I have a clear memory as a child of attending a parade that was marshalled by Wil Wheaton and Michael Dorn, at the time stars of Star Trek: The Next Generation as their characters Wesley Crusher and Lieutenant Worf. Fans crammed around their car for autographs and to touch their hands, especially Wheaton, at the time a teen hearthrob. Fast forward to 2012 and Wheaton, Dorn and the rest of the TNG cast will reunite at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, April 27th – 29th, 2012.
"I was really lucky when I was in my late teens, I got taken up to Calgary to do some promos for Channels 2&7 because they ran Star Trek. We came up for a charity auction and then went to the Children’s Hospital. It is difficult when you are 16 or 17, nobody has enough life experience to really appreciate anything. I remember thinking, I get to go pretend I’m on a spaceship every day and this kid just hopes that the illness that keeps him in the hospital doesn’t claim his life. I get to come up here and sit with him for a little bit and talk about video games and movies and that makes him happy. I remember feeling that I was really lucky to do that sort of thing. I am really grateful I got to do those things," Wheaton recalled. "I am looking forward to coming back again. It is my first time at the Expo which I have heard nothing but good things about. I love Canada, I have thought about defecting since the first time I came to Calgary when I was 16 years old. I loved living in Vancouver when I was working on Eureka. Pick anything that America does that is unbelievably stupid and embarassing and destructive to the world, and then I look at Canada and there is a country that cares about people who aren’t multi-millionaires, I would like to live there. I am really looking forward to coming up and spending some time."
GayCalgary Magazine spoke to Wheaton over the phone in a rare interview. Although he has seen his fellow Star Trek cast members individually, this will be the first time in ages that the entire cast will be together - a coup for the CCEE that will draw fans from around the world.
"I love that and think it is awesome. Star Trek has been uniting people and celebrating what unites us instead of what divides us since 1966. I have always been so proud to be part of something that means so much to so many people that they will come from around the world to be entertained by us. I am really excited to see everybody. I have seen everyone individually a number of times since we all finished working together but this is the first time that all of us will have been together in a public setting in a decade."
In addition to individual photo ops and autographs the group will be available for photos and participate in a panel titled "TNG:Exposed" which is sold out.
"I really hate that name, I think when you say something is exposed it implies there is something to hide. It is not a secret that we all love each other and feel incredibly strongly about how much we love each other. I wish they were calling it something like TNG: Remembered. Something a little less salacious. I am really looking forward as the only member of the cast who has made the transition from child to adult over 25 years to listen to everyone talk about things that happened when I was a kid and how my childhood memories match up or differ from their memories as adults."
It is an experience for both Wil and fans when they interact at conventions and events. Many of those he meets grew up with him on TV and film.
"The last few years, two themes have emerged from people who are roughly my age. One is that they watched TNG with their parents when they were little. Whether they had anything else in common with their parents or not, they had Star Trek in common. I have lost count of the number of people who have told me it is a joyful memory of time they spent with their parents. The other thing that has risen above the standard things people talk about, I am meeting people who are doctors and scientists and engineers. I turn 40 this year and am meeting people who are roughly within 5 years of me one way or the other and they tell me that they chose their particular field of science because they thought Wesley Crusher was really awesome and they were inspired by someone they could relate to – [someone who] was young, liked math and science and could hold his own on a scientific and professional level with adults even if he was completely incapable of holding his own with those same adults on a personal and social level. That is the most awesome thing ever for me, when I meet an engineer who is involved in the space program or is a physicist because they wanted to be Wesley Crusher when they grew up."
It is not just Star Trek that has connected Wheaton to people. Personally I have worn out my VHS copy of The Secret of Nimh and had a strong connection with films like Stand By Me and Toy Soldiers. To illicit that reaction from people means the world to him.
"I wrote a piece about what it means to be an artist and do work that matters to people. I had replied to a girl on twitter and exchanged a couple of messages and she made a video blog about it. She talked about what it meant to her. As an artist and creator I spend more time than I should, wondering if my work means anything to anyone. When I write a story or make a thing, I satisfy this weird creative urge that all artists have, this thing that is broken in our brains. It’s awesome but I would be lying if I said it was enough. The truth is creators and performers need an audience to create and perform for, which brings me back to obsessively worrying if anyone gives a shit. In my life there’s this other thing too where I have the opportunity to touch a life that I would never touch otherwise because of the things I create, like my blog and the stupid cell phone videos I do on YouTube and Twitter and things that are hard work that I am proud. When I saw this video that this girl Victoria made, I felt a little embarrassed and self conscious that a thing I did mattered to her enough to make a video blog about it. Then I thought, wait this is awesome! Look how happy and funny she is, and when our lives intersected for 25 seconds over Twitter, the result for her was this moment of extreme joy. I am incredibly grateful that I get to do more with my work than just make a thing. So when she meets a real celebrity instead of someone like me, I hope they are as awesome to her as she feels I was."
While he is proud of Star Trek and his childhood work, recent performances on shows like The Big Bang Theory and Eureka stand out to him.
"I was talking to one of the assistant directors of Big Bang Theory last night during our taping. He loves Stand By Me and [was telling me] how much he loves it and said it was weird to be standing backstage and talking to me about it. He made a comment that if I never do anything else in my life, I did that and it means so much to so many people. I am super proud of Stand By Me and all of this work I did as a kid, but to be completely honest I didn’t make an affirmative decision entirely on my own to be an actor ... until I was in my 20’s. All that work I did as a kid, I am proud of it and it matters but it doesn’t feel like a thing that I did because it wasn’t something I chose. It was really important to my Mom that I was an actor and she really encouraged all of that stuff. The things I have done in the last 10 or 15 years like The Guild and The Big Bang Theory are things I am super proud of as an actor and a creator. I feel really good about them because they are things I worked hard for and earned. When you are a successful actor as a child people want to put you in a box with child actors who destroy their lives with drugs because they are miserable as an adult. When I think back ... I am incredibly grateful to have been part of these things that mattered to people, and the experiences were all good but, they don’t have the same personal emotional resonance with me the same way something like The Guild and Eureka has. Felicia Day and I have a web series debuting on April 2nd on her YouTube channel called Tabletop. It is a show we created together and it is a gaming show that combines everything we love from celebrity poker and dinner for five and puts us and our friends who are artists around a table playing nerdy board games. I am really proud of it and hope people come and check it out."
