Wil Wheaton – The Wil Wheaton Project

By starrymag | June 21, 2014

Q) How did you get involved with the show? Did they approach you?

A) A little over a year ago – Pilgrim is the studio that produces the show and contacted me and said hey, we have this idea for a show that we’d like you to host and what they pitched me was like a talk soup style show for paranormal reality shows and I said that sounds really funny because those shows are ridiculous. And we sat down and started developing the show and somebody said instead of just paranormal reality, we do scripted paranormal too and that got really funny and then somebody said maybe instead of doing scripted and reality paranormal shows, we should do some of the other kind of nerd shows that we like. We should do all of genre fiction and that seemed like a really good idea and we started writing that and eventually about a year later we ended-up with what is now “The Wil Wheaton Project” and the entire development process was really fun. We just like what basically throughout the development process, we just kept making everybody in the room laugh and we were making each other laugh and the show was getting more and more funny and I think you’ll see tonight the result of that development process.

Q) And since you are a part of social networking sites, are you looking forward to the immediate feedback you’re going to receive once the show airs?

A) Yes, I think that’s really cool. It’s sort of it expands the experience that I have as a performer in a theater to encompass pretty much anyone who’s in the audience who has, you know, access to that type of communication and it’s really fun. And one of the things that I’m really looking forward to is as the show goes forward incorporating that experience more and more because it is very much it’s a very timely show. We shot the episode not even 24 hours ago and I’m really looking forward to sharing with the audience on a week-to-week sort of basis what we are all talking about together. And the way that social media makes that really easy and really I guess they call it frictionless is going to be really, really fun for us.

Q) I was wondering with fan conventions becoming more mainstream, how will events such as San Diego Comic-Con or E3 factor into the dialogue created by the show?

A) That’s a really interesting question. San Diego Comic-Con has been moving more and more towards being sort of an entertainment industry trade show for years and it’s a huge part of our culture in that people make big announcements there so it becomes something to really watch because there’s a lot of really great information that comes out of it. A lot of the things that I used to get out of Comic-Con when I was younger when I was going when it was really about comic books, a lot of those things I’m really getting out of smaller more fan-oriented and less business-oriented conventions like Emerald City and Phoenix Comic-Con and WonderCon. So I would expect that, obviously, we will go to Comic-Con probably with a small camera crew just to like capture some of the coolness of that spectacle that maybe people who are not able to make it physically to San Diego wouldn’t be able to see. And certainly we’ll be paying attention to announcements that come out of Comic-Con but I honestly think that we will get more out of like and I get more as a fan and I expect that we will get more as a show out of some of those other conventions that I mentioned. With regard to E3 that’s always been a trade show and they’ve never tried to not be a trade show. I think one year they tried to not be a trade show and it was just kind of a nightmare so it’s sort of the same thing, right? I mean, it’s just like okay, maybe we can use some of the relationships that I have with game developers and with artists to maybe get some exclusive things that maybe they’re not releasing to the general public and we’ll release – hopefully we’ll be able to release – some interesting stuff that maybe not everyone else will get to see. Like I would love it if a year from now the Wil Wheaton Project is a destination for people who are really excited about announcements and secretive things like it would be a dream come true if our show had a big enough audience that those creators were coming to us and saying listen, we would love to launch this thing on your show. But for right now, I just hope something cool happens on Game of Thrones next week so we have a thing to talk about on Tuesday. I just wanted to point out that I think it’s really important and pretty effortless to support smaller Cons because smaller Cons support us, large Cons maybe support investors and maybe support like the industry with the scary capital letters but smaller Cons support fandom and support us and support the things that we love. And just like I think it’s really important to support your friendly local game shop and your local comic book shop, I think it’s important to support the smaller Cons because if we want to have something that is a place that we can go regionally, you know, all over the country that is about us, that’s about fandom, we have to support those things. Because if we don’t then big corporate things come in and push out the smaller things that are about us and suddenly we find ourselves living in a town where we have no stores to go to except Walmart and I don’t want that world to happen. So I appreciate you pointing out that smaller Cons exist and I think smaller Cons are awesome so thank you.

Q) A lot of what you’ve done has involved tech, technology which is of course huge now. Do you prefer it when technology is made into a joke like “Eureka” as opposed to it being serious when you’re in the middle of it?

