INTERVIEW: Wil Wheaton

I had the extreme good fortune to be able to interview the Internet celebrity, board game connoisseur, and Star Trek veteran Wil Wheaton. We spoke in honor of the release of the release of the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was also his last as a regular cast member.

We talked about that time in his life, but we also talked about Star Wars. For the discussion on Star Wars, you can actually listen to that portion of the conversation on the Full of Sith podcast.

You can order the fourth season of TNG on Amazon, and you can find Wil on Twitter and via his website.

Bryan Young: The first thing I wanted to let you know, I guess that, totally off topic, a redditor had me send you, through the RedditGifts marketplace, some books of mine. So I thought that was interesting that that happened at the same time as this interview got set up.

Wil Wheaton: Oh! That’s, oh, you wrote Lost At The Con!

BY: Yes, that’s me.

WW: Yeah, so thank you. You threw extra books in when it was delivered to me. What a weirdly small world.

BY: With season 4, I don’t know how often you revisit, I mean, how often do you revisit Star Trek? Particularly episodes you’ve been on?

WW: Not very often. Every now and then, I’ll come across something that is just running on television and I might stop and watch it for a few minutes. Mostly when I watch the reruns these days, I don’t even pay attention to the story anymore. I’m looking at it and remembering whatever I can about what it was like to shoot that episode and what was sort of going on at that time, things like that.

BY: So, if that’s how you get to experience The Next Generation, are there other Star Trek series that you get to watch as a fan at all? I mean, I know you’re an impossibly large geek about many things, but are there other aspects of Star Trek that you’ve found yourself latching onto as geek and not as a member of the crew?

WW: I’m a huge, huge fan of the original series, and I absolutely love to watch original episodes whenever I can find them. That is a thing that I watch as a fan. There’s also a couple of seasons of Star Trek that I wasn’t a part of that I can also watch as a fan. I can even watch episodes that I was in, because it was so long ago that I don’t remember as much of it as episodes of TableTop or episodes of Big Bang Theory. It’s a different experience for me.

BY: Which was more uncomfortable for you, the sweaters and the jumpers, or the actual Star Fleet uniform? Which looked very tight.

WW: I thought the rainbow striped uniform was really cool, I really like that. I liked that I was wearing something that was unique to me. I liked that I was wearing something that had all three colors of the Star Fleet branches on it, I thought that was cool that Wesley hadn’t yet committed to one particular branch of Star Fleet so he could kind of go wherever he wanted. I thought that was really great.

I was not a huge fan of the sweaters, mostly because I was fourteen years old in 1987 and I wanted to be wearing obnoxious neon colors because that’s what we were into back then. I really didn’t want to be wearing these earthy colors and in these sweaters that were just gross.

I think my favorite thing ever was, it may have been in season 4, when I got to wear an actual, proper Star Fleet uniform that everybody else wore with the jacket and the pants and all that. I just loved that.

BY: That’s what I was going to ask about, was it a different experience getting to put that on for the first time and sort of be the same as everyone. I mean, you’d been hanging around and shooting in your other costumes for so long, and finally you were sort of, was it off set the same as it was on the show? Were you finally one of the guys at all?

WW: Well, that never really changed. When we were shooting, we were all very much a family, and for me, my experience, being fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old through this time was very much like having eight parents. And always being, sort of, having to be on good behavior and dealing with all the things that you deal with as a teenager. So getting to, you know, that never really changed.

What has changed over the years, especially as I got older and as I became an adult in my own right, I could hang out with them in a way that I just couldn’t when I was a child and they were adults. And now that we’re all just adults, it doesn’t matter that I’m in my forties and they’re in their fifties and sixties, that just doesn’t matter, we can hang out. 25 years ago, when I was a teenager and they were in their thirties, we just didn’t have anything in common other than work.

That’s something that I always felt the writers could have done more with, that created a real angst in me. If Wesley were a real person, I imagine he would have felt something very similar to that, feeling like he can hang out with these people as peers when they’re working, but they can’t really hang out and go goof off and be friends when they’re not working. If the writers had given Wesley that reality, the way it existed in me, I think it probably would have made him a more well-rounded and a more satisfying character that was more of a person than an idea.

