Evan Bass of “We Need Girlfriends” Makes a Secret Pact

I interviewed Evan Bass of We Need Girlfriends and was surprised to realize how drastically different he is from his on-screen counterpart. Below you will find what he had to say about his hair, psychology, fan girls, what he thinks of his WNG character (Rod) - and he was even nice enough to dispense some cooking tips. We even made a secret pact. While I get started beading some BFF bracelets (or buying them, since, you know, I’m not made of money here) go ahead and read this interview. It may very possibly be the best thing you read today.

Key: J - Jessica (me), E - Evan

J: Do you recall what WNG scene you auditioned with the first time you read for Rod?
E: Actually, a couple of weeks ago we all watched the audition tapes (digitized, so not really tapes anymore). I remember most the “squirrel” opening line and the rooftop squirrel scamming scene. Apparently I also thought that chewing gum during the audition would add to the character. I look somewhat like a fool.

J: From what I’ve read on your MySpace, your personality is fairly different from Rod’s. Does that make playing Rod more entertaining, or more challenging?
E: Rod is fun to play. Getting to be something different than yourself is challenging, but that is part of the fun of it, getting into Rod’s head. I work a lot on my scripts and I go through figuring out what perspective the character, in this case Rod, has on each interaction and it is fun. I mean, it is not the same reaction I personally would have, but figuring it out, or seeing how it comes out when I am Rod, is always a blast.

J: Did shooting game night on the set of WNG ever lead to any real game nights for the cast and crew? How skilled are you at board games?
E: I have partaken in a couple of game nights with some of the cast and crew. I am pretty awesome at games. That being said, there was one game where you had to watch videos for each question and dealt with old pictures of movie actors or random movie trivia, and Steven and Patrick were by far a couple of leagues ahead of me in that game. But in Jenga and strategy games I am pretty good.

J: Your hair seems to grow exponentially with each episode of WNG, why did you decide to grow it out?
E: My hair started pretty short at the beginning of the episodes, and I usually go without a beard as well. The producers (Brian, Angel, and Steven) wanted me to look different from Tom (Patrick Cohen) and so I started growing the mini-beard for each episode. In college I had a huge afro but dreaded it and then cut it my senior year. The more I got into Rod the more the longer hair felt right. Once it started getting longer the Ragtag guys liked it and said I should keep it going, and what they want, they get.

J: The character of Rod is an exaggerated version of Angel. What would your advice be to guys who are actually just like Rod?
E: I do not know if I am in the right place to give advice, but Rod, though somewhat simple on the outside, is a lot more complex to me. A lot of how he acts relates to how he views himself, how he relates to women, and the confidence, or sometimes lack thereof, that we all have in our self when we interact with people. He lets his guard down sometimes, and that is the real side of Rod coming out, and everyone does that. We have the ideal self we want to be and the self we are inside, and then there is the side that we project to the world. We are all trying to figure out the right balance of all three of those perspectives. Wow, I don’t think I actually answered your question, but that is my answer and I am going to stick to it.

J: To reference MySpace again - you’re in the group Team Henry but not Team Rod. Is that on purpose?
E: There is a MySpace Team Rod group? Henry gets all the press so I guess I lost track. I don’t really go out in search of groups on MySpace or Facebook, rather if someone invites me I’ll join. I guess no one invited me to Team Rod. Ouch.

J: Being that Rod is loosely based on Angel, do you ever study Angel when he isn’t looking (or while he is)? If he puts a restraining order up on you will that interfere with shooting WNG on CBS (that we all hope will be happening!) or will you work around it?
E: I guess I study Angel. Steven likes to claim I am “very method,” since he noticed that as the episode shootings progressed I took on more and more Angelisms. He liked to say that he couldn’t tell if I brought more of myself to Rod or that I was turning more into Rod in my daily mannerisms. I consider myself a very technologically savvy person, somewhat of a technophile, and Rod and Angel both share that trait. I guess at somewhat of an unconscious level I have added things I have picked up from Angel to Rod, but it has never been a conscious effort of studying.

J: Have you had any odd fan experiences with people recognizing you on the street? Are you prepared for crazy fangirls to run up to you?
E: Angel and I were heading to meet up with some friends in a bar near the NYU area and we were walking through Union Square and this one young lady looked at me, took another glance, and then kind of pointed at me and waved. Now I am pretty good with faces, and I’m nearly 100 percent sure I did not know this girl, so I looked over my shoulder (assuming she was waving at someone behind me and I wanted to save myself the embarrassment of waving back only to realize she meant the wave for someone else), but no one was there. So I kind of waved back and she kept staring at me and slightly waving, and Angel and I kept on our way. Now I am assuming that was a fan. If not, I am the worst friend ever. But then again, if the person was my friend she probably would have come over and said hello rather than pointing and staring. Besides that, I’ve had a few meetings with fans on subways but apparently they only want to say hello or that they have watched the show just as they are leaving the train or I have gotten off at my stop.

