Here's most casting news from the set of Heroes, but this one involves a familiar face from season one:

James Kyson Lee has revealed that Ando Masahashi will become "a full-fledged regular" on the show in the new season.

As far as Lee concerned, Ando, who started off as the rather reckless and feckless pal of Hiro (Masi Oka) on the NBC hit, "has gone through one of the biggest growth transformations of all the characters. He started off thinking Hiro was living in a fantasyland, but slowly became a believer. Now he's started spearheading some of their actions. He's an important part of this mission, even though he doesn't have powers right now.

That's something people can latch onto — the idea of facing danger knowing you're mortal and don't have super abilities. Ando plays the perspective of an audience member, and asks a lot of the questions viewers would ask."

The Seoul-born, Bronx-bred Lee says that as far as socializing with the rest of the Heroes cast, "We try to when we have time, but there's not a lot of time. We work at such a frenetic pace. One week I had to shoot four different scenes with four different directors. It was insane."

We're glad to have Lee back. He's at least an old, comfortable name in the face of so many fresh actors joining the program, such as Dianna Agron and Dana Davis.

Top prizes went to four NBC shows at the Television Critics Association Awards in Los Angeles, including outstanding program of the year to the freshman hit Heroes.

Heroes also took the best new drama prize at the People's Choice Awards in February and is up for an Emmy this year.

Ali Larter, Hayden Panettiere and Masi Oka - among others - celebrate the success of Heroes.

Another first-year show, Friday Night Lights, was handed the award for outstanding new program while fellow NBC series The Office took home the comedy trophy.

Alec Baldwin of 30 Rock, also on NBC, won best actor in a comedy while Michael C. Hall picked up the best actor in a drama category for Dexter.

The Sopranos, which bowed this year after six seasons, nabbed outstanding achievement in drama and the Heritage Award, which honors long-running programs with a "lasting cultural or social impact."

Jack Coleman, the actor that portrays plays Noah Bennet (also known as HRG/ Horn-Rimmed Glasses) told SCI FI Wire that his character will still have a dark edge to him at the beginning of the second season.

"It makes it very clear, in the very first episode of this year, he's not defanged," Coleman said in an interview at the Television Critics Association summer press tour on July 17. "He's still a dangerous guy. I think it's clear that he would move heaven and earth for Claire, but you don't want to cross him. He is a dangerous guy. ... He's a big-picture guy. He's a guy with a plan, and certain things may have to be jettisoned in order to make that plan work."

For the record, Mr. Bennet is probably our favorite character. Few roles on TV have this much depth to them.

Coleman revealed that in the second-season premiere of Heroes, which picks up four months after the events of the season finale, his character has been reunited with his adopted daughter, Claire (Hayden Panettiere), and his wife (Ashley Crow) and son (Randall Bentley).

"The Bennet family has relocated," he said. "I can't tell you exactly where. And it's a new world. The secrets they keep from each other are new secrets. The old secrets have all been divulged. We're not retreading the old ground. But there's old ghosts. Old habits are about to rear their ugly head in a very dramatic way...

The Bennets are together to start, but in a very difficult, awkward circumstance that they all have to try to deal with. And it gets pretty sticky pretty quickly."

Coleman also said that his character will continue to be one of the few on the show without any superpowers.

"I love that I don't have any superpowers, for two reasons," he said. "First of all, less prosthetics and less time in a harness. At my age, there's only so much time in a harness you want to spend. But the other thing, I really like having a character that has to survive by his wits. I mean, every time you see Sylar and HRG face each other, I mean, Sylar flicks him around like he's a bug. So he's not a guy who's going to be able to handle the dangers of the world that he's in physically. He has to do it through his guile and carrying a really big gun."

Another day, another new actor on Heroes.

Dana Davis has joined our favorite showas a regular, playing a new hot young hero whose powers are not yet known. Her name, though, is Monica.

Davis joins Dania Ramirez, who plays another beautiful young hero named Maya, as an addition to the cast. Also new in season two will be Nick D'Agosto, Barry Shabaka Henley, Holt McCallany, David Anders, Eriko Tamura, Lyndsy Fonseca and Dianna Agron.

This past season, Davis co-starred on ABC's critically praised The Nine and the CW's Hidden Palms.

Stars from our favorite show will be in Toronto next month to mark the release of the Season One DVD and to generate some buzz for season two of Heroes.

Global, which broadcasts the NBC hit in Canada, announced Tuesday that several cast members will meet fans on Aug. 31 in Yonge-Dundas Square. It's part of a whirlwind tour that will stop in eight cities around the world.

"We are thrilled to be embarking on this exciting venture," said Heroes creator and executive producer Tim Kring, in a release. "The theme of Heroes has been about people from all over the planet coming together to do great things. About making the world a smaller, more inter-connected place. This tour is the embodiment of those ideals."

The list of cast members coming to Toronto hasn't been announced, but Adrian Pasdar, Milo Ventimiglia, Hayden Panettiere, Masi Oka, Ali Larter, Greg Grunberg and six others are participating in the tour.

The Heroes World Tour, presented by Nissan, kicks off Aug. 27 in Munich and Tokyo with stops in New York, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo.

Heroes: Season One will be released on DVD on Aug. 28 and the second season premieres Sept. 24 on Global and NBC.

No big news here on Ali Larter. Just a beautiful photo of the Heroes actress on the red carpet:

TV Guide recently joined Hayden Panettiere at a Heroes Sunday-morning shoot.

Also present? Hayden's 12-year-old brother, Jansen. He'll be starring in the Nickelodeon movie The Last Day of Summer (premiering this Friday at 8 pm/ET) and the siblings hope to do a movie together some time in the near future.