A) I don’t think it has to be one way or the other. There is room in entertainment for every point of view. I thought that “Eureka” was about the relationships among the people who lived in that town and worked at GD and like the ridiculous technology was there to sort of support that and put them in high stakes situations. And, you know, the other side of that is maybe one of the more serious dramas, I mean, the thing that immediately comes to mind would be something like Apollo 13 where, you know, you have to take that technology really seriously and the technology is there to show, you know, like what these guys can do with limited resources. I think there’s tons of room for everything and on our show, we’re in fact in tonight’s episode we actually have a bit where really super incredibly basic technology that has existed for close to 80 years is used in such a ridiculous way that we have to call it out and make fun of it. So what we’ll do with the show is, you know, we’re always looking for ways to be entertaining and, you know, sometimes it’ll be serious and sometimes it’ll be like it is tonight.

Q) With your show as you see it, it looks like geeks used to be the underdogs, the butt of the jokes, the jock movies, etcetera, but now they’re the leaders of the 21st Century. What do you see and you’re right in the middle of it as well as being the defining moment that turned geeks from the butt of the jokes into the ones at the top?

A) I think there was a moment in time and I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was but there was a moment maybe in the last 15 years where those of us who grew up as you described decided that we’d had enough and that we weren’t going to be ashamed of the things that we loved and there were creators like Peter Jackson and Joss Whedon who were making things that came out of the type of speculative fiction that we all grew up loving. And when that speculative fiction was exposed to a wider audience, I think that that wider audience realized that they liked it too and that this wasn’t something that had to be sort of like confined to the stereotypical basements and rec rooms that everyone thought it sort of needed to be in. And at the same time those of us who love all of those things, who love TableTop gaming, who love comic books, who love superheroes and science fiction fantasy, we were starting to ascend to positions in the creative world where we could make decisions about what was going to, you know, what was going to get green lit and we just started showing the rest of the world like look, man, these are the things that we love. And while that was happening, computers and technology and smartphones and tablets became bigger parts of everyone’s lives and those of us that had spent the last 30 years understanding that landscape, we were sort of like we became guides and we became really useful for people who didn’t know how to uninstall toolbars in their browsers. And I think it sort of created this thing where the world became aware as I have said that being a nerd is not about what you love, it’s about the way that you love a thing so someone who’s a nerd for Formula 1 racing or someone who’s a nerd for baseball or football realizes that they love their sport or they love high finance the same way I love Dungeons and Dragons or the same way that I love video games and I think we realized that we actually had more in common than not. I think a really great, really tangible example of this I have two sons. My son Ryan loves all of the speculative fiction, science fiction and TableTop gaming that I love. My son Nolan is really not that into it. He’ll play TableTop games with us but he’s not interested in sitting down to watch Orphan Black or Game of Thrones but he is a personal trainer and Nolan loves fitness. He is incredibly very for fitness and he stays on top of what is happening in the world of sports nutrition the same way I’m on top of like what’s coming out in the new set of Magic the Gathering. And Nolan came to the taping of “The Wil Wheaton Project” yesterday for the episode that airs tonight and I said, “Dude, this is about shows that you don’t watch and he said I don’t care. I want to come and this is your show, I want to see you on your show. And I asked him when the show was over if he liked it and he loved it and he said you don’t have to be super nerdy for those shows that you watch to like this. It’s just so funny that he said, “That’s what matters is that the comedy is what matters.” And he is part of that audience that I am hoping is going to come to the show that doesn’t identify as nerdy for speculative fiction but enjoys comedy and if his reaction is indicative of what the larger television audience is going to think, then I am really excited for the next 12 weeks.

Q) As far as you are concerned, why at this time would you take on something like this at this stage of your career?

A) Because it is an opportunity, well, you know, it’s an opportunity to be timely and be silly and to work with writers and producers who are super creative and because it’s fun.

Q) And as far as the show is concerned itself, are you guys looking to kind of reach out to fans a little more and because I think SyFy needs that type of show as well. They do have “Heroes of Cosplay,” but to kind of get the fans involved of these shows that you’re going to be talking about.

