WHEATON GEEKS OUT
Self-confessed and proud nerd
Wil Wheaton’s first experience as a celebrity guest at a fan convention was not particularly lucrative.
Although he didn’t know it at the time.
It was a Star Trek convention in Anaheim in 1987 and Wheaton had not intended to appear at all; he was going as a fan. But he was also a minor celebrity. Having played Gordie Lachance in Rob Reiner’s 1986 coming-of-age classic Stand By Me, he had recently started work playing Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
“I went just because I wanted to go, because I loved Star Trek,” Wheaton says in a phone interview.
“I had just started working on Next Generation. One of the promoters said, ‘Hey, I’ll give you $100 if you go stand onstage and answer questions.’ I didn’t know I was getting royally screwed on what the value of that was. I was like: ‘$100 to go spend in the dealers’ room! Sign me up!’
“At the time, I thought it was great. I didn’t realize how badly this guy was taking advantage of me. He was the adult in that situation. He knew what he was doing.”
It may be pushing the story a bit far to suggest it was a harbinger of the disrespect that was to follow for poor Wesley Crusher, the earnest know-it-all ensign who was not exactly beloved by all Trekkies during his run on The Next Generation. But long before that, Wheaton was a fervent attendee of fan and comic conventions. Whateverfamehemayhaveachieved as a child actor at the time did not stop him from geeking out when it came to celebrating pop culture.
As a kid, he was a superfan of Star Trek. And Star Wars. And comic books and sci-fi and just about everything else that is celebrated at conventions such as the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, where he is scheduled to appear from Friday to Sunday.
More than 30 years after he first appeared as Wesley Crusher, Wheaton’s reputation as a geekculture guru may even be eclipsing his legacy as a Star Trek alumnus. Last week, the website Syfy Wire enlisted Wheaton to “dissect the state of geek fandom,” suggesting “few people have been so embedded in the geek community over the last 30 years, and so few have as much authority to offer up an assessment of the state of fandom in 2018.”
And, true to form, Wheaton continues to be a fanboy, admitting he is often star-struck by those around him. That includes Mark Hamill, who will appear alongside Wheaton in the May 10 season finale of Big Bang Theory. Wheaton, of course, has been playing a deliciously warped and evil version of himself on the show for years. But the producers are pulling out all the stops for the episode, in which geeky Sheldon and the equally geeky Amy are expected to get hitched. Teller from Penn and Teller, Oscar-winner Kathy Bates, Brian Posehn and Jerry O’Connell, who was Wheaton’s co-star in Stand By Me, will also make appearances.
On the line from his home in Los Angeles, Wheaton has just returned from a rehearsal for the episode and it was clear he was eager to say more than he probably should about it.
Needless to say, the table reading that had him sitting beside Hamill was a highlight. He even tweeted a photo.
“I can’t talk about it too much, because I’m going to give away the story,” Wheaton says. But basically, he says, Hamill revealed himself to be a big fan.
“He was like: ‘I love your work, I love your career and I’m aware of the things you do,’ ” Wheaton says. “When he made it clear that not only did he know that I existed, but he knew that I existed and he felt good about that and it was a positive thing, I literally felt like I was going to faint. If I had not been sitting down, there’s a real good chance that I would have fallen over.”
When it comes to “the things” that Wheaton does, it has become a long list that goes far beyond acting. In fact, traditional acting has long taken a back seat to other activities. He has had a web series. He writes books. He is a voice actor and is one of the leading narrators of audiobooks. Two of his narrations — for John Scalzi’s Head On and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One — recently topped the New York Times bestsellers list for audiobooks.
He was also an early adopter of social media, as both a blogger and prolific tweeter. So it may be a good thing that he developed a thick skin all those years ago to withstand the Wesley Crusher haters. A simple tweet he posted last year about how excited he is to be providing the voice of Perceptor in the animated series Transformer: Titans Return seemed to garner just as many comments from dullwitted trolls as well-wishers.
“Sometimes it bothers me, but I’d say nine out of 10 times I just block them and go on with my life,” says Wheaton.
“How exactly does Chris Hardwick phrase it?” he continues, referring to his friend and the host of Talking Dead. ‘I don’t have a single f-ck to give about the opinion of a person who makes absolutely nothing and comments and criticizes other people.’ I think it’s a good way to look at people like that. I’m really lucky, in that the type of person I tend to attract is not a terrible person. I tend to attract the awesome people who are enthusiastic, who are positive and who are nerds about all the kinds of things that I’m a nerd about.”
Still, Wheaton has also earned a reputation for pulling no punches with his opinions, whether it be when talking about his atheism or progressive political views. His twitter handle is Wil ‘Ban the Nazis’ Wheaton. On April 17, he tweeted the nasty, and perfectly geeky, observation: “Hannity is what happens when you stuff Trump’s diarrhea into a skin suit and cast Reanimate on it.”
For the past couple of years, Wheaton has also been open about his own battles with anxiety and depression.
All of this has served to deepen the actor’s reputation beyond that of the kid who played Gordie LaChance and Wesley Crusher.
But if there’s a story that best encapsulates his strange position in pop culture, it’s his involvement in Ernest Cline’s 2011 book, Ready Player One. The book was recently turned into a mega-budget spectacle by Steven Spielberg, but before that, it was turned into an audiobook read by Wheaton. But unbeknownst to him at the time, there is actually a strange reference to a futuristic Wil Wheaton in the book.
When he agreed to narrate Ready Player One, he had only read the first half of it. So Wheaton discovered the reference to himself for the first time as he was narrating.
“I read it and I was like, ‘I have to stop for a minute,’ ” Wheaton says with a laugh. “I just need one minute to absorb how freaking cool that is.”