Covert Affairs’ Chris Gorham Q & A

I hope you're still having fun with Covert Affairs, and I have another Q & A for you. This time, with Chris Gorham who plays Auggie.

I was a bit hesitant about this show after the pilot, largely because I wasn't sure it was exactly clear which directions it was going to aim in a variety of ways. I'm pretty happy with it so far, and stay tuned, because in the next day or two I will have a preview review of the next episode, which focuses a good deal on Auggie.

Chris talked a lot about his character, past shows, and even Twitter. I hope you enjoy. Afterward, check out the preview for that episode, along with a couple of images.

By the way, very recently heard reports that the show has been renewed.

What can you tell us about Auggie and what it’s like bringing him to life?

C. Gorham Well, Auggie is a complicated cat. He comes from a military background and especially coming from Special Forces he’s a specific type of military guy. He’s very driven; he’s very creative and he’s been trained to use his brain before his gun. Being blinded was of course an incredibly difficult and challenging time for him, but I think it changed him in ways that I think were unexpected to him.

It will be interesting at some point to kind of explore what kind of guy he was before he was injured, but he’s definitely changed. In fact, in the episode that airs on the 24th, “Communication Breakdown,” there is some talk, his ex-girlfriend is in the episode and they actually dated before he lost his sight. Him being blinded is completely new information to her and so there is some talk about the type of guy that he was before he was injured as compared to the type of guy he is now.

The character is based loosely on a friend of the show’s creators, Matt Corman and Chris Ord, who was disabled and they talk about how it changed him as a person and how it kind of opened up his life quite a bit in ways that were very unexpected, but in some very real positive ways. I think Auggie has had a very similar experience.

How much effort does it take to stay in character so you don’t do something a blind person wouldn’t do? When they say cut, do you still try to stay in character when you’re having lunch and things like that?

C. Gorham Oh, God, no. It would take far too long. They don’t give me enough time. It’s tricky but we kind of work out all of those kinks during the rehearsal. They give me a little extra time to rehearse these scenes because we don’t really get a chance to rehearse them ahead of time so it all happens right before we shoot. They block out a few extra minutes so that I can figure out the physicality of what we’re doing.

Typically what will happen in a regular scene is the case will rehearse and then we go away and we have stand-ins that come and stand in for us while they finish the lighting. Often I’ll just stay there and keep working on the physicality of what I’m doing and what my actions are during the scene just to make sure that it’s as accurate as I can get it. I’ll just stay all the way through the lighting process and keep working on it.

So I was looking ahead a little bit and I noticed one of the upcoming episodes; I see some photos of Auggie, a little bit of racy photos. I’m wondering what kind of trouble he’s going to be getting into.

C. Gorham Auggie gets into some pretty deep trouble. I think the pictures you’re referring to are from the August 24th episode titled, “Communication Breakdown.” In that episode there is a Russian actor that’s causing trouble and it turns out to be Auggie’s ex-girlfriend. He has to go and try and bring her in and get something from her. He ends up in a lot of trouble because of her. She’s kind of the wrong girl for all the right reasons, if you know what I mean.

Do you ever have any trouble filming those kinds of episodes where I guess you’re scantily clad?

C. Gorham Well, thankfully I had a lot of notice so I could work on it, but really Auggie is former Special Forces and one of the things I did kind of early on is did some research on the Special Forces and the training that those guys go through. I’ve tried to emulate that a little bit, which has meant that I’ve had to get in much better shape than I had been previously. Just in doing the research and working on the physicality for this part did most of the work for me.

How did you land the role of Auggie?

C. Gorham Getting this part was the very traditional audition route. I went in and read. The only kind of unusual thing about it is because of the physicality and kind of the idea that everybody has about blind people or blind characters is I had a lot of the same stereotypes so when I showed up to the audition I had sunglasses on and was ready to go in and rock my Ray Charles.

On the way into the room the casting director told me that they didn’t want sunglasses and I had to take them off and it kind of threw me for a loop, as it did a lot of the guys who were going in, I’m sure. I just kind of had to make something up on the fly. That was a little nerve wracking.

After that I kind of settled into what I was going to do for the audition process. Once I had the part was when the real, the hard work really began as far as getting very serious about doing the proper research so that I could portray not only the character, but his disability as honestly as I can.

What kind of research did you put into that?

