David Krumholtz

Exclusive Interview: DAVID KRUMHOLTZ GIVES THE ’NUMB3RS’ ON THE SEASON SIX FINALE

The actor talks about altruism, his short film and working with Joss Whedon on

NUMB3RS is in its sixth season on CBS. The quirky procedural stars David Krumholtz as mathematic genius Charlie Eppes, who uses his calculations to help his FBI agent brother Don, played by Rob Morrow, to solve crimes. Judd Hirsch plays their erudite father.

Krumholtz has had a wide-ranging career, from playing an elf in the SANTA CLAUSE films to a randy college student in the HAROLD AND KUMAR comedies, but he definitely has a place in his heart for the smart, good-souled character he gets to play on NUMB3RS.

iF: Charlie is one of the rare TV characters who has sincere, non-megalomaniacal hopes of making the whole world a better place. Is it difficult to play that level of altruism?

DAVID KRUMHOLTZ: No, because I honestly believe that is a thing that is lacking in conventional dramatic narrative storytelling: the really good guy. It’s easy to do the bad guy, and it’s easy to do the guy with the agenda, or the good guy who’s conflicted, but what about just a really good guy who’s happy and good, and good for good’s sake, and good for his own self-actualization and self-progression? So I love playing it. That’s who this character is. That’s who this show is. We’re not trying to exploit, we’re not trying to fool anyone. We’re about teaching people math and educating people, which is I think the most fundamentally good thing.

iF: Do people come up to you and say, “My family watches NUMB3RS and all of a sudden, my kid is doing his algebra?”

KRUMHOLTZ: Yeah. It’s been years of that now. Now it’s calculus [laughs]. It doesn’t end. It’s always surprising. It never gets dull. As many times as you hear it, it’s always like, “Wow, we really are having an impact, and have had an impact, and are continuing to have an impact.” People are still into the math.

iF: At the outset of your acting career, if you thought, “I’d like my work to have an impact on somebody,” did you ever think it would be getting people to do their homework?

KRUMHOLTZ: [laughs] No, probably not. You know, honestly, I don’t have kids and I consider myself sort of a randy little wild raucous teenager. But I’ve had the privilege to just fall into a lot of these sort of kid-themed, younger-themed projects that are good for kids, everything from THE SANTA CLAUSE to this, and it’s been something that has actually kept me on the right path. I feel like I’m indebted to what I do [that has helped me] to be a good guy and not fall into doing stupid things. It’s made me a better person, I think.

iF: So you’re sort of taking a little bit of Charlie’s altruism home with you?

KRUMHOLTZ: More and more. As the seasons go on and as the show continues, what matters to me more and more, more than anything else, more than even the storylines of what my character is doing on the show, is the fact that people love this show and that I’m an appreciated actor, that I have an audience and that I get a positive response from them.

iF: How would you say the chemistry between you and Rob Morrow or you and Judd Hirsch has changed over the seasons?

KRUMHOLTZ: It’s just gotten more intuitive and more instinctual. I mean, it’s there without us having to work on it any more. It’s just so relaxed and sort of joyous. It just happens, it flows out of us – it’s going to be weird when it’s over, I’ll tell you that much. It did look like season five might be the end, and then we got picked up. We thought, “Well, wait a second. If season five wasn’t the end, if we just do all right in season six …” A lot of us are hoping for season seven.

iF: Do you have any projects you’ve done between seasons of NUMB3RS?

KRUMHOLTZ: Well, I directed and wrote my first short film. It’s called BIG BREAKS and I’m not in it. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in it and Jane Lynch, who’s great, and Elizabeth Banks and Martin Starr from FREAKS AND GEEKS and a lot of cool other people. It’s a good group of people. They all came out and did a good job for me. I’m trying to develop a couple of series for cable with a few friends of mine. I wore a film, a full-length feature, that I sold to Universal, I’m trying to write another one. But acting jobs, no. There’s no time – the show is all-encompassing.

iF: Do you see your career getting more behind the camera as things progress?

KRUMHOLTZ: I’d like to give it a shot. If it never works out, at least ten years from now, I’d like to know that I gave it a shot. So I kind of caught the writing bug and people have responded well. Universal responded well to my first script, so yeah, that would be nice, but I love acting. I really want to sink my teeth into something very different than what I’ve been doing, [to play a] total dumb asshole with maybe a scraggly beard, missing a couple of teeth, who smells and hates the world.

IF: Your character Mr. Universe in the film SERENITY was a bit like Charlie in terms of computer brilliance. Do you have any memories of working on the film?

KRUMHOLTZ: Yes. I actually had the privilege of doing the last two days of shooting on the film, and so the regular cast had all been completed on the film. And it was kind of this sad thing where everyone had said goodbye to each other, like, “Wait, there are two more days of shooting and this guy’s going to come in, he’s not going to act with anyone, he’s just going to be talking to the camera,” and it was kind of weird. It was a little awkward, but fun. And they accepted me, and Joss Whedon is just – he’s Joss Whedon, so can’t beat that.

iF: Is Charlie going to get sandbagged by reality at some point, or is he going to refuse to let it hit him too hard?

KRUMHOLTZ: Toward the end of last season, there was a lot of that. Don got stabbed, it was kind of Charlie’s fault, he went through a catharsis. Amrita got kidnapped and the season ended with him asking her to marry him. So real life is creeping in, and one of the themes we began to touch on at the end of the season was, is it okay if Charlie never becomes the great mathematician, and is it okay if he never becomes a full-on FBI consultant, either? Is it just okay if he becomes a guy who lives his life? And what’s really great about that is, it parallels what’s going on with my life. I’m getting married in my real life, so life is taking over, and it is for Charlie as well. The career is taking a back seat.