On the set of TNT's Leverage

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To Leverage Oscar pedigree

Timothy Hutton, on the other hand, was dying to hop on board from the moment he cracked open the Leverage script.

"(Nate) struggled with the personal tragedy of his son. You know in a lot of ways I feel he has nothing left to live for and that's how you meet him in an airport bar getting hammered with vodka. Dubenich comes up to him and no other time in his life would he agree to what's being proposed. I think he's a little crazy because of what's happened to him. He can't find anything to satisfy it, he's not going to get his son back. There are other things that happen in his life that you'll learn about as the season goes on that are still haunting him," Hutton says.

Says Devlin, "Tim has brought such wonderful complexity to (Nathan) that's beyond what we had expected when we wrote it. We originally envisioned this character as the guy in the control room pulling the strings, but when you've got an Academy Award-winning actor you're not going to leave him in the control booth. Suddenly he started coming up with these characters and so now he's got a really proactive part of the show where every week he's putting on a different hat and a different character. "

Putting on a different hat is just the start of what these actors have to do each week to prepare for a story and thus, a new scam.

According to Rogers, reverse psychology also works on Christian Kane who is charged with filming fight scenes for six hours in 110 degree heat. "The fastest way to piss Chris Kane off is to say, 'hey, maybe we should use the stunt double for this one,'" Rogers says.

Kane is honest as to why he feels performing his own stunts is completely natural. "I was on Angel for a long time and I learned a lot from Mike Massa - David Boreanaz's stunt double. Mike just let me do the fights, so I didn't have a stunt double on Angel either. I honestly feel like I've spent the last ten years of my life preparing for this role," Kane says.

"It's comedy. It's drama and it's action. That's what I like about it. I put every single thing that I've ever learned into this role. It's been a tough shoot and I love it because of that."

Adding up to a hit

But the truth is, all of the actors on Leverage have had to do a little extra homework, including learning how to pickpocket and run a con from a team of real-life professional thieves.

"It's a group of damaged people," says Devlin.

"When they're together, a magic happens. It's like great jazz musicians. It's one thing to play alone but when you get them together it goes to a whole other level. The underlying conflict of the show is 'can they stay together when every part of their nature is to be alone, and to 'not' trust. But there is this honor among thieves, there is this appreciation of each other and it holds them together."

The appreciation and respect goes far beyond the way the characters feel for each other. After spending an evening with the cast of Leverage, it's easy to see that they have that respect in real life, too. Add on the training they've received in professional thievery and I wondered if they could pull off a con as themselves and not their characters.

Says Kane, "If we had this team, I honestly think that we could pull off a big con."

To which Bellman adds, "I've become a really good pickpocket. So if the acting doesn't work out I'm set."

Devlin finally adds: check pockets at the end of every day from here on out!

Leverage premieres tonight, December 7 at 10 p.m. on TNT with limited commercial interruptions. Then it moves to its regular timeslot, Tuesdays at 10 p.m. beginning on December 9.

Alert

The Leverage team needs your help. Their last con went awry when they were double-crossed and forced into hiding. Now the money, $100,000 worth is stashed in a Hyundai Genesis parked somewhere in the city. Can you help recover the cash and find out who double-crossed the team? If so, you could win all the money in the truck? Visit LeverageHQ.com, signup then wait for instructions from Nate.

Get ready to get even with Leverage.