Carter MacIntyre!
When I saw Carter MacIntyre sitting on a stage at the Beverly Hilton Hotel during this summer’s Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour, he seemed vaguely familiar.
He was there as part of the cast of NBC’s Undercovers, the spy series that debuts Wednesday night on NBC. Carter plays super spy Leo Nash on the show which stars Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a pair of married spies who used to work for the CIA.
A quick look at his bio and I realized where I had seen the handsome Carter before: It was in the play He Asked for It during its summer 2009 run at the Macha Theatre in West Hollywood. It was about looking for love in LA and Carter played a hottie guy at the gym who was a real player.
His television role could not be more different: He’s plays a CIA operative who he told me “is kind of a smart-aleck and a wise you know what. He’s the kind of guy whose like pushing people’s buttons. He’s actually the only guy who knows the real reason why they initially left the CIA. So when they all get together and start working together again it kind of creates that interesting dynamic. He also kind of has some unusual and interesting ways of solving problems so it’s a lot of fun to play. There’s definitely humor in it.”
“There’s a lot of physical stuff,” he added. “It’s great. For me it’s the kind of thing where I’m growing up watching Hans Solo on Star Wars then you get a job and you’re doing that stuff. It’s a dream role.”
We talked about how just a year ago he was starring in a play and shortly after gets cast in a network series: “It was the kind of thing where it happened so fast. I was one of the last regulars to the cast added and I think I was the last person they saw for the role. They were getting ready to shoot! They were in such a rush that four days after my second audition, I got the part.”
What was that moment like when he got the call?
“I remember exactly where I was: I was heading to the gym going to LA Fitness on Wilshire and Fairfax and I pulled over to the side of the road, I’m sweating bullets. Then [creator] JJ [Abrams] called and asked if it was Carter? ‘Carter McIntyre? You got the part.’ I tried to go to the gym and work out but I was so excited. It’s just a huge opportunity.”
His previous television work was a starring role the nighttime soap American Heiress and guest stints on Trauma, Nip/Tuck, Bones, The Mentalist and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
He hasn’t had too much time to think about what it could mean to his career or his life if Undercovers becomes a long-running hit.
“It’s the kind of thing where you just take it one day at a time and you’re so busy all you’re focusing is on the day and what you have to do.”