A) Oh yes, absolutely, and I have told everyone at the network from the very first meeting we ever had that I cherish the relationship that I have with the community that I belong to and I think networks are very used to having extremely tight control over what they share with their audience and networks are really used to being able to sort of like almost dictate the terms of the conversation. And I told everybody at the network from the very beginning, that’s not the way I do this. I have a wonderful relationship with the community and there’s a big difference between audience and community and I love being part of the community and I’m going to engage the community as much as I can. I’m going to reach out as much as I can to involve the community in the things that we do and I’m going to talk about the creative process of the show and I’m going to tear back the curtain every chance I get and I’m going to share as much as I can about how this thing all comes together. And everybody at the network at the beginning was like really uncomfortable with that because it’s really out of their comfort zone and I said I’m delighted that that’s outside of your comfort zone. Trust me, it’s going to be great and to their credit, SyFy has been unbelievably supportive and really allowed me to like carry information about my show with my name and my stupid face on it to the community that we want to be part of the show. I put a thing on my blog about a month – we reached out to fans and asked them to tell us stories about when they met people that they admire it could be someone from our science fiction fantasy world or it could even be somebody from another world that maybe an athlete or something. And we’re actually taking their stories that they gave us and we’re animating some of them with some really talented animators and then putting together a segment that right now is temporarily called first contact that should be really funny where we get to share their stories about meeting the people that they love, whether that went good or bad with the world through animation. And we have some other things that are in development right now but until they’re worked out a little bit more I don’t want to talk about them because I don’t want to collapse the wave form by opening up the box before it’s ready.

Q) I’m looking forward to seeing you and Chris Hardwick together on your show. I think it’s going to be a geek-gasm episode, no doubt about it.

A) It’s really funny and when Hardwick and I – shot the segment that he is in tonight – Chris and I have been friends since we were freshmen in college and actually lived together in college and because we are such good friends, we goofed off a lot while we were shooting that segment and when we cut the cameras, I went to the control room and I went straight to our network executives and I said you guys, you have got to let me put those outtakes online. They’re so funny and they said that they would let us do that so a bunch of the outtakes are going to be on blaster.com tonight and anything that doesn’t go to blaster.com, I’m going to try to get to put in my own blog, my own YouTube channel because it’s just really, really funny. And Chris and I have been I think it’s really interesting that our careers have taken almost parallel paths for the last couple of decades and we are always looking for opportunities to do things together because it’s just really fun to work together. My friend John Rogers who co-created Leverage and brought me up to play Chaos for a bunch of episodes, he pointed out that we’re all at a point in our lives, you know, we’re all in our 40s and we’re at a point in our lives and our careers where we want to work with people we like on things that we’re proud of. Like if we are privileged enough and fortunate enough to be in a place where we’re really paid a lot of our dues and we can make those decisions about what we’re going to do, then we want to work with people who are awesome and we want to work with people that we like. And that is I really internalized that when Roger said that to me and I brought it to the Wil Wheaton Project in the, you know, when it was time to hire people and it’s something that Chris and talk about all the time that, you know, we’re always looking for opportunities to do fun, nerdy stuff together. And I mean, honestly when we get together, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing, it becomes nerdy. It’s just we can’t help ourselves.

Q) What’s more important to you, the fact that you have a successful career or the fact that you’ve inspired so many kids who want to be like you and embrace their inner nerd so to speak?

A) The second part – a million years ago I took a marketing class that was about how actors can market themselves and it’s kind of how I learned that in scripted fiction I should play the character that you love to hate, even though that’s not who I am in real life that is who I am in drama. It’s who I played on “Leverage” and on “Eureka” and in “The Guild,” it’s how I started out in the “Big Bang Theory” and part of this marketing class – the man who taught it – told us that we really should find all this who were actors, we should really find a purpose in our lives that’s bigger than us, something that we – a task – that we could never complete, something that we can always be sort of working on. And I spent a lot of time figuring like what I think my greater purpose in life is and what I came down to is I want to inspire people to greatness and I want to be the kind of person I hoped by kids would look up to when they were younger and when I am given the incredible privilege of speaking slightly above the background noise, it’s real important for me to have something to say. And I am incredibly grateful that I have been able to like occasionally be the Internet stab and it’s why when I got to go speak to Penny Arcade Expo in 2007 the message that I wanted everyone to talk away from that was don’t be a dick. Let’s have fun when we play online games and let’s be kind to each other when we’re in real life and just don’t be a dick about it. And it’s why I’ve wanted to inspire people to get excited and make things and I have always pushed that philosophy every chance that I get. A talk that I gave at a convention recently went viral maybe not two months ago where I was and this little girl was really upset that people were bullying here and teasing her and what I told her was when a person is cruel to you, it’s never about you. It’s all about them. They feel back about themselves. They feel inadequate. They feel frustrated. They feel sad and I know it’s hard and you should always stand up for yourself but I think it’s important to have compassion for people who treat you like that and be the change you want to be in the world. That thing went viral and honestly if that’s all I am remembered for for the rest of my life, I will be really, really happy. I think one of the reasons is resonated with people is that everyone has experienced that in one way or another, right? It may have been on a playground or like my bully, the kid that bullied me lived across the street from me and he tormented me for years and nobody ever did anything about it. My parents tried but it turns out that that kid’s parents were bullies too and he could get away with it and never held him accountable and I know that I’m not the only person who’s had that experience. I know that there are people who are bullied in the workplace and there are people who just maybe they just there’s just a place that they like to go, maybe there’s like a corner pub or someplace and there’s some jerk there who bullies people. I think everybody’s had that experience and one of the reasons I think that particular thing went viral was that it resonated with people because we’ve all had that experience one way or another. And hopefully it will get people to think about how we respond in those situations and also how we tell our kids to deal with those things when they happen so hopefully we kind of like we start pulling that out at its root, right, by telling our children this is not the way we do things. This is not cool so it’s long slow work but that doesn’t diminish its importance.