C. Gorham I spent a lot of time with the Canadian National Institute of the Blind, the CNIB. During the pilot, a woman named Leslie McDonald came out and worked with me on using a cane, worked with me on sighted lead, which is how you see Piper and Auggie when they’re walking together. You’ll see me holding onto her elbow, that’s called sighted lead, how to do that properly, a lot of just little physical details.

Then I met a man named Randy Fer, who was blinded when he was 20 years old in a car accident. I talked with him and just observed him for not only the physical aspects of his disability, but also we talked a lot about the emotional journey that a person goes through when something that traumatic happens to them and how they come out of it at the end of that journey.

When we pick up Auggie at the beginning of the show he’s gone through that already, he’s not still suffering, he’s not still angry about it; he’s not still feeling sorry for himself at all. The guy doesn’t have an ounce of self-pity in him. Then when we started the series I’ve just continued along those lines meeting with other people who have been blind since birth, other people who have been blinded as adults, spending time at the CNIB building doing training on things like getting around the kitchen and all kinds of little details like that.

In a recent show—I think it was episode Auggie had the interrogation scene—I felt like we saw a little bit of a mad Auggie. Did the character kind of moved towards that, or expand on that because that was like his soldier training sort of thing coming out.?

C. Gorham Yes, you know, we see it occasionally. One of his arcs for this season is that frustration that bubbles up at times of not being able to get out in the field in the way that he would like to, in the way that he used to.

He was very good at it. Clearly he’s limited in his ability to do that now so you see some of that in this Tuesday’s episode you see some of that struggle because he is actually involved in helping some of his old buddies on a mission in the Middle East. You see some of that frustration, but also some of that anxiety and kind of self-doubt as to whether or not he can still really help his guys out in the way that he used to.

In the following week’s episode on the 24th you actually get to see him get out in the field and in many ways he proves that in certain situations he can still very much function at the high level that he would demand of himself.

In Jake 2.0, you were the super spy, you were the action hero. Now you’re the backup. You’re the guy that action hero goes to when he needs help. What’s it like working from that other angle?

C. Gorham It’s a lot of fun. I think if it were a lesser character, if Auggie wasn’t so interesting and the writers weren’t doing such a great job of writing really interesting things for him to do, I don’t know that I would enjoy it that much, to be honest. With this character on this show, and particularly working with this actress, being Piper Perabo, I couldn’t be happier.

In a very practical sense, creatively I’m incredibly satisfied by the work that I’m doing on this show. Also, I’m a dad, I have three kids. I love my wife and having this part gives me the days off that Piper doesn’t get. I use those to spend time with my family that otherwise I wouldn’t be able to.

Would you say Auggie is 50% into his tech job and 50% living vicariously through Annie? How would you rate that?

C. Gorham Auggie loves his job. We should make that very clear. In fact, there is a line in an upcoming episode where he says, I’m a techno-geek that gets to play with all the coolest toys in the sandbox and I get paid for it.

He loves his job. He also loves what he did when he was in the field. In an ideal world he would have that job back where he can meld those two things. Having things the way that they are, he’s said as much in one of the episodes, that sure he harbors some jealousy because he would love to be out there with Annie.

I think there is some conflict between Auggie and Jai Wilcox, Sendhil Ramamurthy’s character in the show for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons is absolutely that Jai gets to go out in the field and he’s running around out there doing the things that Auggie is very confident that he could do better, but can’t anymore.

With Harper’s Island, I know you only received like a script … so in advance so that the cast is surprised. How does it work with Covert Affairs? Do you find yourself surprised when you read the script or do you kind of know Auggie so well now that it all just kind of makes sense for you?

C. Gorham It varies. We’re often surprised by plot turns. We had a conversation with Chris and Matt early on because as a cast you get curious as to what’s going to happen over the course of the season. They really prefer to keep us in the dark, not that we need to be kept in the dark, not that we’re going to spoil anything but they just kind of like giving us the story an episode at a time, like a serial.

There are character things that happen that recur. There are certain characters traits that at this point we’re very solid in what the relationships between the characters are so for the most part when it comes to those relationships we kind of know where they’re going to live. Plot wise we don’t always know very far ahead of time and it’s kind of fun. It’s different than in Harper’s Island because there is not the threat of one of us getting killed off every week.

Do you ever wonder just how much of what happens on the show is similar to how things are in real life in the CIA, the types of story lines, how things are handled, the inner workings that type of thing?

C. Gorham I do wonder. I get the answers to some of those questions and some of them I don’t. We actually make an effort on a lot of the little details on the show we work really hard to make them accurate. For instance, you’ll never see anyone talking on a cell phone within our CIA because in the real CIA no cell phones are allowed.

