Christopher Gorham

The Ugly Betty star is filming Pursuits, and is also listed on his IMDB page as filming “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” with Alyssa Milano.

Trivial Pursuits is set at the University of Michigan, which is why the filming is in Ann Arbor.  Production is expected to finish early this month on Saturday with filming during the first week of classes next week and at Michigan Stadium before the kickoff of the football season’s opener on Saturday.

Trust me, you don’t want to get in the way of Big Ten football.  Even if it is just Michigan. 

Apparently, the film is starting to cause quite a buzz amongst the crew and locals. 

It’s turning into something really great,” says Gorham, 35. “When it started, I didn’t know what it was going to be, how it was going to turn out. Seeing a lot of the dailies we’ve shot so far, it’s really good.”

Writer-director Christopher Farah, 33, a U-M alumnus, was a journalist before he made the switch to movies. He drew on his student days in Michigan and his bar trivia experiences in New York for “Trivial Pursuits,” which is about frustrated college types who enter a trivia tournament.

This looks like a cute little movie, and might just be the thing (besides playing a deranged serial killer) that might propel Gorham’s career to the next level!

Image: SplashNewsOnline.com

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Christopher Gorham

Starring with Gorham are Arielle Kebbel and Chris Parnell.  The film is being directed by Christopher Farah. His brother Mike Farah is producing.

Trivial Pursuits is Set in the world of competitive bar trivia (who knew there was a world of competitive bar trivia?)   The script centers on frustrated academics who finally get a chance at beer, women and nerdy redemption when they enter a citywide trivia tournament. Gorham and Kebbel are the love interests.

This is going to be right up Gorham’s alley.   He seems to really excel at playing the “smart guy” who seems to have something wilder or even more dangerous underneath.  And it’s great to seem him in a role with a romance again.

Also appearing in the movie are Kip Pardue ("Remember the Titans"), Evan Jones ("Jarhead"), Nelson Franklin ("Scott Pilgrim vs. the World") and Kali Hawk ("Couples Retreat").

The movie just began shooting in Ann Arbor, Mich. (they have a little college there, don’t they? ), of which the Farahs are natives. Christopher is a former editor at "Foreign Affairs" magazine who left journalism for filmmaking, while Mike heads production for comedy Web site Funny or Die.

Gorham is going to be busy, not only working on Pursuits, but also USA Network’s spy thriller "Covert Affairs."

Image: SplashNewsOnline.com

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Chris Gorham

Now, this one looks like fun.

The show centers on Annie Walker (Perabo), a multilingual CIA trainee who joins the agency still reeling over a mysterious ex-boyfriend who appears to be of particular interest to her bosses.

Gorham will play Auggie Anderson, a CIA military intelligence/special-ops agent blinded years ago on an assignment who is helping Walker navigate her new job.

Excellent, excellent, excellent!  Chris will really get a chance to show off his skills.  The plot seems to have a touch of "The Bone Collector" to it.

USA handled the pre-production of Affairs interestingly.  Instead of giving the show a straight pilot order, USA last month hired a casting director and began quietly casting the two leads. It seems the casting of Gorham gave producers a green light to go ahead with the pilot.

The show is written by Matt Corman and Chris Ord, and executive produced by Dave Bartis and Doug Liman, with Corman and Ord co-executive producers.

The events in Ugly Betty episodes 2.23 and 3.24, Curveball and The Fall Issue, seemed to close this book on the Henry character (IMHO), while, in typical Ugly Betty fashion, still leaving the door open for a return.  If Gorham is going to be busy with "Covert Affiars", I’d say any new UB guest appearance wouldn’t happen in season four.  But we’ll see.

Congratulations on the new pilot, Chris!

Image: SplashNewsOnline.com

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“I got a call from creator Silvio Horta.  When I left the show the first time, he made it clear to me that he was hoping that I would be able to come back at some point. So it wasn’t a totally unexpected phone call. He wanted me to come back and do an episode near the end of the season and, of course, I was happy to do it.”

On his exit from the show, he says the responsible party was “the writers. It was a story problem. I always felt that Henry was kind of accidentally written off the show.”  (I always had that feeling, too, like they backed themselves into a corner and said, “whoops”).