BY: Was that ever anything that you thought to voice when you were in the situation there? Did you ever take the initiative to talk to the writers about that, or is that something you kind of hit upon in hindsight?

WW: I didn’t have the maturity and the wisdom as a child to figure all that stuff out, I just knew that I felt conflicted and I didn’t know why. I mean, that’s kind of a core feature of being a teenager, right, being confused and conflicted? I don’t know what it was like for the other actors, but I wasn’t allowed to talk to the writers, and I know from some of the writers that they were given an edict by the executive producers that they were not to talk to us.

BY: Why is that, do you think? Just to keep actors from lobbying for better parts?

WW: I really don’t know, I suspect that a lot of that was sort of motivated by a desire to sort of keep people under control.

BY: Of all the episodes you’ve done of Star Trek, what’s the one you’re most proud of?

WW: I’m really, really proud of, I think it’s called Final Mission? Picard and Wesley and a red shirt guy crash land in a shuttlecraft on a planet, and they end up stranded together in a cave. Wesley is charged with keeping Picard alive. I think it’s some of my best work as an actor on the show, and it was certainly one of the best scripts I ever got to work with. Just being in scenes with Patrick all day, every day, that was just amazing. I feel that I grew a lot as an actor during production of that episode.

BY: So, I’m probably seven or eight years younger than you, and watching The Next Generation as a kid at that age, having Wesley on the bridge was like the coolest thing in the world for me. It’s actually funny, in showing it to my son, Wesley is the character that he globs onto and he’s ten now. At what point did you become aware that you were the avatar for kids watching the show in groups of families?

WW: I didn’t even know that until I was in my late twenties. That was the first time I’d ever heard about that, all I ever heard were the, because I was online so much back then, all I ever heard were the twenty-somethings complaining about there being, about a kid existing on a television show. The kids that really identifying with Wesley, who have now grown up to become doctors and engineers and scientists because they were inspired by just the existence of that character, they were kids so they weren’t online complaining about stuff. They were enjoying the show, then enjoying life, then moving on.

It’s been wonderful over about the last ten years or so, to meet people all over the world who are roughly my age who grew up watching Next Generation with their parents, identifying with Wesley Crusher and then moving on to watch Next Generation and the new Star Trek movies with their own children. It’s really cool that it’s this thing that has bridged now three generations of family. It’s really humbling and exciting for me to be part of that legacy.

BY: How often to you get people coming up to you and saying, and I’m sure that my experience with that isn’t unique in any way, how often do you hear that? Does it ever feel like a weight at all to you?

WW: No, it’s awesome, it’s a gift.

BY: Okay, I can accept that. I believe that completely, actually, but it’s funny, I remember very distinctly watching the first episode and reacting so vehemently and hating Picard when he told you to shut up. I think I was maybe 7 when that happened, and when I showed that again to my son that was the one thing he latched onto, too, it was like “Man, that captain, he really doesn’t know how to act around kids at all.”

WW: People say it and they think they’re being clever and it’s just sort of like, I’ve heard that so much that it used to really irritate me. Now it’s just mildly annoying, people say that to me on Twitter and I block them. Whenever someone disagrees with me about a thing, that seems to be the first place they go to and it’s just like, come on you guys. We can do better than this.

BY: Wow, that’s, I wouldn’t have expected that people would go immediately there that quickly. With being on set, especially during season 4, and correct me if I’m mistaken, but that was your last year as sort of a regular cast member, and after that you were just sort of around now and again, right?

WW: Yeah, that’s true, I became recurring after that.

BY: What was it that caused that switch? And how did you feel about that? Was getting away something that you needed to do more, or was it something that you were anxious about?

WW: By the time the fourth season rolls around in a large ensemble show, the writers have generally settled on who they’re going to write for, and it wasn’t me. And that’s cool I get it, in retrospect I totally get it. I mean, you’ve got the robot is really interesting, you’ve got the relationship between Picard and Dr. Crusher is really interesting, Riker is really great, and there’s this kid that nobody really knows what to do with because he’s never been allowed to develop beyond being more than an idea.