You’ll never see anyone with a purse or a personal bag because those are not allowed in the real CIA. Instead of garbage cans there are burn bags under all the desks. Those types of details that the way the top secret documents are transferred around the CIA in these bright orange, zip up lockable envelopes, we use the same ones on the show. A lot of those things we replicate and they’re absolutely true.

There are a lot of facts in the pilot that we used that came directly out of the CIA that are true. As far as the missions, I don’t imagine that they work exactly like they do in the show. I’ve been reading a book called Legacy of Ashes about the history of the CIA, kind of boning up on my own knowledge of that organization. I think, while I say that what we do on the show probably doesn’t happen so much in the real CIA, having read that book there is a lot of crazy stuff that’s happened over the decades, so even in saying that sometimes we may actually get pretty close to home and maybe sometimes unintentionally.

I’ve been gathering, from listening to you on this phone call, that your personality is closer to Auggie than say that of your previous character Henry. What do you think are your similarities between you and Auggie?

C. Gorham Well, Auggie, I mean the kind of guy that Auggie is—the kind of guy that goes through the military and makes it into Special Forces and succeeds in that organization has the type of drive and the type of motor inside him that I honestly don’t have. He is a truly extraordinary human being.

I think we have a similar outlook on life, I would say, in that trust is one of the most important attributes that you can have as a person. I think it’s one of the reasons why he and Annie get along so well. They instinctively know that they can trust each other and that their relationship may be the only truly safe relationship that each of them has in that place. That’s one similarity. I can also keep a really good secret.

What would you say the difference is between— I mean you mentioned that you don’t have the same kind of drive with the military, but let’s just say personality or humor wise. What would be the differences between you and Auggie?

C. Gorham We both have a good sense of humor. One glaring difference is that I have very little technical skill when it comes to the computer world and he is a whiz at it. In that arena we are worlds apart.

You’re very active on Twitter and have been for a long time, even before Covert Affairs, and you’re interactive with the fans as well on there. Have you found any sort of difference with your newfound fame almost with Covert Affairs now?

C. Gorham You mean focused on a difference on Twitter?

Yes, on the Twitter part.

C. Gorham I haven’t seen a big difference. I think I have a lot of followers, I guess, but there are many, many people that have hundreds of thousands of followers, so I think that I really appreciate my followers because I feel like I’ve got what I lack in quantity I make up for in spades in quality. There are some really smart people. My followers tend to be smart, they tend to be funny, they tend to be witty, and very rarely do I ever have any problems with anybody that I need to block then. I think I put it on my Facebook page that go ahead and post stuff on here but just keep in mind that I am married, I do have kids, so keep it PG.

I think the vast majority of the time they respect that I have a personal life and I respect their interest in the things that I’m doing, especially in this show. I’m happy to interact and to kind of give them a sneak peek and behind the scenes of what we do and how it works.

What’s been your favorite episode so far to film with Covert Affairs?

C. Gorham That’s an interesting question. There’s been a couple favorites. I guess my biggest episode is “Communication Breakdown” which airs on the 24th. It’s a very Auggie-centric episode. It’s the only episode that I worked every day. It was really satisfying. We got to really explore Auggie in ways that we hadn’t done before. That’s going to come back to haunt me. It was a fun episode. Auggie has a fight scene in that episode and he’s on the run and he’s helping his ex-girlfriend who is kind of the love of his life and so it’s very big. It’s very emotional and exciting and that was a lot of fun.

That being said, we’re working on the season finale right now, and that’s also been a blast and I don’t have any big action scenes in the finale, but there are just some developments and some character development and relationship development between Auggie and Annie in that episode that I think is really strong and interesting.

Before you were in Covert Affairs, you were in a few different shows that were unfortunately canceled before they came to a proper ending. Is there any show that … do you regret most about not having a conclusion?

C. Gorham I did a sitcom called Out of Practice years ago that was just an amazing experience. It was with Henry Winkler and Stockard Channing and Ty Burrell, who is on Modern Family now, and Paula Marshall, Jennifer Tilly, and the writers were Chris Lloyd and Joe Keenan. They’d just come from Fraser and Chris Lloyd is now doing Modern Family. It was a really, really good show and great writing and a fantastic cast. That one I was really sorry to see that one go.

Of course, any time a show ends prematurely it’s tough, but then you move on and I’m really happy that it looks like this show is going to be on for a while. It’s doing very well and I couldn’t be more pleased.

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Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.

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