John Cho has certainly been busy over the last couple of years. He’s played Sulu in J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek, Harold in the Harold & Kumar films and FBI agent Demetri Noh in high-concept SF show Flashforward. With the latter title just out on DVD, the actor sits down to chat to Total Sci-Fi. “I’m the kind of guy that could sit around all day and do a single scene!” he tells Abbie Bernstein.

After Star Trek, Flashforward and two Harold & Kumar films, do you feel an obligation to only appear in things that have a cult following?

I’m starting my own cult, as a matter of fact! If you’d like to join, there are some membership forms… Yeah, it is odd that I have stumbled into a few franchises. I was also in all three American Pies!

Between thinking he’s going to die and the situation with his fiancée Zoe and pregnant colleague Janis, Demetri has a very heavy psychological burden…

I don’t think of it that way. I tried not to take that burden into scenes; I tried more to play the reality of the moment. What’s interesting is, because it’s hanging over Demetri's head, I loved to then find little moments of joy in his life in scenes with Gabrielle [Union, who plays Zoe]. Those scenes were even more fun – they had a bigger payoff.

Demetri seems to have three different primary areas of his existence. He’s got the romance with Zoe and the partnership with Joseph Fiennes’s character, Mark. And then there’s the time he spends on his own, trying to find out what’s happening. Which part of the character did you enjoy playing the most?

I would say that maybe it’s the domestic stuff, the stuff with Gabrielle. It’s not that it was necessarily more gratifying to do, but I felt like it had a greater payoff. And he’s the most honest there, so it affected how I saw everything else that he did.

Did you do any research into playing an FBI agent when you were cast as Demetri?

I did. I read literature about the FBI, and then I called up a friend who had a brother in law enforcement. We got together and went to the shooting range; we shot and talked, and shot and talked!

I also did some martial arts training with Joseph, and some more gun training under their tutelage. And they hired an FBI consultant.

Was that easier or harder than learning how to fence in Star Trek?

Guns are hard. I find myself very nervous around guns, and I’m not very good at it. I think maybe it’s a mental block. I dislike guns. I dislike touching them!

How does the pace of doing a weekly TV series compare to heavy-duty special effects movies?

I always want more time to work on scenes. That’s my thing. But depending on the week and the director, it wasn't a problem. But if there’s anything about TV that’s tough, it’s the schedule. And I don’t mean the long hours – I just mean sometimes you feel like you want another take. I’m the kind of guy that could sit around all day and do a single scene!

Which themes on the show were you particularly drawn to?

The Janis storyline and everything that’s involved with her. I didn’t see that coming and didn’t think I’d be as attracted to it as much as I was!

Christine Woods [as Janis] did an amazing job. Janis sees herself pregnant [in her flashforward], and her storyline was fascinating for me – maybe because I’m a recent father. She has a bond with her unborn child in that two minutes and 17 seconds. Then, when she's back in the present, she must get pregnant because of that bond created in the flashforward. I find that fascinating.

Flashforward: The Complete Series is out now on DVD (region 1 & 2).