You might as well go and call 2012 “the year of Chris Messina.”
Not only can you see him on FOX’s The Mindy Project, which premieres Tuesday, but you also may recognize him from any of the seven other projects he’s taken part in this year.
Messina has gone nonstop: HBO’s The Newsroom, Direct TV’s Damages, indie flicks Celeste and Jesse Forever and Ruby Sparks, The Giant Mechanical Man, and The Trouble with Bliss. He’ll also play a CIA operative in the upcoming political thriller directed by Ben Affleck, Argo, out Oct. 12.
When Celebuzz caught up with the highly sought after actor at the Paley Center for Media’s FOX Fall TV Preview panel, he told us, “[This year has] been great. It hasn’t always been like this. There were many times I thought I’d never get a job again so I feel really lucky and excited to work with all these great people. It’s really cool.”
The busy actor plays a rock star OB/GYN named Danny Castellano on The Mindy Project who just so happens to be a thorn in the side of Mindy Kaling’s character, Mindy Lahiri, at their medical practice.
So what did he tell us about his hothead character?
Messina said he was attracted to the role of Danny because of the series’ spectacular writing. “The character is super flawed and heart broken and getting over a divorce.”
“It reminded me of old sitcoms like Taxi or Cheers or something like that where there’s a really a lot of funny stuff but it’s got a huge heart to it so that was something that really excited me,” he continued.
While the relationship between Danny and Mindy seems to be antagonistic and love/hate on the outside, we really hope the duo will sway towards the love side during the season.
While Mindy strives for a love like the ones that romantic comedies are made of, she makes the same old mistakes — like hooking up with office playboy Jeremy (Ed Weeks) rather than finding someone consistent. But the pilot episode gave us a little smidge of hope that that the love end-game for Mindy will actually be Danny in this story. The two have great chemistry.
When we talked to him about their relationship and its possible inspiration, he told us, “We talked a lot about Moonlighting and how those two characters, they have real big personalities and they’re kind of batting heads all the time so we’ve been doing that a lot.”
Messina, 38, continued “There are moments where they really see eye to eye and then moments when they want to kill each other. I think there’s a lot of potential to where Mindy and I may both go.”
The Mindy Project premieres Tuesday at 9:30 PM on FOX.
Will you be catching any of Messina’s projects this year? Tell us in the comments below!
