Sofa Chip Talks with Wil Wheaton about Leverage, Being a Geek, and His First ‘Laptop Computer’

The terribly talented and witty Wil Wheaton (see what I did there – with my oh-so clever alliteration skills?) is a guest-star for the upcoming Leverage episode entitled, “The Two Live Crew Job“. I spoke to him in a conference call on Thursday the 20th about his experience with the Leverage team. I finally think I can be coherent and tell you guys about the call. Because Wheaton’s a fan of The Guild and Felicia Day, I already knew that I liked him before speaking to him. (Okay, and admittedly I do have a bit of a natural fondness for ‘nerdy/geeky’ guys.)

Wil Wheaton’s episode of Leverage The Two Live Crew Job airs on TNT on Wednesday August 26th at 9:00 PM.  I’ve seen the episode already, and it’s a thrill ride of ridiculously epic proportions – the kind you can only expect from Leverage!

Jessica Rae: Hey Wil, it’s great to talk to you. How do you think your character, Chaos, compares with the resident Leverage computer guru, Hardison.

Wil Wheaton: Well, if you ask Chaos he would tell you that Hardison dreams of one day being half as competent and skilled and accomplished as he is. If you asked Hardison, he would tell you that he thinks it’s just adorable that Chaos holds this opinion of himself and that’s part of what makes their relationship so much fun to create. It was really important to me when I was putting this character together, and Aldis and I were rehearsing our scenes, that the audience get the sense that these guys are both at the absolute top of their game.

And in fact, all of the players in this particular episode, in both crews, are convinced that they are the very best at what they do, and are really kind of happy and kind of excited to finally have somebody to go up against that they consider a worthy rival. So when I was working on my scenes and preparing my scenes with Aldis, we made sure that there was this sense of sparring as opposed to a sense of bare knuckle brawling.

Jessica Rae: Well, it was really enjoyable to watch.

Wil Wheaton: I’m so glad that you liked it. It was  as much fun to do those scenes as you think it would be.

Jessica Rae: That’s awesome.

Wil Wheaton: And there’s a ton of stuff, a ton of really funny like Fark-style trash talking that he and I engaged in that we just improvised that didn’t make it into the final cut of the show but I really hope finds its way to a DVD or something like that, because it’s all really, really silly stuff.

Jessica Rae: All right, we’ll look forward to that.  I am wondering something, and this might seem like an obvious question, but I want you to really think about it. Do you think that right now in this current everyday world is the best time to be a geek?

Wil Wheaton: I wrote a column for one of my first columns at Suicide Girls was called “Have the Geek Inherited the Earth?,” and I examined that because I remember growing up and feeling like I was the only kid on my block and in my school that was into Star Trek and you know there were a few kids that were into Dungeons and Dragons but we were at a parochial school so it was something you had to really kind of keep on the down low as they say. I didn’t know anybody else that played the Ghostbusters soundtrack and recreated the entire movie from memory like I did – you know, playing all the different characters and stuff. I was really, I was really a geek. I remember I had this book that was one of those like here’s how computers work, and it was like a pop-up book that I bought at a bookstore.

But I carried the thing with me everywhere I went and pretended that it was a laptop before laptops existed and I’d go to restaurants with my mom and she’d be like what are you doing? I’d be like stop mom, I’m talking to Norad because I had just seen War Games. And back then I felt like I was the only one, and you know I endured the tormenting that we all endure at the playground and in school, and felt like I was alone. If you fast forward to like the last few years, because of the ubiquity of Internet culture and the ability for us to find other people who are like us, it doesn’t feel as lonely and it doesn’t feel as hopeless is it did in the 70s and early 80s.

You know, one of the reasons I love going to science fiction conventions and comic conventions is because I can find other people who are just like me and we are in an environment where not only is it OK to dress up in a costume, but like you want to impress people with how hard you worked to like put the thing together, and that’s awesome. And that sort of thing didn’t really exist before. So I think it’s probably a little bit easier now, especially when you hear that like… if you’re a kid growing up today and you watch Robot Chicken and then you find out that Seth Green who makes it loves the same things you do, it kind of takes the edge off a little bit. And I think that that does sort of like mitigate a little bit what the whole geek experience was like.

I think that with the advent of personal computers and the success of like the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Batman reboots and things like that, we are starting to see the creators of mass culture who are not the little players like me and the other guys who do this stuff online… But the really big, like the giant conglomerates in the studios, are realizing that there’s more of us than they thought and we’re now a viable market. So I guess it’s a very long way of saying that it’s probably a little bit easier now than it was  when I was growing up. But I bet you if you were to find some of the kids who are teased today, and some of the kids who are still in school who are trying to get people together to watch Dr. Who or whatever, that they would probably tell you that it sucks and that it’s hard, because I think that’s just kind of, the fires that forge geekdom are stoked by the cool kids, and I think that’s going to be like that forever. And I guess I just hope that it’s getting easier for people now than it was for me when I was a kid.

Jessica Rae: Well I think that it is and I think people, if they read that quote, they’re going to take a little bit of solace in it, so thank you so much for answering and talking today.

Wil Wheaton: Thanks a lot. It’s really super awesome.  I was really excited to do this because I feel like we’re all of the same tribe and it just rules so much. I remember when I started blogging in 2000 and all the like mainstream media and old media and traditional media, whatever you want to call it, and they were all sort of like sneering at us like “how dare you try to come and play on our baseball field. Your gloves are ugly and you’re fat and stink like manure,” and you know we were like, uh you know we’re doing the same thing it’s just in a different medium, but you enjoy that giant wooly mammoth, keeping standing in that tar pit, we’re going to be over here. I just think it’s great that we who started this whole blogging thing, that we’ve carved out our own little section of the world and I’m so excited to come back and be part of this. It’s kind of weird to be on this side of the call because I’m used to being on the other side. So I wanted to thank you guys for taking time out of your day to talk to me and just letting me be part of this, it’s been really awesome.

Wil Wheaton’s Blog – Check it out, my pretties!

The Two Live Crew Job synopsis:

The Leverage team is forced to go head-to-head against another crew of thieves in order to retrieve their clients’ priceless artwork. The other team has a cast of characters that rival the Leverage gang in every department:

Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stand by Me) plays Chaos, the hacker opposite Aldis Hodge as Alec Haridson.

Griffin Dunne (TNT’s Trust Me) plays Starke, the mastermind who challenges Timothy Hutton’s Nate Ford.

Noa Tisby (Israeli actress/producer who is co-executive producer of In Treatment) is Mikel Dayan, the muscle against Christian Kane as Eliot.

Apollo Robbins (sleight-of-hand advisor on Leverage) plays Apollo, the thief who tries to out-steal Beth Riesgraf’s Parker.

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