Q) So, this obviously is going to be a really fun job. You get to talk about what you love, but is there anything that you’ve found particularly challenging?

A) Yes, absolutely, yes, absolutely. This week we’re launching so the show launches today and last week and the week before almost like a bunch of the shows that we cover had their finales so we had so we couldn’t talk about like for example there’s no “Game of Thrones” this week and “Game of Thrones” is a load-bearing pillar in our world. But we all knew that was going to happen and if everything goes according to plan, we’re going to be on television for a really long time and we’ll be on a time where there really isn’t a whole lot of new stuff and we just kind of have to roll with it. One of the really big challenges and one of the difficult decisions we made yesterday just a couple of hours before taping was about the show “Revolution.” “Revolution” is that show that we all watch the pilot of and thought, “Oh my God, this is going to be just like ‘Lost.” And then five episodes in we all went aw, man, it’s just like “Lost” and then “Revolution” like they were working on it, it was going somewhere and then they were just like bam, you’re canceled and the producers had to suddenly tie-up all kinds of loose ends and like had very little time to do it. So we had a really funny joke and a really funny quip where the way that I set it up was “Revolution” was recently canceled and I had some really silly puns, something about (revdev) pulling the plug on “Revolution” and leaving the fans in the dark and just a bunch of stupid puns about the power being off and then and the setup was so what do you do when you suddenly have to do a series finale and you have all these loose ends to tie up. And we cut to a scene that was in the show of one of the characters on the show surrounded by a bunch of the main important characters and he’s like “uh,” and then he just pulls out a gun and shoots all of them and it’s really funny in the context of the writers need to wrap everything up. “Oh God, how are we going to wrap it up? Oh, I know, we’re just going to have this guy shoot everybody and all those loose ends are gone, right?” And I said about two hours before we were going to go into the studio I said, “I’m really uncomfortable doing a joke where this guy pulls out a gun and shoots all these people when that just happened for real 50 miles from where I live,” and I think it’s a really fine line. I think the joke is very funny and in a vacuum it’s really funny, but we have to respond to current events and I just my instinct when I saw that clip, I recoiled from it and I just thought I don’t want to do that and we had to cut it and we had to find other stuff. We had to scramble – the whole team scrambled – because we were like oh man, this revolution thing’s going to be funny, we did that like we did that a week before this horrific thing happened up in Isla Vista and we had to scramble to find something different to do. And, I think we learned really quickly that we are a very nimble group and we can react to those challenges really quickly and we can adjust to things that change over in a 24-hour or 48-hour cycle and what we ended-up putting in the show is really super funny and really great and I don’t miss the piece that we cut at all. And I think it was a terrific test for us at I’m really proud of my team. My team responded to that test and I think they passed.

Q) Can you give us an idea of a couple of the shows you are going to be talking about since a lot of them did end?

