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Being A Brief History of It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton

Posted on By Wil

I have written for, and been published by, some fancy publications, including the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, Salon, and … well, at least two more that I can remember turning in, but not who I turned them in to (being middle aged is GREAT! Why did I come in here, again?)

It always felt like a significant accomplishment, even if the editorial hand from the mainstream publications was heavier than it needed to be. For instance, Wall Street Journal. When I wrote about choosing kindness online in a world where that seemed to be less and less common, I included a passage about my fear that Elon Musk would turn Twitter into exactly what he turned it into. The editors cut it because they knew it was true and they know who their audience is. Still, I got to tell the world how important Noah Grey is to all bloggers, so I accepted the compromise.

Each of these essays took time and effort, and with my eyes wide open and a full understanding of the deal, I wrote them without being paid. The point was to put my ideas into the world as widely as possible, and I was willing to do that while I made my living elsewhere.

But I always wanted to be paid the professional rate for something I wrote and delivered for publication, and today that has finally happened!

I have an essay in this month’s Uncanny Magazine, called Being A Brief History of It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton! I requested payment in a paper check, so I can frame it.

Here’s an excerpt:

I have never been S-tier in anything, but I feel as close as I ever have, during this incredible run. People stop me on the street, in stores and restaurants, because they recognize my voice. They all tell me they love my narration. A lot of them tell me they will listen to anything I narrate. For the first time, ever, I feel respected and recognized in my field. I feel worthy and special. I feel confident and creatively satisfied. I feel like I earned it, that it belongs to me in a way my acting career never did. After nearly thirty years of being told by other people what I want to do, and what I am allowed to do, I finally know what I want to do with my artistic and creative life, until I choose to retire. I just have to find a way to do it without asking for permission.

In early 2024, one of my oldest friends, Christopher Scott, who I have known since I was fourteen, tells me that he finally sold his first story, “The Hidden Heart of Brass Attending,” to a magazine called On Spec (which, like too many indie publications, sadly no longer exists). He isn’t a full-time writer, but he has always been a great writer, a storyteller like me, and I had been waiting for this day for almost forty years. I go to the publication’s website and buy his issue. While I wait for it to arrive, I have this thought that maybe it would be cool to commemorate his achievement, and celebrate him, with a small gift. It had come up more than once that he liked my narrations, so I thought it would be cool to narrate this for him. No music, nothing fancy, no director. Just me and a microphone, doing a fun thing for my friend. 

I sat down to narrate, and right before I hit record, a voice in my head said, “Hey! Stop for a second. You know all those people who tell you that they’ll listen to anything you narrate? What if you tested that? What if you started a weekly audiobook podcast where you narrate short stories like this one? You could ask LeVar if it’s okay to step into the space he is leaving!” For the uninitiated, LeVar had a podcast for years called LeVar Burton Reads, that I loved. Coincidentally, he was ending that series around the time I started to think about mine.

This is such a big deal for me, a real level up moment. It’s just a couple hundred bucks, but it feels like one of the biggest and most significant checks I will ever receive.

I would love for you to read this. If you do, I’d love to hear your thoughts. I also recorded it for this month’s Uncanny Podcast, if you would like to hear it in my voice.

As always, thank you for all your support and enthusiasm over the years. I’m so happy you’re here.

Hi. I’m Wil. I write this blog, Sometimes I’m on TV. I host It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton, and co-host the official Stuart Fails to Save the Universe podcast. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your email, here’s the thingy:

Until next time, take care of yourselves, and take care of each other. Never forget that you are enough, you are worthy, and you matter.

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sensual daydreams to treasure forever (can’t you just see it?)

Posted on By Wil

I swear to all the gods, the Grim Reaper is really fucking up. It’s like he caught Mitch McConnell and decided to take the summer off, leaving some intern in charge who just does not understand the assignment.

While we were reeling from the loss of Dolly Parton, we found out that Tim Curry had passed away. Late last night, I heard that he passed on the same day as Dolly, but his estate kept the news private, so as not to step on her memory. That’s such a wonderful thing to do, and it doesn’t surprise me; as far as I can tell, listening to people who knew him, that’s exactly what he would have wanted.

