Lucas Till in “Macgyver”
Lucas Till knew he had big shoes to fill. But the “MacGyver” reboot, starring the 28-year-old actor as the 20-something crime-solving improviser armed with almost infinite scientific resourcefulness, is proving to have legs.
Fans of the actor and his adventure series have reason to rejoice because, just last May, CBS gave the show its go signal for a fourth season.
But the character hasn’t always been an easy fit for Lucas.
“It’s like going to war,” the handsome actor said of the daunting task of living up to Richard Dean Anderson’s “likability.” The latter portrayed the iconic TV character for seven seasons, from 1985 to 1992.
“How do you approach the character of a TV classic and turn it into something new?” Lucas said in a previous interview with Inquirer Entertainment. “In Season 1, I couldn’t assess how I was faring through the whole year we were shooting it because it was always like an 80-hour week. There was even a week when we had to work for 90 hours!
“It’s probably a good way to [deflect] the pressure being thrown my way. I mean, every interview that I went to, people would always say, ‘Those are big shoes to fill! Are you gonna fill ’em up?’
“So, I was like, ‘Let me try, OK? If you don’t like it, just change the channel. But it seems like, after I got done [with Season 1], people really liked it—which was cool, because we worked really hard. Not just for people to accept the show, but also to accept me as the young Angus ‘Mac’ MacGyver.”—RITO P. ASILO