Till a natural MacGyver
MacGyver star keen to return for a second season
As sure as you can use a chewing gum wrapper to fix a broken fuse box, Lucas Till was born to play Angus MacGyver. The star of CBS’s action reboot MacGyver has a mother who’s a chemist and a dad who’s in the U.S. army, so playing a government operative who uses unconventional — and sometimes unbelievable — methods to save lives comes naturally.
“We used to call my dad MacGyver because he would hijack all my class projects and do them for me, so it’s kind of crazy that I got the part in the show,” says Till.
Based on the like-named series starring Richard Dean Anderson, which aired from 1985 to 1992, MacGyver builds on the franchise so embedded in pop culture that the name MacGyver has become a catch-all verb.
Have a leaky faucet that you fixed using duct tape and Silly Putty? You just MacGyvered your way out of a flooded bathroom. Got stuck in a snowbank and used kitty litter to get out? Your MacGyvering skills are developing well, young Grasshopper.
Set to debut its second season Friday on Global and CBS, MacGyver also stars George Eads, Sandrine Holt, Tristin Mays, Justin Hires and Meredith Eaton.
Last season, the team used a ruler and coconut oil to make disguises, employed a hook and a car cable to extract a criminal and finagled a fish scaler and some fishing wire to track down a corrupt FBI agent. Behind the scenes, technical consultant Rhett Allain, who’s also a physics professor and author, is on hand to verify the plausibility of Mac’s tricks.
“There’s a trick with toothpicks and forks that I can do in real life, and it’s like a balancing act. But other than that, there’s not too much. A lot of that stuff is too dangerous to try on your own,” Till says, adding filming the action scenes can also wreak havoc on a guy.
“I’ve been doing a lot of yoga after the fact, because when I wasn’t preparing at all I would get really stiff and hurt myself. Unless I’m mistaken, I think I do all my fight scenes, but every now and again they have a jump-in because it’s just not safe enough or I don’t have time. But I like to do as much as they’ll let me.”
Also in its first season, MacGyver aired a crossover episode with fellow CBS show Hawaii Five-0,a reboot itself of the like-named series that aired from 1968 to 1980. For that episode, Till and Eads flew from the Atlanta set of MacGyver to film scenes with Five-0 cast members including Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim (both have since left the show after salary disputes). Till says he’s cautiously open to another crossover.
“If I have one day off at the beginning, and one day off at the end, then I’ll go back,” he jokes. “Obviously I’ll do whatever they want, but it’s not as beautiful of a trip as you’d think because it’s all work and you can’t even get to the ocean. And filming in the middle of the week is very stressful. But yeah, it sounds really cool on paper. Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park were amazing.”
As for guest stars, the idea of original MacGyver Anderson making an appearance is still out there. Show executives reached out to Anderson last summer, but the actor said on his website that he didn’t want to be part of the reboot out of loyalty to fans of the original show.
“I have no idea (if he’ll guest-star). We still don’t know what he would be yet, but it’s always a possiblitiy,” says Till. “I think that first season we were just trying to figure out whether we were going to get season 2 or not, and establishing all these other characters and relationships. Now we can build on that and introduce new people.”