For now, though, the Heroes actress began the interview by asking questions of her adorable little brother...

Hayden: Why are you so handsome?
Jansen: 'Cause I got good genes from my mom.

Hayden: You are hurting Dad's feelings.
Jansen: [To his father, Skip, who is also at the shoot] Dad, you gave me a very balanced body. [To Hayden] Now, why are you so gorgeous?

Hayden: Because I am related to you. Why did you get the dark skin and the dark eyes?
Jansen: It is a lot harder for me because [Hollywood] likes blond, blue-eyed kids.

Hayden: No one wants him to play white. He is doing a feature film, The Perfect Game....
Jansen: I play a Hispanic baseball player from the 1950s.

Hayden: What's your character like in The Last Day of Summer?
Jansen: I don't think he is extremely... energized? How do you say it?

Hayden: Energetic. You, by the way, are very energetic.
Jansen: Thank you for noticing. My character does not have the electricity that I have. During the film his confidence gets a total boot.

Hayden: Boot! You mean boost.
Jansen: Oh my god. I can't work with her. [To his mother] Mom, Hayden is picking on me.

Hayden: I am just correcting his grammar. [Mom shoots them a look and they quickly get back to the "interview."]

TV Guide: How would you describe your relationship?

Jansen: We still fight, we still argue and stuff.
Hayden: I can still beat him in a fight.

Jansen: When I turn 14, dude, I'll beat the shiitake mushrooms out of you.
Hayden: Bring it on. [They both look at their mother and realize they'd better get back on track.] What is it like having me as a sister?
Jansen: An inspiration.

Hayden: What is it like having a sister that is on a hit show?
Jansen: All my friends are jealous.

Hayden: I mean what is it like having your photograph taken with her when you are walking down the street with the dogs and when you want to be left alone?
Jansen: She gets me a little more noticed; she gets me in magazines. She gives me a kick-start. With The Last Day of Summer, they will notice me more because she is my sister. It is almost like you are looking in a book, and the bookmark is my sister and she is basically showing me, she is able to push me out there. She helps me tremendously.

TV Guide: Heroes and The Last Day of Summer both demand tremendous physicality.
Hayden: It is a blast. I always love doing my own stunts. Being on the set of Heroes keeps me in shape. I don't have time to go to the gym and I don't have a chance to be on teams anymore, so anything I get to do that is physical is a blast.

To continue reading this interview with Hayden, follow our link...

Guess those Emmy Award rumors held true:

Heroes has been nominated for Best Drama. It faces some stiff competition, but you know what everyone says: it's an honor just to be nominated.

Here are the five shows up for this trophy:

1. Heroes
2. The Sopranos
3. Grey's Anatomy
4. Boston Legal
5. House

Meanwhile, congratulations to Masi Oka for his nomination in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.Here are those nominations:

1. Masi Oka
2. Michael Emerson
3. William Shatner
4. T.R. Knight
5. Terry O'Quinn
6. Michael Imperioli

Heroes cheerleader Hayden Panettiere will make a guest appearance with fellow cast member Greg Grunberg's all-star Band From TV this weekend.

"I sang with them at the wrap party for our show," Panettiere told People magazine Tuesday at a party in L.A. celebrating NBC's fall season. "I saw them and said, 'Anytime you guys want me to perform with you I'm totally up for it.' "

Panettiere, who has an album on the way and recently made headlines with her rendition of the National Anthem at the July 4 fireworks ceremony in Washington, D.C., will take the stage with Grunberg and his fellow actor/musicians on Saturday in Orange County, Calif. at Cal State Fullerton, after the Orange County Flyers baseball game.

The celeb-heavy Band From TV is a rock 'n' roll cover band featuring Grunberg on drums, Desperate Housewives' James Denton on guitar, House's Hugh Laurie on piano and both Bachelor star Bob Guiney and Kitchen Confidential actress Bonnie Somerville on vocals.

Panettiere says she'll jump at any chance to practice singing onstage. "I have terrible stage fright and [with an album coming out] I'll need to go on tour at some point – so I need to practice."

But Grunberg later laughed off Panettiere's claims. "Give me a break," he said. "She just played in front of like 500,000 people!"

This weekend's audience is expected to be closer to 5,000, according to the Heroes actor.

"That's like the biggest audience we've played. It's really exciting," he says. "We're going to do a whole set, and then [Hayden] is going to do two amazing songs."

So what exactly will Panettiere sing? "I'm singing Meredith Brooks's 'Bitch,' and then I'm singing Alanis Morissette's 'Ironic,'? she says. "It'll be fun!"

None of the Heroes ended season one on more of an obscure note than Hiro himself: the character played by Masi Oka was somehow whisked back to 16th century Japan.

How long will he stay there? Oka recently spoke with SCI FI Wire and said his character will remain in Japan for a while. He'll enjoy have a parallel story separate from the rest of the show when the second season kicks off in the fall.

"Season two is going to begin with two parallel timelines going on," Oka said in an interview at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., on July 17. "One starting four months after the explosion and another-mainly Hiro's storyline-starting 400 years in the past. And we'll see how they kind of affect each other."

According to Oka, Hiro will spend at least eight episodes in old-day Japan before returning to the present.

There, he will encounter some of the characters from the stories of his childhood, including the legendary samurai Takezo Kensei, who will be played by David Anders. The show is currently finishing the third episode of the upcoming season.

"There's a princess," Oka said. "Princess Iako, played by [Japanese pop star] Eriko Tamura, who's going to be in that world, as well as David Anders, who plays Takezo Kensei. That was Hiro's childhood hero that he's always heard about these stories.

But David Anders, last time we checked, he was Caucasian. So there's a mystery there."