Like a lot of Gen X theater kids, my introduction to Tim Curry’s existence was in a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show. I have never talked about it, ever, but one of the things I took away from my first viewing (my first experience, really) is that drag is more fun than you could ever imagine. I always wanted to do a full-on face and stuff, when I went to a show, but I never had the courage to risk my dad seeing me. So I’d borrow black lipstick and eyeliner from on of my friends, and put it on in the car.

My friend and I are going to a screening soon, and we are both going in full costume. She’s thinking Magenta, and I’m thinking Frank. We’ll see how it goes, and there will be pictures if it does.

Speaking of Gen X theater kids (we never really stop being those kids, do we?), Rocky Horror reassured me that there were lots and lots of weirdoes just like me, and they weren’t the scary deviants the news and my parents told me they were. They were lovely people who welcomed everyone with open arms into a safe place where we could all just … be.

(Don’t dream it, be it, right?)

Way back in 2008, when I was a baby writer, finding my voice and figuring out how I could tell stories like the storytellers I admired, I wrote a couple of blogs that helped me level up. One of them was about the first time I ever saw Rocky Horror Picture Show, when I was a weird teenager who desperately need to belong somewhere.

Today, as we remember and celebrate Tim Curry, I wanted to repost it as a tribute to a man who meant so much to so many.

A few days after my sixteenth birthday, I lost my Rocky Horror virginity with my best friend, in a shitty little duplex theater in Van Nuys.

I’d wanted to see Rocky since I was ten or eleven on my way to an audition and my mom drove us past a marquee advertising a midnight showing every Saturday. My parents couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me what it was about (my memory is hazy on that specific detail) but anything that happened at midnight on a Saturday sounded great to me. The creepy lettering and word “horror” in the title only increased my antici . . . pation.

Darin and I were at a place on Van Nuys Boulevard called Cafe 50s. These fifties cafes were everywhere in the eighties (some blame Stand By Me and Back to the Future for their popularity) but this particular one was my favorite. Though I’ve never actually been in a diner in the fifties, this one felt the most authentic, which means it copied what I’d seen in movies better than anything else, and had Del Shannon’s Runaway on the jukebox.

We gorged ourselves on patty melts and chocolate shakes and vanilla Cokes while we talked about all the things that seemed important after you discovered girls, like how to actually, you know, talk to one and convince her to take an unforgettable trip with you to second base for sixteen seconds of passion. We argued about the time travel paradoxes in Back to the Future, confirmed that quoting Monty Python to the 24 year-old waitress is not the best way to get a stand up double when you’re sixteen (or ever) and admitted that Michael Keaton was a vastly superior Batman than we’d been prepared to give him credit for. In other words, it was a Saturday night like any other, and as midnight (and the restaurant’s closing) drew near, our attention turned toward that most important of teenage activities: doing anything but going home.

“Have you ever seen Rocky?” Darin asked.

“God, I hate that stupid movie,” I said. “And the sequels are even worse. It’s like, we know he’s going to win, so why waste our time wi –“

“I mean Rocky Horror.” He said.

“Oh.” I said. “No, but I’ve always wanted to.”

“It’s playing across the street at midnight. We should go.”

As quickly as I’d gotten excited to see it, I lost my nerve. Through the pre-internet grapevine that gave teens of my generation the truth about Mikey from Life cereal (“Ohmygod he died by eating pop rocks and drinking coke”) I’d heard about Rocky virgins being deflowered in horrifying ways (“Ohmygod this guy I know went to see it in Santa Monica and they made him take off his clothes and wrote VIRGIN on his chest in lipstick!”)

“Don’t they do horrible things to people who haven’t seen it?” I said in my most nonchalant voice, grateful that it didn’t crack.

“Not really,” he said, “but if you’re worried about it, we won’t say anything.”

“Okay,” I said, my excitement returning.

The waitress came back by our table. “Can I get you guys anything else?”

Before I could demand a shrubbery, Darin said, “Could we get some slightly burnt white toast?”

The waitress and I gave him the same curious look. He smiled enigmatically.

