When Justin Bartha landed the lead role in the NBC comedy “Teachers,” he knew just how he’d play unorthodox high school English teacher Jeff Cahill.
“I wanted to make this guy like the teachers that I had that I remember. He’s a guy you’ll always remember who taught you something that you never learned in another class, just because of the way he taught,” Bartha says. “I just wanted to make him like that – with a little Johnny Carson thrown in. Mischievous.”
In “Teachers” (8:30 p.m. Tuesdays on KUSA-Channel 9), Bartha, who had supporting roles in movies (including “National Treasure”), plays Cahill as the smuggest member of the faculty at (fictional) Filmore High in Fort Lee, N.J.
“He definitely puts on an air of not caring. He thinks for some reason that it is not cool to care,” Bartha says. “But when the class door closes and the bell rings, he definitely is there for the students. He wants to get through to them.”
The big appeal for him was the ensemble of “really specific funny characters,” played by Sarah Alexander, Deon Richmond, Phil Hendrie, Sarah Shahi and Kali Rocha.
“What I love about the show is that, for me, it feels like a ‘Cheers’ type of show, where it’s not important that they’re in a school,” Bartha says. “‘Cheers’ was not about alcoholics and bartenders. It was about the people who hung out in the bar and how they related to each other.”
Bartha, 27, was born in Florida and moved with his family to Michigan at age 9. He took up acting in high school.
“Right when I hit that stage I just knew that’s where I wanted to be,” he says. “Fifteen years old. Bam. I knew it.”
Bartha went on to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and won notice in the movies “Gigli” (as the mentally challenged younger brother of a federal prosecutor), “National Treasure” (Nicolas Cage’s sidekick) and “Failure to Launch” (Matthew McConaughey’s best buddy).
“Teachers” creator Matt Tarses, who’d seen “National Treasure,” approached him about playing Cahill. Bartha loved the script and the characters.
“I said, ‘Why not? Let’s do it.’ I was ready to kind of step up and do a leading part. And also, I thought there’s a lot more interesting things happening on TV than in movies right now.”
His main inspiration was an English teacher he had in Michigan.
“He never stuck to a lesson plan and he always tried to get us to read books that he really admired that no other teacher would ever assign,” he says. “They are still some of my favorite books today. He trusted his audience. The kids were his audience. He didn’t teach down to them.”
NBC ordered six episodes of “Teachers,” and with ratings not great and two episodes left to air, its future does not look rosy.
Regardless of this show’s fate, though, Bartha has found his first brush with TV to be a positive experience.
“It’s a lot more fast-paced than a movie. I love that,” Bartha says. “You get a script on Monday and you’re shooting it on Friday. It’s a lot of hard work. It’s a lot of fun.”