Right around that time, I had been cast in Valmont by Milos Forman and he was going to take me to Paris to be in the movie, it was a legitimate movie, it would have been great work with an incredible director. It would have been kind of a career making kind of thing. We shot the beginning of season 4 out of order, we shot the second episode first if I recall correctly. The producers, after I had been cast in this movie, it would have been a conflict, I would have been unavailable for the first week of production on Next Generation, which normally would have been a problem because everyone is in the first episode back, however this year I was in first episode but I was not in the second episode so it shouldn’t have been a problem. One of the producers told me, through my agent, and then told me personally before production started, that the production schedule had been juggled around quite a bit and Wesley was heavily in that episode and that there was no way they could shoot around me and there was no way they’d be able to accommodate me working on this film.

I had to not go work on this movie, that would have very much been a career making experience, then a few days before the production of that episode began, they wrote me out of the episode completely.

I was sixteen or seventeen and I was just enraged, I felt betrayed and controlled and lied to and wronged. It was the beginning of the end of me being able to be there and have a positive relationship with the people who made the show. I always loved the cast, I continue to love the cast, I loved a lot of the people who were on the set every day, our crew was terrific. There were a couple of people in executive producing positions who I felt worked very hard and deliberately to undermine and sabotage my ability to have a career beyond Star Trek.

This was confirmed for me years later by other people who were involved in that whole experience. That really sort of poisoned the well. I was so upset about it that I told my agents at the time that I wanted out of my contract, I don’t want to be on this show full-time any more, I don’t want to be working at a place where I’m treated like I don’t matter, especially because at that time Wesley had become a character that they didn’t do much with. I was basically on the bridge saying, “Yes, sir,” and sending the ship into warp speed.

There were negotiations, we always renegotiate contracts in the fifth season, and they renegotiated me off the show full-time. I’ve written about it, I wrote about it extensively in my book, Just A Geek, it’s something I regret in some capacity but also it’s something that I’m really glad that I did because it has lead me down a path to the life that I live right now where I created and host and produce TableTop and Geek And Sundry, where I work on Big Bang Theory multiple times a year, worked on Leverage and Eureka for multiple seasons, and have been able to find my ability to communicate as a writer with the world.

Had I stayed on Star Trek, that very likely never would have happened. It’s very easy to just get complacent and comfortable, who knows where my career would have gone after that? It really forced me into a position of having to make my own way. I’m really glad that I’ve done that, and in some ways I will never forgive this particular producer for sabotaging my career, in other ways, if he hadn’t done that, who knows? We probably wouldn’t be on this phone call right now.

BY: I was going to say, it seems like you’re the one laughing last here. I don’t know anybody who hasn’t heard of Wil Wheaton. It sounds kind of weird to say, it’s like how many members of the Enterprise crew can people name without their character names? It’s probably you and Patrick Stewart and LeVar Burton, because of Reading Rainbow. There’s three of you guys now, because of what you’ve done afterwards. And that’s not to say, I mean there’s Jonathan Frakes who went into directing so he’s not as visible and things like that, but you’ve built a career where people care about what you’re doing. I think you got the better end of the deal.

WW: I am incredibly, incredibly happy with my life. I don’t want to change anything because the defining characteristic in my life is that every day I’m afraid I’m going to wake up from this really fantastic dream I’ve been living.

BY: I think that’s totally normal, though. I feel the same way and I haven’t achieved an eighth of what you have. I think a lot of people feel that way and look up to you in ways like that. I met you at Dragon*Con when I first gave you a copy of Lost At The Con years ago, and I was able to tell you that it was you publishing your short stories on your own that was one of the keys in me figuring out why and how I should publish Lost At The Con. It’s the way you’ve built yourself in the days post Star Trek that have really served as an example for a lot of people, not just me.

WW: That is a wonderful thing for me to know, thank you.

BY: With Next Generation, after you were just a recurring character, it seems like now with the crew and the cast, it seems like you guys haven’t missed a beat at all when you see each other at conventions and things like that. Is that the case?

WW: Yeah, I think that’s pretty accurate. We’re all very, very close to each other and we have stayed together and stayed close to each other, and have really; that experience that I talk about, sort of feeling like those producers were working to divide and conquer us, I think they ended up putting us closer together. When the world gets broken up, the way things were back then, when the world gets broken up into us and them, we were and are “us” and that’s just the way that things stayed together.

You can order the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation on Amazon and it’s available now. You you can find Wil on Twitter and via his website.