A) Yes, for sure, so “Orphan Black” is my favorite thing on television right now. We’ll be talking about that for sure. There are a bunch of things coming up throughout the year. I am really excited for “The Strain” and trying to figure out a way that we could cover a show like in the flesh because it’s so weird, but the trick is taking something that really requires you to settle in and sit with it for a couple of hours and pull out five seconds to make a reference to. SyFy’s got a show coming up called “Ascension” that my friend Tricia Helfer is in and I am really, really excited for that. I know what’s going to happen in like I know the story arc for that show and I think it’s going to be just the coolest thing ever so those are some of the things that I’m looking forward to. And then we also have permission and a big of a directive from the network to cover things that are not on television and movies so we can do comic books, we can do literature, we can do video games so whenever the next installment of the Kingkiller Chronicles comes out from Pat Rothfuss, I’ll be able to talk about that and we’ll be able to dig a little bit deeper into, you know, into our culture. I’m really looking forward to covering the next release of Dungeons and Dragons and going to Gen-Con and maybe to Origins and covering what’s happening in the world of TableTop gaming and if we can do some crossover with my show Tabletop on Geek and Sundry, I am going to embrace that for sure. So it will really be when we say we’re talking about the stuff that we who live in our world love, that’s not marketing. That’s just a fact.

Q)  What is your creative process like when you’re putting together an episode for that?

A) We have a wonderful team of researchers and producers who have been assigned certain shows because it’s not possible for all of us to watch everything so the researchers watch the shows and will point out when something silly happens or something notable happens. All of us all day long are looking at things on the Internet so I’m looking at things on Reddit and we’re coming across things on YouTube. We’re all fans of this genre so we are constantly taking in and processing the things that happen in our culture so we gather up a whole bunch of stuff and then we have our executive producer Doug has a big board in his office and we just put stuff up on the board on an index card that says sort of like where we think a thing’s going to go, which how it fits into the four-act structure of the show and then we start working it out and we start writing jokes and we start watching clips and trying to make each other laugh. We have a basic structure, a basic sort of skeleton for the show so at the first act is all about what has happened in the last week and then the second act might go a little bit deeper and a little bit further back maybe a couple of weeks or something that isn’t necessarily timely. The third act is kind of experimental. If I have a silly idea like hey guys what if we did blah, blah, blah. Then we can try it in the third act because it’s kind of short and then in the fourth act we’re doing a segment where we just sort of like we’re calling it shout-outs and it’s really silly. We have these ridiculous graphics that look like they came out of 1990 and that’s where we just sort of like it’s not enough for a full segment but it might be enough for like a quick thing or weird and that’s just a bunch of quick hits. And then we end with a supercut of something that we like like this week’s supercut is real-life mutants and our researchers found clips online of people doing things like real-life things that look like they should be mutant superpowers and some of them are funny. Some of them are horrifying. Some I have to look away from the screen on and I actually made the producers apologize to the audience for like putting those a couple of these things in. There’s a guy who can bug his eyes out and it’s horrifying but it’s just funny stuff like that and then we’re out so that we’ve had a couple of months to sort of work out the structure and build up some packages of things but really, you know, we start, the show goes out. We tape the show on Monday and we start writing the next show on Tuesday. When I was talking earlier about being part of a community, TableTop is such a perfect example of that. Gamers really take care of gamers and we love the community that we’re part of and TableTop is just I feel like TableTop is we are supporting the gaming community as much as we can and to our delight the gaming community has supported us as well. And it’s sort of my experience with TableTop has been so wonderful and so much fun I’ve had so much experience producing and creating and editing and really being part of that process from conception to delivery. And I have learned that it’s really important to respect the audience and not take the audience for granted. We’re never entitled to an audience we earn it and we have to keep it and one of the prime directives I gave to the creative crew on “The Wil Wheaton Project” was we have to respect our community. Like it’s okay, we can laugh at ourselves and we can make jokes but we can’t be mean and we’re never going to punch down and we’re never going to like make fun of people for the things that they love unless they’re ghost hunters, ghost hunters are fair game. But, you know, like we’re not making fun of cosplayers, we’re not making fun of gamers, it’s just we’re not going to do that because I don’t think that’s funny, I don’t think that’s cool. I think that we need to celebrate the culture. We can do it in a humorous way and I don’t think it’s possible to do anything creative these days without offending somebody but I think it’s really important that we’re just doing something that makes our culture accessible and brings people in. And hopefully someone leaves the show saying to their partner who’s a giant nerd God I really I want to go watch Penny Dreadful now so hopefully fingers crossed we’ll be adding more nerds to the world the way TableTop has added more gamers to the world.

