Nerd World Leaders

It’s official: the geeks have inherited the Earth.

Thirty years after they helped start a dweeb revolution the big-screen comedy smash Revenge of the Nerds, Robert Carradine (aka Lewis Skolnick) and Curtis “Booger” Armstrong are reveling in their roles as cohosts and executive producers of TBS’s reality competition King of the Nerds.

Not surprisingly, it’s proven a perfect companion for the net’s reruns of TV’s top-rated comedy, the geek-centric The Big Bang Theory. As the search for the ultimate dork kicks off its third season, emmy contributor Bruce Fretts held a meeting of the minds with Carradine and Armstrong.

What was the genesis of this show?

Carradine: We’d been trying to get this going for a few years.

Armstrong: When we started developing it, there was already one nerd reality show, [the CW’s short-lived dating show] Beauty and the Geek. It wasn’t the same kind of show, but the nerd thing was a red flag. So we forgot about it for a few years. Then Bobby called and said we should try again.

And this time, it was like they’d been waiting for us.

When you made the movie, did you expect it would have such resonance?

Carradine: At the time, we were just having a good time making a movie. We had no idea how iconic the message would be.

Did you have any concern that playing a nerd might typecast you?

Carradine: My feeling about roles at the time was: if Mel Gibson wouldn’t do it, I wouldn’t do it. They dragged me into it kicking and screaming, but once I was in it, I fell in love with it.

Armstrong: I’d only done one movie, Risky Business, and I thought that was a fluke. So for me, just being in movies was a new experience.

When I got Nerds, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s two flukes.’ I was not thinking of this as a career move, and I certainly wasn’t thinking about typecasting.

Was the movie ahead of its time?

Carradine: Yeah, it’s funny: the mainstream is all nerds now. There’s almost always a nerd in every TV ad. Nerds are cool now.

Armstrong: The movie was really well cast, and people could relate to all those different nerds. The idea of those people all living in a house drew them to the movie, and I think it’s what drives them to King of the Nerds.

Are you empowering a group that’s historically been bullied?

Carradine: Yes, nerds had been ostracized socially. And it took a group of nerds to invent social media.

Armstrong: With  King of the Nerds, we draw from such a wide pool, everyone gets represented. They may work for NASA and have multiple degrees; they may collect comic books or do cosplay [dressing up in costumes]. Some of them may feel awkward and  shy and some may be very confident, but that doesn’t make them any less nerdy.

What’s the biggest challenge in making this show?

Armstrong: Coming up with the perfect challenges. It’s hard to keep it cinematic and think of nerd-offs that aren’t all just up in the head. I think we did a really good job this season.

Any big guest nerds coming up?

Armstrong: One who worked out well was Moby. His interaction with the nerds was terrific. He and Lisa Loeb were judges for our nerd anthem episode.

Will there ever be another Nerds movie?

Carradine: We do have a really good concept for another one, and the time is right, I would say.

Do you keep in touch with your fellow nerds from Revenge, like Anthony Edwards and Timothy Busfield?

Carradine: Yes, we had a big Nerds reunion at Sketchfest in San Francisco. We were very well received. It was exciting.

How do your kids feel about being related to famous nerds?

Armstrong: My daughter’s never seen the movie, and she’s 19. I don’t know that she’ll ever see the movie. From the time she was little, she was put off by people yelling “Booger!” at me on the street.

Carradine: My kids are older, and when they saw it, they really loved it.

So how do you look back over this whole nerd experience?

Carradine: It’s been a blessing, really.

Armstrong: I would have to agree. For a role that I had no expectations of, this has been an amazing thing.

It’s never interfered with doing other types of roles, but it has opened doors for me to do things, just because people loved that role. If it has that kind of effect on people after 30 years, we must have been doing something right.

Photos by Jeremy Freeman.