Twenty minutes later, we bought our tickets, burnt toast in my pocket, butterflies rising in my stomach. We stood in a line that grew to about two dozen people and waited for the theater to open. I made nervous smalltalk with Darin, talking a little too loudly about the great cast they had in . . . I think I chose Huntington Beach.

The doors opened a few minutes before midnight, and we walked into a theater that, Tardis-like, seemed bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outsider: dirty blue and orange curtains hung on the walls. Two aisles separated three groups of squeaky blue seats. The floor was painted a dark navy blue — blue seemed to be a recurring theme in this particular theater — and was appropriately sticky. We chose seats on the aisle near the back. I should have been freaked out when a guy sat down a few aisles in front of us and lit a cigarette, but being rebel-adjacent excited me.

The theater quickly got as full as it was going to get. It seemed that most of the audience knew each other, especially the four people who huddled together at the front of the house, next to the screen.

A dude with long black hair and bright red lipstick emerged from the group, and spoke to the audience. I can’t remember what he said, because when he began, a hand tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up and saw the most phenomenally beautiful girl in the world standing in the aisle. She had short black hair in a Bettie Page cut, bright green eyes, full red lips. She wore a red corset that fit her . . . perfectly.

She bent over and said, “are you a virgin?”

I was, in every way that mattered, and in that moment I would have pushed my mother in front of a train on its way into a lake of fire if it meant that this girl would remove from me this . . . condition.

If I’d been standing, I’m certain I would have fainted. “W-what?” I stammered.

She extended one hand and caressed my face. She repeated herself, even more seductively than the first time.

My voice cracked as I said “YES!” a little too loudly.

Her eyes flashed and she squeaked – squeaked! – a little. “This is going to be fun.”

She stood up abruptly and hollered, “I have a virgin!”

“A VIRGIN!” Replied much of the audience.

Before I knew what was happening, she stood me up, had me repeat some oath that I’ve sinceforgotten, and spanked me. I remained fully clothed, but by the time I was done, I was soaked through after everyone in the theater sprayed me with their squirt guns and spray bottles. As quickly as it started, it was over, and she disappeared before I could get her number.

My deflowering was, like most people’s, nothing like I’d hoped for or expected, but it was still magical. I loved every second of it.

While other regulars repeated similar rituals with a few other virgins in the audience I looked at Darin. He looked back, mirroring my disbelief.

“That was awesome!” I said. Not only had a girl practically showed me her boobs, she’d touched my face! Seductively! And talked to me! And squirted me with a squirt gun! I was beside myself, and the movie hadn’t even started yet.

The lights went down, and the show began. I didn’t know any of the lines, but I quickly figured out what to yell at Brad and Janet. I threw my toast. I did the Time Warp. I watched the girl who’d taken my Rocky virginity play Magenta, which is probably why Magenta is still my favorite character in the whole show to this very day, twenty years later.

When it was over, we drove back to La Crescenta in my slightly-better-than-Patrick-Stewart’s Honda Prelude, blasting New Order the whole way with the sunroof open and the windows down. I dropped Darin off at his house, and though I got back to mine around 3, I didn’t fall asleep until the sun came up, I was so loaded with caffeine, sugar, adrenaline.

The movie, of course, was campy and not especially good, but that wasn’t the point. It was a shared experience, a place for misfits of all stripes to gather once a week, and fly our Transylvanian freak flags. For the next two years, Darin and I lead an ever-growing group of our friends to Rocky at least once a month, usually more, at the Rialto theater in South Pasadena. I haven’t been since 1991 or 1992, but those years — and the film itself — hold a very special place in my memory. Maybe, just once, I’ll go back to a midnight showing, just so I can do the Timewarp again.

I never did go to a midnight showing. I would be brutal on my middle-aged body to even try to stay awake that late … but caffeine exists, and there’s an energy that can infect and propel you all that way into the gloaming dawn, if you allow it. So … maybe. Maybe.

This story was fun to write back then, even though I can see all the incredibly rough edges now, that my experience and I want to sand off and rewrite. I suppose that’s part of its charm? Sure, we’re gonna go with that.

If you have a Tim Curry, or Dolly Parton, or Rocky Horror story you care to share, I’d love to hear it; I think all of us theater kids could use a big hug today, you know?