Q) Do you also plan on maybe working with Geek and Sundry at all with doing any kind of sold promotion or doing kind of what Geek and Sundry’s done?

A) Yes, Felicia Day’s coming on the show next week actually because we have a new show with Geek and Sundry that premieres on June 4th called Spooked that is so funny, it’s a parody of the ghosthunting shows. It is exactly like it is a perfect Venn diagram overlap of “The Wil Wheaton Project” and Geek and Sundry. And a bunch of our friends are on it, Neil Grayston, who I worked with on” Eureka” and Alison Hayslip who I have done tons of things with. She was on TableTop in the first season and Felicia co-wrote it and executive produced it and it was one of those things where I was like hey, do you want to come on my show to talk about your show? And she was like can I come on your show to talk about my show and it’s a really great example of sort it supports what I was saying earlier about how, you know, we want to do things with our friends and we all want to work to support stuff that’s awesome and I am so excited for that show. I’ve seen a little bit of it and it is so, so funny, that I was really excited that I have the privilege of supporting one of my very best friends in something that I’m genuinely excited about.

Q) We, the people of the Internet, love your wife Anne Wheaton. Can we expect to see her on the Wil Wheaton Project since we all love her so much or is that just going to just fuel the jealousy and you’ll have to hire her away from everyone else?

A) I would love to somehow share with “The Wil Wheaton Project” audience what those of you who are ahead of the curve know about how awesome she is and how silly our family is. We have because we’re a broadcast television show we actually can’t put people on camera unless they’re members of AFTRA so that kind of like totally takes my family out of the equation. However on Season 3 of TableTop we are going to do an episode that is the Wheaton family game night and it’ll be me and Nolan and Ryan and we will all be together playing one of the games that we play here at home. So you’re going to get a little more of your Anne Wheaton fix and if you don’t already her blog at http://www.annewheaton.com is really terrific. All I did was install WordPress for her and she just sort of took it and tells stories and does her thing and I look forward to not getting things on it as much as anybody else does.

Q) How does it feels to be that human and that publicly open, vulnerable, knowing that the very serious business people who hold power over your current and future projects, they might see that in a negative light? How do you reconcile that with your (thoughts)?

A) Well, I have to live with myself at the end of every day and that is far more important to me than the perception that business people have. Ultimately, I think that the right people like sort of like Joel Hodgson says about Mystery Science Theater 3000, the right people get it. And if I allowed myself to be concerned about how some business person in a tall glass building was going to perceive a thing that I do, it would probably be about as productive as being concerned about what some anonymous person on the Internet was going to do. I sort of I have to do what I believe in and I have to talk about what I think is important and I think one of the reasons particularly in relationship to depression and other mental health issues, one of the reasons that we have such widespread suffering from depression and anxiety in our culture is this stigma that surrounds it and that sort of like supports the premise of your question. If we talk about it then we’re going to be, we might be risking employment or we might be embarrassing our families or whatever and the reality is mental health should be treated the same way physical health is treated. If a person had diabetes, they wouldn’t like just try to feel better, right, they would go to a doctor and they would get treated for it. Mental health issues are exactly the same way. One of the reasons that I speak so openly about it and without any shame is that I suffered for probably 10 years because I didn’t want to admit that I had depression and anxiety and I was afraid of what would happen. I was afraid that if I took medication for my symptoms that it would change who I was. And it wasn’t until some of my friends who are extremely successful people who are really inspiring to me who are awesome began speaking publicly about their experiences with depression and anxiety and other mental health issues that I realized geez, if these guys have these things but they can live the life that they live well then I think maybe I don’t need to be as afraid of this as I’ve been. And I got myself help and as I’ve written, I didn’t realize how much I had been suffering until I wasn’t suffering any more. The description that I’ve used is like having it’s like walking out of the room that was so loud, I had just gotten used to the noise and I didn’t realize how loud it was until all that was left was the ringing in my ears. And I didn’t talk about it publicly for a long time until my friend Jenny Lawson who writes as the Blogess was super open about her struggles with mental health issues and when I read what she was talking about, it made me feel better about the things that I was going through and I decided I have the privilege of reaching a lot of people and I think I have a responsibility to do something good with that and something meaningful with that. And I just started talking about it and it’s therapeutic for me because it makes me feel a little less alone when I struggle and it actually makes me feel really good if there are people that read that and feel less alone the way that I feel less alone when I read other people talking about it I just I feel like I am doing something worthwhile with all of the wonderful things I’ve been given.