Gorham says, “Everybody got so excited about America Ferrera and I together, so the writers immediately tried to save that relationship for the long term on the show, and their way of doing that was to start throwing obstacles in the way to keep us apart. I think what they underestimated was deciding to give him a baby. I don’t think that they realized what that really meant.”

Apparently, something we discussed at Ugly Betty News during season 2 was discussed behind the scenes: “At first, there was a lot of talk that they wouldn’t make the baby Henry’s. That they’d make it Dr. Farkas’ or something. But they didn’t want to cop out and not make it his. So we had long conversations about how Henry could come back with the baby having left his girlfriend Charlie and be a very sympathetic single dad in New York and how that could be really interesting because Betty’s dad is a single dad, too. But as Season 2 was winding down and they started breaking stories for Season 3, I think they realized the show isn’t called ‘Ugly Betty and Henry.’ It’s ‘Ugly Betty’ and there’s a lot of other characters and to really service that single dad storyline you’d really have to spend a lot of time on it. It just wasn’t going to work.

More (including some interesting quotes about the S2 love triangle) after the jump.

About how his character changed at the end of season 2:  “Yeah, at the same time they’re giving me this baby to keep me and Betty apart they also brought in Gio, to do that as well”, said Gorham.  “So they had to make me a little dumber and make him great. It was very much to make people like Gio, to make this triangle work and make it believable. It just was not good for my job security.”

Shippers, please do not read this next quote from Gorham (about Betty choosing “herself”):  “As a viewer, taking my life out of it, I was actually relieved. Because as an audience member and as a fan of the show I was bored of me. Me and Gio and all of her romantic stuff. Like seriously? I never dated that much. Who does that?”

How does Henry come back?  “Henry has a new girlfriend, who remarkably looks like his old girlfriend. She’s an aerobics instructor so he’s going with her to New York for an aerobics convention, but he really wants to run into Betty, so he’s updating his Facebook page every five minutes, saying where he is at all times.”

Ha!  I’ve done that before!

As for Charlie and the baby, “We talk about the baby. Charlie we don’t talk about. They’ve broken up. In my head, they’re not together. They were never going to be together. The whole point of going to Tucson was not to be together with her, it was to be there with his kid. It’s very Dr. Laura. I think Dr. Laura would like Henry.”

There is so much more at the original interview (hat tip Beatrice B).  Check it out!

Image: Newscom

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It seems like a combination of an Agatha Christie murder mystery and an 80’s slasher film.  It seems a little intense for us to watch with the kiddies, but intriguing just the same.

In the video, there’s a short snippet of interview with Christopher Goham, and several clips of some of his scenes (amongst others).  At the Harper’s Island web site, there’s also “biographies” of each character, including Gorham’s  (who is, once again, named Henry).

About Island’s unorthodox filming, Gorham admits it was a little unsettling. 

“As an actor, it requires an unprecedented amount of trust in your producers, because none of us knew what was going to happen,” he said. “None of us knew what our story arcs were going to be. There was no planning in advance. There was no planting of seeds. In a situation like that, you just have to trust your instincts, and trust that the producers know what they’re doing.”

“You say to yourself, ‘OK, I’m going to play what’s in front of me, and only what’s in front of me. And trust that when we get five episodes down the line, I’m not going to look back and regret the choices that I made, because something changed, because a relationship changed, because someone died . . .’ There was an extraordinary amount of trust involved.”

“On the flip side of that, I think it brought an incredible freshness to what we were doing. It made it incredibly alive, incredibly in the moment, and it made the whole experience a lot of fun. The funny thing is that, by doing it that way, we got to experience, as actors, what the audience is going to experience when they’re watching it.”

I know I’m going to at least DVR this show.  What about you?

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Her name is Alondra Cecilia Lopez Gorham (love that name!). According to Gorham, she’s “perfect”. He and his wife also have two sons, Lucas and Ethan.

Gorham is only a part of keeping the baby-making streak for the show alive. First it was creator / executive producer Salma Hayek, and more recently new parents Eric Mabius, Rebecca Romijn and the newly expecting Ana Ortiz.

I hope when (and I say whan, not if) Ugly Betty renews for its fourth season, they include a nursery in the contract.