Hi, I’m Wil. I write this blog, and I’m glad you’re here. If you want to get my updates in your email, here’s the thingy:

I narrate short speculative fiction stories every week for my podcast, It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton. This week’s episode is a gorgeous story called The Flaming Embusen by Tade Thompson. I also co-host the official companion podcast for Stuart Fails To Save The Universe with Felicia Day. Episodes for both shows are available wherever you get your podcasts.

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felicia day and i want to play more games together

Posted on By Wil

About twenty years ago, when I was in the Saturday show at the ACME Comedy Theatre, a friend of mine who I wrote with for the show encouraged me to check out one of her students who was in the Sunday show.

I remembered when she and I were in the Sunday show, how exciting and validating it felt when the upperclassmen in the Saturday show came to watch us. I knew that some of the Sunday show performers would be moving into the Saturday show soon, and I wanted to see who I would possibly be writing with or for in the coming months.

So I went to the show, and this woman who my friend told me about was absolutely hilarious. In a show that had a solid lineup of great sketches, she stood out to me. So I made a note that this was someone I wanted to do comedy with, and I started making little notes in my book when ideas arrived.

We never did a Saturday show together, as circumstances outside of our control did their thing, but … oh, I don’t know, maybe around six months later, or so? Less than a year, at least. It isn’t important. At some point after that, my friend, Kim, emailed me about a show she had done with that woman we both loved. It was a little thing they did for five bucks, without asking for permission, entirely on their own. It was about gamers who played something like WoW, meeting up in person for the first time, and they are all the most outrageous characters you’ve ever seen. She thought that I’d love it. She asked me to take a look at it, and maybe post about it on my blog, if that felt right. I looked at it, thought it was so funny and so original, and couldn’t write a post about it fast enough.

For the one of you in the world who hasn’t yet gotten there: The show was The Guild, and the brilliant woman in the Sunday show was Felicia Day.

About a year later, I’d met Felicia a few times, and though we weren’t yet friends, I admired and respected her immensely. I loved how she was doing what she wanted to do, on her terms, entirely supported by the audience she was building one person at a time. Think back to 20 years ago, it’s 2006, and everything is growing online. Indie creators doing indie projects were starting to rewrite popular media and popular culture for a generation. I was a tiny part of that as an Ur-blogger, and Felicia was an enormous part of that as the creator of The Guild (and future founder of Geek and Sundry). It was such an exciting time! We all felt like power was shifting away from gatekeepers, entertainment was getting more diverse, and creative nerds were ascendant. God, I miss that.

After one season, I had become a legit fan of The Guild. I loved the story, I thought the actors were hilarious (I could listen to Jeff Lewis be aggrieved for a thousand hours), and I was just so fucking excited to see someone I didn’t really know, but who I was very aware of, doing truly great, transformative work. It was inspiring as hell to me, and I loved having a front row seat to all of it.

Around this time, Felicia reached out and asked if she could take me to coffee and pitch me a role in season 3. I could have saved us the drive and the cost of some VERY bougie coffee and just said “I’m in and don’t need to hear anything else,” but I like coffee and I wanted to sit down with her, get to know her a little better.

We went to this place in Silverlake that I can never recall the name of, but is still there, where we paid something outrageous for two cups of coffee. I think it was like eight dollars, which, believe it or not, was a lot to pay for coffee at one time. To this day, we howl with laughter when we recall the phrase on the menu: “We invite you to enjoy the purest expression of the bean.” I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, and I’m usually pretty fuzzy on what day of the week it is, I can’t recall what the “purest expression of the bean” was on that fateful morning, but I will never forget the invitation to discover it. I’m giggling right now.

Felicia started her pitch. “So I want to introduce a rival guild, and I thought you would be great to play the leader,”

“Okay, tell me when to show up.”

“…I’m not done.”

“Oh. Go on.”

“He’s a douchebag in a kilt.”

“…”

“That’s it.”

“Okay, tell me when to show up.”

The rest, as many of you know, is award-winning, online-media changing, paradigm-shifting history that I am intensely grateful and proud to be part of.

