Zachary Levi had a simple reason for taking the role as the caretaker for the furry singers in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. He wanted to work.

The filming of the second season of Levi’s NBC series Chuck was coming to an end in the spring and NBC executives hadn’t said whether it would be back. We now know the show will return at 8 p.m. Jan. 10, but at the time Levi wasn’t sure.

“My agent called and said Alvin and the Chipmunks 2. What do you think?’ I said ‘Let’s go! I need a job,” Levi says. “So during a lunch break from Chuck, I went in and auditioned.”

Given a choice, actors tend to accept roles that have meaning. Levi, a 29-year-old Louisiana native, says he’s just trying to find a balance between work that feeds his artistic soul and the jobs that make so much money they raise an actor’s cachet with the studio.

The first Alvin and the Chipmunks pulled in more that $360 million, and that’s the kind of money that gets attention.

So Levi signed on to play Toby, Dave Seville’s (Jason Lee) cousin, who’s put in charge of Alvin, Simon and Theodore while Dave recuperates in the hospital after a chipmunk-related catastrophe. The film opened Dec. 23.

It was a quick transition for Levi, who finished filming the last scene for the second season Chuck at 5 a.m., slept for three hours and then headed to the Chipmunk movie set.

“It was the weirdest day. I was with a whole different crew. I was a different person. It was like being bipolar, but an interesting experience,” Levi says.

Now his attention has returned to Chuck, as NBC launches the third season with some huge changes for Levi’s character. In the first two seasons, Chuck was little more than a walking computer full of secret government information. This year he’s been reprogrammed to take all that knowledge and use it to be a superspy.

“It’s Chuck 2.0,” Levi says.