Heroes casting director Natalie Hart has revealed that the first person to be cast in the hit US sci-fi show was Masi Oka, who plays Hiro.

In an interview with the official Heroes magazine Natalie admitted that they started the search for Hiro first as it was such a specific role. She said:

“Masi might have been the first one because we knew it was a little bit limited. By limited I mean we needed someone who could be endearing, a good actor, and needed to fluently speak Japanese. It’s not like you have a large talent pool, like when you are looking for a handsome 30-year-old ­ there are a ton of those guys in LA. When you have something as specific as Hiro, you are going to show producers 15 to 20 people, tops.”

“We cast Tawny Cypress [who played Simone], Ali Larter (Niki Sanders) , Sendhil (mohinder Suresh), Masi, and Hayden (Claire Bennett) in the first group. I think Masi stood out to me because it was so specific. We had Tawny and Ali come in for the same role, but Ali seemed the way to go with the character of Niki. However, we fell so in love with Tawny that Tim changed the character a little bit to fit her.”

Read the full interview in issue 9 of The Official Heroes Magazine ­on news stands now.