Sooner than either of us expected (well, sooner than I expected. Felicia and I have never talked about her expectations, so I’m going off of how I recall the vibe at the time), Felicia was one of a few creators who were invited by Google to pitch a channel lineup for a YouTube thing that was meant to be a sort of patronage, an effort to introduce a new generation of creators and their content to the world. I think it was a tentative effort to put YouTube up against traditional television and cable. Interestingly, I recall that they gave money to some established studios and networks (money they didn’t need) and those studios and networks didn’t do a single frame of original content. They used YouTube as a dumping ground for their libraries, attracted no audience, and were all gone in a matter of months. As grateful as I am to Google for its early patronage of not just Felicia, but other creators I love, I wonder if that money could have been more wisely invested? Maybe an indie creator who just missed the cut in favor of some legacy company would have done something cool with it.

If my memory is correct, Felicia’s channel, Geek & Sundry, was one of the only channels that Google reinvested in at the conclusion of the original funding effort. None of the legacy companies returned. I remember how great it felt to survive that. It made me feel like we were doing something right, and these old legacy companies just fundamentally didn’t get it. It felt like I was part of a new space that I’d helped create, an expansive, growing space for people like us to make the things we wanted to see, to highlight and celebrate our creative friends and the artists we loved, to reach out to an audience that we were part of, that was bored to death the the legacy stuff. It didn’t last long, but it was magical while it did. And there is some of that magic in the air again, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So you probably know that Felicia created Geek & Sundry, and if you know that, you know that we created Tabletop, together, and that we did four incredible seasons of the show, plus an RPG spinoff called Titan’s Grave, before a legacy company bought us, fucked everything up, set all the money on fire and destroyed what we built, and confirmed for all of us involved that it’s better to remain independent, no matter how great their pitch is, because legacy companies are full of people who do one thing very well, and it isn’t managing online communities, nurturing indie creators, and patiently allowing an enthusiastic audience to organically grow over time.

The sale and subsequent destruction of what we worked so hard to build (extending beyond the programming) was deeply demoralizing for me. Not owning the rights to what we created has allowed Legendary to take everything we made, stuff it in a box, and put it in the corner of a basement somewhere. When I tried to license it, or buy it back, they refused to sell. Weirdly, it was very important to someone there that I know the company considers Tabletop a dead property that they will never do anything with. So even though I could potentially do something cool with the thing I created, and pay them for the privilege of taking all of the risk, they have no intention of ever doing anything at all with it, they’re going to sit on it and never do anything with it. It is a dead parrot. They never gave a reason that makes sense, so I’m going to presume it’s either spite, or standard executive fear that something someone killed could come back and be a huge success without them.

But before all of that, for the entire time Felicia and I were making things together, it was the best thing, ever. The joyful memories, the difference we made in the world, the boardgame renaissance we helped instigate, and the hundreds of thousands of new gamers we helped create all come back into my mind all the time. I’m so proud of us, so grateful that we did it, and that we did it well. I genuinely loved doing Tabletop, and I genuinely love working with Felicia.

And because the world is on fire right now like it hasn’t ever been in my lifetime, I feel called to do what I do best: entertain you, and give you something to enjoy with people you love, while we all do what we can do get through it. When Felicia told me about Kickstarting the movie and possibly adding our original show as a stretch goal, I swear to all the gods I felt that magic in the air all over again. I could smell it, I could taste it. I could see it, shimmering at the edges of my vision. It was, like, right there, just begging me to jump back in and take a swim.

So I did, and that’s why Felicia and I are getting the band back together for a limited series that will feature us playing games, together. Let me tell you all about it!

Felicia is Kickstarting a reunion movie called The Guild: Ren Faire’d, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s been massively successful, and is maybe on its way to becoming the top earning crowdfunded movie in history. It’s incredibly exciting for all of us who know and love Felicia, and it’s especially exiting for me, because we are in stretch goal territory, which means not only do we all get The Guild movie I want to see, we are also now building up funds to produce a show where Felicia and I pick a theme, share things we love around the theme with each other, like books, music, movies, recipes, podcasts, etc., and then play a game with some friends that kind of fits the theme. We are calling the show Conludo (that’s Latin for “play together” because Felicia has a degree and I am notoriously bad at naming things)