Q) Well, since it’s in the beginning early days, what do you want to see as “The Wil Wheaton Project” goes? Is there something you want to see as like a syndicated talk show on different channels or what is your ultimate goal?

A) Well, I’m really happy to be on SyFy because the network has been really supportive and they have given us the resources we’re asked for. They’ve given us the creative freedom and the support to do what we want to do and to make our show, you know, the way that we want to make it. And to get such a vote of confidence from a network is not common, it is usually a network like sort of takes an idea and then like just they will get so many notes that eventually we call it noting it to death and our network has not done that to us. They have been extremely supportive. They have been incredible partners and I’m really, really happy with the relationship that we have and if we can continue this relationship in this way for years, I would be delighted. I’m also really excited to be part of SyFy right now because the commitment has been made at all levels of the network to be a science fiction destination. And long before I was part of the family when I was a viewer, I was heartbroken when SyFy started moving away from those things that I loved and stopped really putting on shows like the shows we’re seeing coming up this year, 12 Monkeys and the Magicians and Ascension and “Dominion.” I was so like I am so excited to be part of that and to be like I feel like we are it’s like I’m grabbing the tail of a phoenix and it’s climbing into the sky and I’m super excited about that so I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m really happy here. As far as what I want the show to be, I think what you’re going to see tonight really reflects what I want the show to be and where I want the show to go. There was some talk really early on about maybe making it a little more of an interview show and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be an interviewer. I really like that I am on my feet talking to the audience, setting up clips, making jokes about the clips and then occasionally showing some produced packages. I would very much like to hire some correspondents and I have talked to a couple of my friends who I just think are just super awesome who are really smart who are really in our world who I think would be fantastic additions to the show and hopefully as the show moves on and if we’re on the air in a year, you’ll get to see some of that work. That’s I guess the thing that I really want is to bring some of these really amazing women I know onto the show to do some really fun correspondent work for us.

Q) Are we going to be able to see you at Comic-Con this year?

A) Every year I try not to go to Comic-Con because it’s like I said it’s become such a giant trade show that it’s kind of like it’s like a working weekend for me but yes, I’ll be at Comic-Con. I will be before Comic-Con we’ve got Rootstock then we’ve got Hop-Con with Stone Brewing, then we’ve got all of the stuff with Geek and Sundry. And there’s even a non-zero chance that we’ll be doing something cool related to “The Wil Wheaton Project” at Comic-Con this year so I think in spite of my efforts to have a nice quiet weekend at home, I will be in San Diego gawking at all of the amazing cosplay with everybody else.

Q) Do you consider yourself a sci-fi icon?

A) No, no, I absolutely don’t. I think that the moment a person starts thinking of themselves in terms like that, they completely lose touch with reality and I am an entertainer and a creator and a husband and a dad and I’m really, really lucky that the things that I make are interesting to other people.

Q) I want to know if you believe that “The Wil Wheaton Project” will affect your blog time or do you believe that the two and everything that you have within Twitter and all of your media sources will actually complement each other and just feed off of each other and continue to grow?

A) I tried really hard, I’ve made a decision a sort of like a tactical decision in terms of managing my time to have all the things that I do support each other and “The Wil Wheaton Project” is very much a culmination of that, right, I mean, it’s very much a culmination of my writing on my blog, my podcasting on Radio Free Burrito, my silly videos on my YouTube channel and then just the love that I have for all of the subjects that we cover. I have not had as much time to sit down and write the long narrative pieces that I love to write for my blog because I’ve been working on multiple projects for the last several months. I don’t foresee things really changing in terms of what I’m doing now over the next few months just because I’ve kind of already been there for the last few months. I really, really hope that I will be able to incorporate my blog and my existing like sort of like little Internet landing places into the show. I am working very, very hard to get the network to give me permission to put stuff that we cut from the show online like to let me put it on my YouTube channel, let me put it on my blog. And like we’ve already shot it, it already exists, let’s do something cool with it so I am working really hard to help people who are sort of part of old media to get more comfortable with new media and if I am successful in that, then it’s going to let me do more with the world that I’ve been really happily living in for the last 15 years than I can do right now.

 

*CONFERENCE CALL*