.  So, I don't think it's one does it more than the other.  We both do it quite a bit.  We're both down there in Dallas sweating it out every day.  It's only really fun when you're counting the bruises.  It's not so much fun when you're actually getting the bruises.

SF: What was one of your favorite things on the season premier?
CH: To be honest, we're still so much very in the thick of it in terms of - in terms of filming the show.  Everything blurs together.  People say, "Oh, the premier is “Vacation."  I go, "I have no idea what that means."  "It was episode 107."  I have no idea what that means.  "It's the one where you guys get to suspend it.  I think I kind of remember which one you're talking about.  So for me, it all sort of blurs together. 

What I really love is I love the show.  I love the relationship that Dan and Jack are sort of growing.  More than anything, I love just making the show.  There's not really a specific scene that pops to my mind because that's like a Sophie's Choice.  There's scenes in every episode.  I can't pick one more than the other.

SF: What is it about Jack Bailey that attracted you to take this role?
CH: I like that he was a character that talked back.  He wasn't a passive character that was constantly exacerbated by crazy people, zany people.  So much of comedy sort of ends up being one guy who's really over the top and then the other guy that just simply reacts over the top to the zany guy.  This was an open relationship. 

Jack is a character that talks back to Dan and lets Dan know how he's feeling and comments on Dan's stupid ideas and perceptions of the world.  He's active in expressing himself, and it's not just why is the world so crazy.  Jack is very much trying to make the world less crazy, while also maybe sometimes showing little bits of his crazier side.  So, Jack sort of seemed like a well-rounded character in comparison to a lot of other stuff that was available to me. 

Also, it was a character that, like I mentioned earlier, was going to evolve.  I could see where things would sort of go, and we have some options in terms of Jack evolving and changing and his relationships changing, so.

SF: Now The Good Guys has an amazing cast.  Can you talk about your chemistry with them?
CH: We're sort of in this weird state where we all really like each other.  We all really get along.  Everyone who's come to join us in our little corner of the sandbox has been great and have been great sports and have had a good time coming down to Dallas and playing with us.  It's pretty much everyone that's come through has really said, "Wow, you guys are really having a good time.  This is the most fun I've had on a TV show in quite some time." 

We try and keep it light.  We try and keep it fun because if you're able to laugh during work no matter how arduous it is, it sort of comes through in the finished product.  So, we have a good time.  We're all great.  We're sort of enjoying our honeymoon, so to speak.

SF: On thinking back to the last episode that aired, and you got tased.  What was that like to film that because I have to say as somebody who has experienced the Tasers, you just nailed that perfectly.  That was classic.
CH: There was a video I saw that was actually really funny of a guy getting tased, who when he was getting tased, he sounded like Chewbacca.  I remember going up to Jonathan Frakes, who was directing.  I said, "Look, I would like them to do something with my voice.  I think that would be really funny, but I know that that will never happen because I have no control over sound or anything like that once we're finished making the episode.  So, I want to try and do something here that's kind of like that.”  But I also needed to make sure that whatever action I did was extremely identifiable since so many other people in the episode then copied whatever Jack did.  So I just sort of put the hands up and did the little back and forth and the tase and there you went.  Ironically, the entire crew did the tasing for me on the last day of the episode, which was very funny. 

For some reason—I don't know why—but when my wife saw the episode, she laughed a laugh that I'd never heard before and laughed hard.  That was a little disconcerting when your wife laughs really hard at you getting tased.  She had to watch that like three or four times, and I was just like, "What?  What does this mean?  What does this mean to our relationship?  You're enjoying this a little too much."  Never seen her laugh like that before, but it was great because then I realized, "Oh, we sort of did something right there."