A big part of the show’s focus is how much joy there is in curating things for each other around a theme, in discovering our new favorite things, and sharing them, on our way to a game. For example, I love a game called Rock Hard: 1977. It’s a heavily-themed resource management game where you are a hopeful rockstar in the 70s, trying to make your way through the clubs, to the radio, and, ultimately, the big stadium show. So this episode’s theme would be music or something about music. To set the mood, I’d probably bring a book I love, like Meet Me In The Bathroom, or Under The Big Black Sun. I may bring in a record, like the new Sincere Engineer release, Probable Claws, (that I’m on!) or Who Let The Dogs Out, from Lambrini Girls. Maybe I’d pitch going to a punk show together, or watching Decline of Western Civilization together, something like that. And part of what’s fun about this is that I don’t think Felicia likes punk the way I do, if at all, so I’d almost certainly be exposing her to something new, and I have no idea how she will respond. We’re still refining it, but you get the idea, right?

Here we are, talking with Felicia’s friend, Paula, about the show, then playing Codenames together, on Things Get Dicey:

It’s important to me that I set expectations. I have told you what this is, now I need you to know what this is not. This isn’t Tabletop Redux, or Son of Tabletop, Abbot And Costello Play on Tabletop, Tabletop Strikes Back, or Tabletop 2: 2Table 2Top. This is its own thing, and it will be (legally distinctly) different from what we did with Tabletop. The North Star of that series was “Create More Gamers” by showcasing some of the greatest games of the moment, as well as some timeless classics, around a table of interesting people having fun together. I’m refining the language, but the North Star for Conludo is “Celebrate Sharing and Playing Games With Friends.” It’s more of a hang out, than it is a how to. It’s a celebration of gaming culture, going as far back as we want to go. We aren’t limited to new games, and I have at least one game that I love, that is out of print, that wouldn’t qualify for Tabletop, that I will bring to Conludo, because this is a fundamentally different show, and that means I can.

I’m so excited to do this. I’m so excited to revisit a space that I haven’t spent much time in for almost a decade, after living there for most of my life. I’m super excited to do it with one of my best friends and favorite creative partners.

The Kickstarter ends on August 21, with a massive livestream that I think is planned for around six hours, on Felicia’s Twitch thingy. As I am writing this, backers have pledged 4.7 million dollars (2.3 million in Itchy and Scratchy dollars) with a little over 32,000 individual backers toward the movie and Conludo. Felicia would love to get past 5.7, which would put her in first place of all time, past Veronica Mars. That’s a big ask, but I’d love to help her dream come true. Will you join me?

I’m Wil. I write this blog, I host It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton, and I co-host the official companion podcast, with Felicia, for Stuart Fails to Save The Universe. Thanks for reading. If you would like to get my blog updates in your inbox, here’s the sign up thingy:

Spoiler: Wil Wheaton is a Wizard

Posted on By Wil

I am holding pink pages in my hand, reviewing them before I collate them into my script.

A magic battle ensues between Wil and Bert (fireballs, energy bolts, conjured beasts, etc.)

I look at the script again, to make sure I haven’t misread it.

Yeah, it really says fireballs, etc. Holy shit I’m a wizard. A wizard!

About two years ago, I was having breakfast with my friend, Bill. Bill co-created The Big Bang Theory, and over the last decade or so, we have become extremely close, very good friends. He is like family to me and I just love that not only did Big Bang introduce me to a whole new generation of audience, it introduced me to two of my most cherished and treasured friends, in Bill Prady and John Bowie.

Bill told me that he and Chuck Lorre were developing a Big Bang spinoff with Zak Penn, and went on to describe Stuart Fails To Save The Universe. I was in love with the entire thing from the first few minutes he talked about it, and that excitement and enthusiasm for this thing to get to the audience has never softened. For almost two years, we’d get together for some reason, and I’d excitedly listen to Bill as he told me what stories they were working on, how they had developed the arc of the season, and how it was all going with the studio and the network.

For a show that I never expected to be part of at all, I became (and remain) intensely invested in its success. I wanted five seasons, and then five more. I genuinely loved it.

Let’s fast forward to October of last year. I know the show is in production, because all of my friends are working on it. John is texting me from the set, telling me what an incredible cast it is, how much fun they are all having. I’m texting Bill to ask how it’s all going, and he couldn’t be happier.

