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In “First Date,” Levi pairs up with Krysta Rodriguez, who’s additionally maybe perhaps not Jewish. (Joan Marcus)

In “First Date,” Levi pairs up with Krysta Rodriguez, who’s additionally maybe not Jewish. ( )

People who adored the sweetly nerdy lead of TV’s “Chuck” is going to be thrilled to find its celebrity, Zachary Levi, on Broadway, doing just just exactly what he does well: singing, dancing . . . cringing.

In “First Date,” opening in a few days, Levi plays Aaron — as awkwardly earnest as Chuck, but as bearded and bespectacled as a yeshiva child, as well. Cue the cringing whenever Aaron finds that their hot date, Casey — the comely Krysta Rodriguez (“Smash”) — is not Jewish.

Then once again, neither is Levi.

“Nope, not really a Jew!” he says with a grin. “But if individuals wish to lump me in with God’s plumped for, I’ll go on it!”

Backstage in the Longacre Theatre — backpack by their part, their 6-foot-4 frame closing in black colored Converse sneakers — the set that is 32-year-old record straight, their discussion peppered with all the words “journey,” “amazing” and “blessed.”

He had been created Zachary Levi Pugh — that Welsh surname’s pronounced “pewww!” — which resulted in no final end of “brutal responses” in boyhood and past. Their representative recommended the actor that is young would like to alter their title.

It wasn’t a decision that is easy.

“I’d made a guideline that i’dn’t alter or fold for Hollywood,” claims the star, whom spent my youth in Southern Ca, when you look at the shadow of Disneyland. But after he “prayed about any of it very long and difficult,” he chose to just lose the Pugh.

That, Levi states, resulted in another trouble: “I’ve had casting directors call my representative and state, ‘Yeah, you know — he’s a touch too Jewish.’ ”

So far as the creators of “First Date” had been concerned, Levi ended up being perfectly.

“Zachary’s like a better-looking form of me personally — the me I’ve always wished to be,” says Austin Winsberg, the show’s bespectacled book journalist. The one women want to be with and the guys root for while writing for “Gossip Girl,” which shared offices on the Warner Brothers lot with “Chuck,” Winsberg saw in Levi what he calls “the sweet spot — someone who could sing, dance, be funny and play the https://www.datingrating.net/escort/cambridge romantic leading man. ”

Because it took place, Levi had been free, and Broadway had been on his bucket list. He’d been singing and dancing in local movie movie theater I was a ham”), and he and his “Tangled” co-star Mandy Moore sang a duet together at the Oscars since he was 6.

Their only doubt: getting typecast as a nerd, also himself that way in real life if he sees. He and buddy operate a small business he describes as “Nike for Nerds” — the Nerd Machine, which produces duds and gizmos for sci-fi fans and gamers like Levi himself, whom place their supply by way of a light fixture whilst hitting an overhead smash within a Wii game of tennis.

“ we believe in making use of the working platform you have got for good,” says Levi, whom calls their business transactions “conscientious capitalism — get a dollar, provide a buck.” A k a Comic-Con he’s an avid supporter of Operation Smile and other charities, and arranged for a week off at “First Date,” just after previews started, to honor his commitment to appear at Geek Central.

Along with his love life?

“That I won’t go into,” he claims, pleasantly. Despite a breakup that is well-publicized singer Caitlin Crosby, he’s was able to keep his personal life from the down low.

“I’m maybe not just a dater that is big genuinely,” he claims. “I’m a go-with-the-flow style of guy . . .

I’d rather hang down with somebody in friends and view when they check these different containers beside me before we venture out together — get acquainted with one another really casually and coolly, of course there’s chemistry, then we’ll continue a romantic date.”

Judging through the ecstatic applause Levi’s drawing in “First Date,” great deal of individuals could be really pleased to understand him better.