The CCEE features another reunion of sorts, Wheaton’s Python co-star Robert Englund will also be there.
"I love snakes, when I was a kid I had a ball python and as a teenager had a 12 foot Burmese python. My son has a corn snake he has hand raised from when she was 4 inches long. I absolutely love snakes and think they are wonderful, and from an evolutionary standpoint they are incredible pieces of biology. Python came along at a time in my career where I just wasn’t working much. The guy who was managing me at the time knew a production company that was making these low budget B movies. Some of them were really awful and I said no, and some of them were less awful and I said yes. I had a family to support and actors act. Python came along and I went, this is ridiculous! I can’t wait to be part of this movie! I sat down with the director and he said, look, this movie is about a 25 foot snake that wreaks havoc on a town. We aren’t taking a single frame of it seriously this going to be a fun date night movie. I was totally on board. I don’t even remember if (Robert and I) had any scenes together. When I knew he was in the movie I was excited because I am such a Nightmare on Elm Street fan. I remember meeting him and he was kind and had the same attitude about the film the rest of us had. It was stylized and everyone was in on the joke. ...[The movie] was on cable a couple of nights ago and I stayed up and watched a little bit of it because I was pretty sure the scene where I get eaten was coming up. I said to my wife the next day, I don’t totally suck in this movie, I was clearly having a good time in this thing. I have nothing but good memories of working on that film."
Rumours in Hollywood are very common, and Wheaton has long been rumoured to be gay, even after he got married in 1999 to his wife Anne. Such rumours included him allegedly being fired from Star Trek for supposedly coming out.
"As an adult now it is kind of awesome. All of my friends who are gay are beautiful, they are in shape and in wonderful loving relationships and are talented and amazing. It absolutely infuriates me to the point of being unable to speak when I look at people who treat everyone in the LGBTQ community like they are anything less than the hetero community. When I was really young like 14 and 15 it kind of freaked me out because I didn’t understand and have a lot of experience. People would say, so you’re gay right? I wasn’t and I didn’t understand that I should just say, no I’m not, doesn’t matter. I got really defensive about it when I was younger and it really bothered me. What it comes down to is not that I had any problem with gays and lesbians, it is just that it drives me crazy when people don’t get their fucking facts straight. A lie gets halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes and it really drove me nuts. So as a teenager it kind of freaked me out and bothered me but since then I am incredibly flattered that, of all the really beautiful gay men in the world, there is someone who would go, Wil Wheaton is my ideal, not this incredibly beautiful man next to me."
In 2004 he wrote a blog in support of gay marriage when President Bush was considering a law making gay marriage illegal country wide. Wheaton has long had a connection with the gay community.
"It is no different than fan support from anyone, it is nice that my work is appreciated. I am really grateful that I can speak with a voice that may be listened to more than a random person because of the nature of my work. The thing all artists have in common, along with that thing in our brain that is broken and makes us need to perform, we have this sense of empathy and compassion. There is no argument to be made at all that allowing a same sex couple to marry somehow could ever have any kind of effect on anyone’s heterosexual marriage. The hypocrisy of those arguments and outright lies, it is bullshit and makes me mad. One of the things I learned from Star Trek and a core value I picked up from science fiction is accepting people as they are and getting past the differences that just don’t fucking mean anything. It makes me sad that in America there is a [significant] portion of the population that is ignorant and afraid. That is a real shame. The good news is my kids’ generation couldn’t give a shit, they don’t care who you love as long as you are happy together. I believe we will see in my lifetime, if not the complete end, at least the end of institutional discrimination against gays and lesbians. Last time I checked [Canada] hadn’t completely fallen apart after same sex marriage. You look at these bullshit celebrity marriages that no one would get in the middle of, but then you have two men or women who love each other and been in a committed relationship and want to be recognized in legal ways that they have this love for each other. That anyone would stand between that is appalling to me."
As LGBT people have fought for recognition as married couples, Wheaton’s own life experience has brought him to understand the importance of this sort of recognition.
"My sons are my wife’s kids and I have been in their lives since they were 3 and 5; they are 20 and 22 now. When my older son Ryan was 19 he came home from college and said, I’ve been thinking about something. You’ve been like a father to my entire life and I am who I am because of how you raised me and love what I love because you loved them and shared them with me. I feel like you are more of a father to me then my biological father ever was. I was wondering if you would like to make this relationship official and I was hoping you would adopt me and be my dad. When I got a hold of myself and stopped crying I said absolutely yes. I love him as much before
he asked me to adopt him as I do today. Our relationship is exactly the same, nothing has changed. But to anyone who says, it’s just a title it doesn’t matter, fuck you, it matters. It means something to say this is my son or in the case of a marriage this is my husband or this is my wife. It matters and is important. If someone has a gigantic problem with gay marriage, don’t marry someone of the same sex and go on with your life, it is very simple."
Related Articles
Contributor Jason Clevett |
Person Wil Wheaton |
Topic Calgary Expo | Celebrity Interview | Comic Expo | Most Read Articles in 2015 | Most Read Articles in 2018 | Star Trek The Next Generation | The Big Bang Theory |
Photo Gallery Wil Wheaton |