Neither of them says anything to me about playing a wizard in a universe where magic is real, so when the email arrives asking about my availability to do a few days on the show, the excitement and surprise shake the foundation of my home. Yeah, I’m available. Even if I’m not available, I will become available.

So I go to Universal Studios for a table read, where I meet Tommy Walker (god, I love him) and get to see Melissa Rauch for the first time in years. The entire room is rocking with laughter by the time we are done. I have to wait a week to go to the set, but first I have to be fitted for my costume.

When Felicia and I wrote the Fawkes issue of The Guild, I wanted his in-game wizard robe to be really over the top, with lots of runes and Eldritch energy that he absolutely can’t control, but wears because it makes him look cool. So during my fitting, I mentioned to Val, the costume designer, that I would *love* it if we could put some runes on the robe, as a little easter egg for me and like twelve other people. She’s rad, by the way. She is so creative and clever, puts so much intention into every detail on every costume, nothing is there just because. Everything has a reason, just like it did on Big Bang Theory.

I put rings on almost all my fingers, and you know that in my imagination, each one held a different spell, a different well of magical energy, and so on. No, it doesn’t matter to the audience, but it matters to me, it’s fun.

A funny and fun thing happens when I put the robe on. Without meaning to, I stand up as straight as I can. I am tits up all the way, my shoulders feel strong and solid (they are neither), and I feel legitimately cool. As Lester Bangs says in Almost Famous, “Oh, dude, they made you feel cool, and you are not cool.”

You can see the pins and stuff on the robe in these pictures from my fitting, because I didn’t take any pictures of myself when I was on set (I made a choice to leave my phone in my dressing room, so I could be fully present on set, forgetting that it is also my camera. Oops).

Also, while I was at my fitting, Jonathan Frakes showed up! He was directing episodes after mine, and was there to prep. He found out I was going to be there, so he surprised me with a big hug and a day I didn’t think could get any better took its place in the top ten of 2025.

A few days later, I reported to set for my first day, where I proceeded to have one of the best days of my life, playing a motherfucking WIZARD.

The first thing I notice when I walk into the stage is how happy everyone is. This show shoots in Los Angeles at a time when that is not as common as we all want it to be. Everyone is thrilled to have the job, to go home after work, to be collaborating with genuinely talented professionals. (For instance, every grip on this show is a Key Grip, usually, because they were all so happy to work locally).

The cast are all my friends, all people I know, some better than others, and just like when I was on Big Bang Theory, they welcome me like I have been there all along and won’t be done in three days.

We rehearse the entire sequence, very loosely, just getting an idea where we will all be, where the camera will go, all that stuff. We don’t get into performance at all, yet. This is pretty much just blocking. I find out that I will get to stand on this lever platform thing that will lower me into the scene, as if I have come through a portal (A PORTAL) to deliver my magical justice.

So we get into it, we shoot some of it, and it’s just incredibly fun and satisfying. About three hours into the day, I realize that I, too, am just having fun. For the first time maybe ever in my life, I feel worthy and unafraid of being fired when I am on set. I make choices to see how they feel and if they work. Some do, some don’t, but Kyle Newacheck, the director, encourages me to play and find stuff, even if it means I find something that doesn’t work.

I can’t overstate how healing this is for me, at 53 years-old, to be on the set of a show that really matters to me, where I don’t want to let anyone down, and feel supported and safe. Even when I was on Big Bang Theory, and I’d been recurring for almost ten years, a very big part of me was absolutely convinced I was going to fuck up and get fired. Not because of anything anyone said or did when I was there, but because of the trauma my mom filled me with when I was a kid.

The first day, we do everything except the big battle between me and Brian, which will be first up when we come back tomorrow. For the first time ever in my entire career, I don’t want the day to end. I don’t want to race back home to my regular life. I want to stay on the set and keep playing with my friends.

