At the 2012 Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, Wil Wheaton was one of the highlights of the event, reuniting for the first time with the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In a display of grit and determination, an exhausted and sick Wheaton pushed himself to the limit and was gracious to the fans. He clearly made an impression as he and comic icon Stan Lee were the only two returning guests this year.  GayCalgary Magazine spoke to Wheaton prior to the Expo.

"I am in my home - I am going to be home before the Expo. I was exhausted last year [from flying to Calgary directly from Australia]. I am really good at conserving energy, taking care of myself and knowing what my limits are. I am very fortunate in that the average person who wants to meet me at a comic convention tends to be pretty understanding and respectful of exactly what I have to offer. I am really looking forward to coming back and being at 100% energy and health so I have time to see more of the convention than just the parts I am directly involved in. I am especially looking forward to getting out into Calgary itself and partaking in some of the fine craft beers you have there.

"It makes me feel like I am doing something right. I started going to conventions when I was a kid before I worked on Star Trek. I know what it is like to be on both sides of the line. I know what as a attendee I want from a guest, and I work really hard to treat the people that come to meet me the way I would want to be treated if I was there to meet somebody else. Getting invited back makes me feel like I did something right and that makes me happy."

While much of the focus in 2012 was on Star Trek, typically Wheaton appears at conventions as a "solo" feature. He is excited to have more of his impressive career up for discussion instead of being focused on one aspect.

"It is truly nothing new for me. I go to cons all over the country to talk about Tabletop or Big Bang Theory or Falling Skies. Being somewhere with other groups of people is outside of what’s normal for me, this will be more about letting the fans tell me what they want to know about rather than everyone be expected to focus on one thing."

The 2012 convention culminated in a sold out corral for an on-stage reunion of the cast. In a night that was memorable for the cast and fans alike, it was important to Wheaton, as he got to publicly address how he felt leaving the show and how he didn’t feel he had the right to invite them to his wedding and to apologize. It was an emotional moment, but also funny as Levar Burton told him, "you were a pain in the ass. But you are our pain in the ass." The emotion of the cast in that moment was evident to the back of the arena, and it was a moment Wheaton is grateful for.

"What is interesting about that is that everyone in cast came to me individually and privately and said you didn’t need to say that, we knew. It was really important for me. It is almost like a thing that I had to let go of, to stop living my adult life in the shadow of something that a teenage version of me felt responsible for. In a lot of ways it unburdened my relationship with everybody in the cast. Everyone in the cast was like, look man, you were kid. It’s fine, let it go nobody thinks less of you. For me because I grew up working so much as a kid and having so many adult responsibilities, when I look back at behaving the way a teenager behaves there is a part of me that feels ashamed of that because I felt a responsibility to be an adult even if I didn’t have the maturity and experience to know precisely what that meant at the time. Getting to take ownership of that and let it go was really important to me."

His challenges on the show can be summed up in being a teenager. It has always been a challenge growing up in the spotlight, and now seems to be even more so, when every move a young artist like Justin Bieber makes seems to be plastered across the internet.

"I have an incredible amount of empathy for Justin Bieber. That kid is never going to have a normal life. Things you and I take for granted like going to the grocery store or having drinks with friends in a bar or sitting in an airport and being left alone, he is never going to experience that. I guarantee you there is not a person in his life who says, hey man don’t do that you’re fucking up. There are 100 people in his life that are basically making their careers off of him. He doesn’t get to be a person, he is a business. So every time I see him do something that a teenager does and I watch this celebrity obsessed media that just cannot wait for him to fall, jump all over him, I feel a great deal of empathy and sadness for him. I am hoping he gets a chance to grow up and grow out of these things but I expect he may end up sort of a dysfunctional man child, sort of like what happened to Michael Jackson. I think that is really, really sad. It is always hard to be a child who is famous. It is hard to be a teenager anyways, being a teenager and in high school sucks. You are trying to navigate the most difficult transition to the world from child to adult. Every time I put up a picture of me as a teenager dressing as a jackass I can laugh at it now and people will respond to me and say, boy am I glad my teen years weren’t preserved the way yours are.

"The only advice I would give to young people in the industry is stay close to your siblings because they are going to keep you honest and be inherently suspicious and wary of people who are constantly telling you how fucking great you are – [only] because there is probably something in it for them."

The last year has been very busy for Wheaton since he last graced Calgary.

"Gosh I have worked a lot. My show Tabletop has just taken off and become a massive, massive hit and much more of a success than any of us thought it would be. We have shot the first half of the second season. We are just about done editing that and getting ready to get back into the second half of production. Surprisingly what I did not have time to do was write more because I have been so busy producing other things. That is the only regret I have really from the past year, I have been working on a novella for a little while and I really wanted it to be done by now. I guess it will be finished when it is ready to be finished."

Being a veteran of conventions around the world, including this past Expo, Wheaton knows what to do at these events. He is determined to be healthy and gung ho, and wants you to be as well. He had some important words of advice for the 60,000 packing the Stampede Grounds that weekend:

"Stay hydrated and wear comfortable shoes."