And of course, keep an “eye” out for Gorham on CBS, where he will be playing the lead in the upcoming new serialized drama “Harper’s Island,” in which he plays a groom at a wedding that soon becomes a nightmare when the guest get picked off one by one by a mysterious killer among them.

Congratulations Chris!

Image: Pacific Coast News

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(Hat tip to commenter Sarah !)

I have a couple of questions about this. First off, Henry is apparently going to be in this scene. There has been discussion about whether or not this is actually Christopher Gorham, or a double (if the scene is a quick flashback, it’s possible they used a double). I have no reason to think it’s NOT CG, though, and I’m going to see if I can get to the bottom of this in the next few days. Part of my problem is that, although there are pics (which you’ll see after the jump), the ones available to me do not include Gorham. I know that one or two exist out there, though. Stay tuned.

The other thing is more mysterious. What are they doing here? Why shoot another version of the scene? Although, I guess it COULD be a new softball game. But, that doesn’t seem likely.

I see three major possibilities for this scene:

• This could be a flashback. I’ve been combing through the old photos, trying to figure out if Alec Mapa is wearing the same thing he wore in Jump. If not, then a flashback wouldn’t make sense. Plus, Betty is wearing a strange diamond-encrusted belt buckle (shown in some of the photos out there) that I don’t remember from 2.18.
• This could be a present-day dream. Maybe Betty is having a dream or vision, reliving the softball game with new perspective? None of the OTHER actors (Urie, Williams, Newton, Mabius) appear to be in the scene.
• Or – Silvio Horta could be pulling a “Newhart” on us. What if everything that happened after the softball beaned Betty was a dream? I surely hope not. Please, please, please don’t do this, Ugly Betty producers!

One thing for sure, Freddy Rodriguez is in this scene.

Anyway, this makes for interesting speculation. I’ve got lots of pics after the jump – and Benry fans, I promise you, if I come across photos of Chris Gorham in this scene (that I’m allowed to use) I PROMISE, I’ll post them.

(So, what the heck is “D&G” or “DeG”?) Was Betty wearing this in 2.18?)

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This week’s print version of TV Guide has a blurb about Christopher Gorham and his new show, Harper’s Island.  You can view a scan here.

Gorham says, of his Ugly Betty character Henry’s relationship with Betty, “The show got us together and had to think of ways to keep us apart”. 

There’s really no disagreeing with that.  We can argue whether the producers jumped the gun with the Henry/Betty relationship (as much as I like him, I think they did – romantic tension is always better, dramatically, than a healthy relationship), but there’s no denying that the whole love triangle thing was not handled well. (This is assuming that the story just abruptly ends early in season 3)

Back to the blurb, it mentions that Gorham’s character on Harper’s Island, Henry Dunn, is a “dashing groom”.  The plot of the show has friends and family gathering on the island, only to get picked off one by one by a mysterious killer. The killer is revealed in the season finale.

But there’s an interesting Ugly Betty connection: Adam Campbell, who plays a guest and subsequently one of the suspects, is married to none other than Jayma Mays, who of course played the girl we loved to hate, Charlie.  Asked if she could be the killer, Campbell says, “I live with the girl, so I know she’s got a sinister side.  Nothing would surprise me.”

Source: SpoilerTV

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I am pretty convinced that this means that Henry is coming back next season. Betty is NOT going to go away with anyone, and if someone like, say, Gio, were to go to a certain European country shaped like a boot, certainly he wouldn’t be on the show anymore.

I know all the hints have been about Henry leaving the show – now I’m not so sure.

By the way, the chicken they cook looks scrumptious!

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(BTW, I created this clip myself, and it’s my first, so forgive any sloppy editing!)

Henry hits Gio! This wasn’t entirely unexpected, in fact, youkind of knew they’d come to blows.

After introductions, they cook chicken. Most of this clip is of Chris and Martha cutting up whole broiler chickens. I didn’t realise how funny Gorham is in real life till I saw this appearance.

BTW, there is another clip (coming very, very soon). Chris has an interesting (maybe) spoiler. My jaw just dropped when I heard him say it. Stay tuned, because you don’t want to miss it!

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