So the morning comes and we are all on the set again, blocking the big fight. The set is cleared out of everyone except me, Brian, Kyle, the cameraman and the visual effects team. Kyle asks Brian and me if we had any ideas, before he tells us what he’s thinking. I can’t overstate how rare this is, a director asking actors what they are thinking, before he even mentions what he is thinking. It opens the door to collaboration, gives us permission to take some chances, and relaxes me so much, I let go of tension I didn’t realize I was holding.

I have spent more time than is probably necessary, practicing my spellcasting at home in the mirror. I have very clear ideas about how Wil Wheaton from the Wizard’s Guild of America casts spells, how I grab the magical energy from the aether and shape it into fire, stuff like that.

Brian has ideas, too, and Kyle takes his and mine and adds them into what he was already thinking. We develop this beautiful choreography, and Brian makes this choice right away to be kind of stiff and unfamiliar with his magic, to help sell how fluid and experienced I am with mine. It’s another moment where a scene partner makes me look so much cooler than I am, just like Jim always selling how much you loved to hate Evil Wil Wheaton back in the day.

We are moving through it slowly, starting and stopping so VFX can see where to put practical explosions on the set, when I get an idea.

“Hey, Kyle,” I say, “can I pitch two things?”

“Sure,” he says.

“Okay. What if I deflected one of his attacks like this,” I make a Vulcan salute and thrust my hand forward, putting all my body’s energy and intention behind it.

“Oh yeah! And I can throw it like this!” Posehn makes the Dio Rock Goat and aims the horns at me.

“Holy shit that’s so cool,” I say.

“I love that!” Kyle says.

“And what if I pulled my octopus tattoo off my arm, and threw it at him?” I say, casually spending a few hundred thousand dollars on the resulting visual effects shots. Kyle’s eyes light up. Brian’s eyes light up. Suddenly, I am surrounded by several pairs of lit up eyes.

Kyle turns to one of the producers. I can’t recall who it was, due to the fog of excitement, but they pow wow for a second. I can see that they are getting excited about it. He turns back to me. “Do you own it?”

“I do.” This has come up before, so I am prepared with releases and permissions.

“Great. Let’s do it.”

Holy shit it’s going to happen!

Bill will later tell me that refining the shot becomes more complicated and technically fraught than they ever expected, and it’s entirely worth it.

We spend a few hours filming our battle. It’s a mixture of visual and practical effects, and I feel so cool the entire time. It’s just so many things I love all coming together at once, a gift I will cherish forever.

When we wrap, I get this lovely round of applause from the cast and crew. In that moment, I make a wish for the show to get picked up, so I can come back next season in a different universe, and play with my friends again. I walk back to my dressing room, wearing the absolute shit out of my robe one last time.

Felicia and I talked about this in even more detail on the podcast, which you can find in all the podcast places, if you’d like to hear more.

I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for reading. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your inbox, here’s the thing:

i can finally talk about something i worked on!

Posted on By Wil

It feels like it was about 18 months ago, but could be as long as three years ago, that my friend told me about a TV show he was developing. It was a brilliant idea, I thought. A science fiction action comedy? YES PLEASE. It was funny, and clever, and entirely original, which was wild, considering it was a spin-off.

The show did get the green light, and it premieres July 23. If you have not figured this out, yet, the show is Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. My friend is Bill Prady, who also co-created The Big Bang Theory.

AND AND AND … I am co-hosting the companion podcast with Felicia Day! The trailed for our thing dropped a few hours ago.

Felicia and I will interview a ton of our real life friends from the cast1, and some genuinely amazing department heads. We get into some of the deep nerd shit in each episode (that’s kinda my thing), and just have all kinds of fun working together. Okay, that’s probably more than I can tell you without getting a stern look from a twentysomething who I technically report to. I may be getting at least a sideways glance, as it is.

I have so many things I want to say about the series, which I loved from start to finish, but I’ll get so much worse than a stern look if I even think about that, so allow me to merely say that I endorse it and hope you trust me.

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is on HBO Max. We are also on HBO Max, the HBO Max YouTube channel, and wherever you get your podcasts. And, hey, while you’re looking for podcasts, maybe check out It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton.

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your inbox, here’s the thingy:

  1. You will hear me, more than once, excitedly celebrate the feeling that someone from the neighborhood made it big in Hollywood. It’s not a bit; I’m genuinely thrilled for my friends. ↩︎