I can only wait for the day that crazy fangirls run up to me.

J: Have you always been so ambitious in a scholastic vein? Is ambition a part of your personality in general?
E: Yes.

J: What daughter on Full House did you have a crush on when you were younger?
E: I am going to have to go with John Stamos’s wife when he was still married to Rebecca Romijn. The older children I wasn’t really attracted to, and the Olsen twins were like 5 years old and though I was not greatly older than they were that still is wrong.

J: Is it going to annoy you if I ask you a psychology-related question? (Warning! I’m still asking.)
E: No.

J: Is there any one psychologist that you find particularly appealing? (Not for looks, for their thoughts and theories.)
E: Philosophers, I would have liked to meet Hegel, a friggin’ genius. Psychologist…I guess of the old school I would like to have a conversation with Carl Jung, it’d be amusing I imagine.

J: Do you know anything about birth order? What would you guess your character Rod would be, and why?
E: I do not really know much about birth order via psychology, a little via sociology, but I would say that Rod is the oldest of two children, with a younger brother.

J: And what are you, in terms of birth order?
E: In terms of birth order I would put myself under “confused.”

J: Your website has a ‘word of the month’ listed on it. How do you choose the word? Is it based on what the word means, a concept you want to keep in your mind, or whatever sounds coolest?
E: I had that put up because I really like that word at this moment, “fortuitous.” It is just a great word all around. It is more of a “word of the moment” and won’t change until I find another word that makes me smile close to equally as much.

J: Steven told me he had never heard of Otter Pops. I’m hoping you can tell me that you have - have you?
E: I have never heard of them. I did just Google search them. They are just specialty brand ice pops?

J: Otter Pops are so much more than just ’specialty ice pops’! They have Otter Popstar band members on them. I don’t know of any food that is neater than that. (I think whoever is in charge of them should send a bunch of Otter Pops to the WNG cast and crew! ) On the subject of food, you mentioned to me earlier that you can dispense cooking tips. I’m trying to learn, and I bet some others are as well. So, we’d love some tips. Can you tell us if you have a go-to simple meal that is easy to prepare but still nice?
E: Easy to prepare but “still nice?” How are we defining nice? As in, a dish to present a girlfriend? Or you mean it tastes good? For presentation, I am a fan of baking fish. Get a fish steak or filet, salmon, sea bass, catfish, whatever is available fresh, put some olive oil on both sides of it and bake it between 325 and 375 (lookup online what temp depending on the fish) on a cookie sheet. It is pretty simple, takes hardly any preparation, and you just check it by testing the meat with a fork. Throw some pasta on the side, a piece of lettuce and it looks classy too. For easy and good tasting, I fall back on a meal that my college roommate and I happened upon when we experimented with throwing together everything we had in our cupboard one year in college: the black bean, yam, and cheese burrito. The name pretty much describes the dish. Heat a can of black beans, grate some cheese, slice and cook the yams (steamed preferably, but boiled is easier…but less nutritious for you), and then layer everything together in your tortilla. Surprisingly, to us at first at least, it tastes pretty awesome.

J: Do you have any tips about cooking pasta, or good pasta dishes to make?
E: Pasta… cook it a little al dente (take it out a little earlier than you think)…sure fire way to test when spaghetti is done is to throw it against a wall…since it is starch based, if it sticks to the wall it is done, if it bounces off it could use another minute or two. Add olive oil to the boiling water to avoid clumping. Other than that, I am a fan of angel hair.

J: If you opened up a restaurant what would you call it? (And of course, tell us why - unless the reason is ultra top secret, in which case, tell only the Sofachip readers and we’ll make a secret pact.)
E: I actually have thought of it. The restaurant would (will) be called Zeitgeistian Design. The idea behind the restaurant would be that a large list of ingredients would be presented in the menu and the diner would select the items that he or she likes and then the chef would create a dish using all of the given items. So each time you would get something new, or different, and you would always get food that you enjoy. Secret pact, please.

Okay guys, I am enforcing the secret pact rule! You with me? Good. How cool does that restaurant sound? I would definitely go there. And someone invite Evan to ‘Team Rod’ or make the Myspace community and then invite him. Rod, Henry and Tom all deserve our love.

You can read my review of We Need Girlfriends here. I also interviewed the production team who makes the show happen behind the scenes (although they have been extras in shots before). You can read my interview with Angel Acevedo here, my interview with Brian Amyot here, and my interview with Steven Tsapelas here.

WNG has a Wikipedia page, now! Check it out.

Until later,

Jessica Rae

For more, see evanbass.com (Photo credits go to that site.)

For even more, see weneedgirlfriends.tv