You have been friends with J. J. Abrams since you were kids but how exactly do you know each other?

Well just that way, since we were three. We met at elementary school and you know my dad jokes that even back then he knew that J. J. was going to be who he is today. It’s just one of those things where we became fast friends and how he’s like a brother to me, he’s the greatest guy ever.

Really you’ve been involved in every project in his career haven’t you?

Yeah that’s kinda what we’ve always said we’ve wanted to do was work together as much as we possibly can. As an actor it’s harder to choose the people you want to work with, you really have to hope that they want to work with you on the producing and the directing level and he’s just been so sweet you know to want to work with me.

It shows how highly he values you as an actor mixing his personal life with his professional.

Yeah I mean it’s a tough thing to do. If you hire somebody you have to be willing to fire them [laughter] and he and I have just always said “as best we can we’re going to try work together” and so far it’s worked out. You know doing Heroes is kind of the first big TV project that I’ve done without J. J. and I got very very fortunate that the people that I’m working with are of that same calibre so it’s been a really great experience.

In the last series of Heroes you play a darker version of your character, was it a good change for you getting to play a darker part?

Yeah I love mixing it up.  I love the idea of doing something that people would not expect me to do; it makes it more interesting and I tend to play you know people that are number one hopefully very relatable and number two are characters that no matter what he does he’s always going to be the good guy and it’s a blessing and a curse at the same time but“5 years gone” that episode where I went around killing everyone it was like “what is he doing?”, it makes for a very interesting storyline when the characters doing something against his type.

I do think that’s what makes your character so good that he is so relatable. You could see yourself living next door to him.

Yeah, well thank you, I mean that’s the best compliment I could get. They certainly write the character that way and I try to play it as real as possible and you know the flip-side of that is I’ve got this power where I tilt my head [laughter]. If you and I were in the same room and I did that you would probably make reference to it so it’s a tricky kind of combination to do that and make it seem as real as possible.

You spent most of your time last series working with Brea Grant. Do you think you will miss working with her?

Yeah I thought we had great chemistry, I love Brea I think she’s amazingly talented, and she is an example, and we’ve had this a number of times on the show, we get these great actors that come on and they have a great presence and he just haven’t locked them in on a contract yet so they go somewhere else to do something on a regular basis and unfortunately we just have to let them go because we haven’t signed them. Some people we do sign and Brea’s one of those that I wish they had of locked in and I just love her, I love working with her. I’m happy that Lisa Lackey back though too because I love working with her and I love having the wife and kid relationship on the show.

Was the age difference between you and Brea hard to overcome?

No, you know there were times where I was like “is she my daughter or is she my love interest?” but yeah I think she is terrific and we got along well and it didn’t seem to bother too many people and it was fun to play, it was really fun to play. And I think it also played into the fact that my character was more hopeful than realistic about that relationship, it was something that he just desperately wanted and was kinda blind to the fact that is was never going to happen for him.

In the next series are we going to see Matt trying to start a family again?

Absolutely. The next series of Heroes is all about really Parkman trying to deal with what he’s done and the consequences that play into that now that he’s switched out the brains between Nathan and Sylar and was my character effected by that at all? I mean when do something like that you can imagine there’s probably residue left and is that going to effect me? Is Parkman going to have a little bit of Sylar in him? And I hope they play that up. The first script just came out and it’s fantastic so I can’t wait and see what they have planned for me.

Do you think your character is going to be one of the ones seeking redemption in the next series as it is titled “redemption”?

I think so. I think there’s defiantly redemption there and I think there’s regret, there’s defiantly going to be a lot of regret and even the very last shot of me in the last series is when you see Parkman standing over Sylar’s body and he defiantly regrets what he’s just done. And so if things go wrong they’re going to turn to Parkman to try and fix what he’s done even though he begrudgingly did it.

You’ve also had a small part in LOST as the pilot; do you know if there are any plans for you to turn in the final series?

I would love it. I don’t know if they have any plans for me but it would be so great to come back and you know to let people know exactly what happened in the cockpit when the plane came down. I think that would be a really cool kind of flash-back. I let them know if they do want me to come back then I’m available and hopefully it will work out schedule wise but they haven’t mentioned anything specific yet.

You also had a small part in the new Star Trek film but your  voice only appeared due to some scheduling conflicts?

Yeah I was suppose to have a bigger role in the movie and I was filming a movie that I co-wrote with Lawrence Trilling and produced and stared in called “Group Sex”  that is hopefully going to be coming out soon, we’re finalising a distribution deal but if was a really tough thing to do. When you’re doing a low budget movie locations are key and everything has to be locked in stone so I couldn’t do both but J. J. again was just so sweet and said “I want you to do something in this movie” so I ended up doing the voice of the step-dad.

That does at least leave you with a chance to appear in the next film as a different character as the audience hasn’t seen you physically.

Yeah, exactly. That is something that I would love to do. I wouldn’t even have to play that part, I just did the voice, you never saw me, I could play some else. But I luuuuved the movie, I just loved it! I think it set the bar really high for summer films and so if they have anything for me in the next one I will just jump at it.

You also have a project called Yowza that just launched quite recently?

Yeah it’s an awesome, free i-phone and i-pod touch application. It was born about 10 months ago, we try and save money where we can, especially in these times now, and we’re trying to teach our kids to be frugal and good with money. Meanwhile we don’t have time to cut coupons, we don’t have time to look for the best offers in the paper and we always forget the paper coupons when we need them so it was just kinda born out of that and just the fact that I luuuuuuve the i-phone and I live by all these applications. And I met these two guys, August Trometer and Rick Yaeger and they are kinda Rockstars in the app world and we started talking about doing something like Yowza and they loved the idea and 10 months later it was born and we’re about a month in and we’re getting a lot of retailers onboard. It’s a free download, people can just download it and know that they have hundreds of great offers with them all the time.

Source: Lots of Interviews