Author: Wil

Last night, I made a new stupid cellphone video. Enjoy:

Related.

This Sunday, I return to LEVERAGE on TNT as the evil computer hacker Cha0s, in the holiday spectacular episode The Ho Ho Ho Job. Immediately after the episode airs, I'll be joining the cast for a live web chat. I'll give links when I have them, if you want to watch us.

I did some press for Leverage last week, and some of the interviews are starting to be released. Here's one I did with Aldis from Sci-Fi Chick dot Com:

How do your characters interact in this episode? What is the animosity or mutual respect, being that you’re both hackers?

Aldis Hodge: I think there was a bit of jealousy established between our characters and, Wil, you can definitely jump in on this one if you – I think in the first episode that we did together when Hardison was kind of beat for the very first time. And of course he doesn’t like Chaos, but there’s a general respect for his skill level because there’s nobody else in the world as good as Hardison.

I mean, Hardison can go work for the FBI, who has the best hackers in the world working for them, so he chooses to do his own thing. So, I think there is a bit of jealousy established. And I think that Chaos, once he got beaten himself, had to give us his crown, his thrown; his pride was beat down a little bit. And, you know, I think there may be a little bit of jealously on his end.

So, I think because of that these two are going to continually go back and forth, back and forth for seasons to come.

Wil Wheaton: Yeah, these guys are – they’re Holmes and Moriarty. It’s Superman and Lex Luthor. You know, it’s Kennedy and Khrushchev. These guys are complete nemesis to each other and I think if you asked Hardison who the greatest hacker in the world is he would say, “Well, it’s me of course.” And if you asked Chaos he would say, “Well, it’s me of course.” And then, who’s the second best and each would probably say the other.

And that’s what makes it really fun to bring these guys to life and have them clash, because they probably – I mean, if you were to make them characters in a role playing game and build out their stats, they’re probably really close. They’re maybe separated by one point in either direction in a few different places. And they, you know, they are both, from their point of view, without peer. And the truth is, these two guys, you know, if they were on the same side the world would really be in a lot of trouble.

And here's the first part of one from Star Trek dot Com that is, as you may imagine, mostly focused on Star Trek.

A lot of people loved Wesley, but you also took tremendous heat during TNG’srun. Despite the fact that you were just a kid playing a character written by others, those people who simply hated the character more or less took it out on you. How personally did you take the criticism?

Wheaton: I’m 38 now and I meet people all over the place, in airports, in coffee shops, at restaurants, at conventions. I meet people who grew up watching TNG,who are around my age, and they tell me how much they loved Wesley Crusher and how much they related to him. Whenever I go to anything associated with science or medicine or engineering, when I go to speak at universities, when I go to do things with NASA, I meet people who were inspired to become what they are today, working in some sort of science-based field, because they loved Wesley Crusher. So I have discovered over the years that the people who are adults now, they didn’t have access to Usenet and the Caps Lock key when they were kids. What I was hearing back in the old days were older people who were just sort of predisposed to not like a young character on a show. I think the writers could have navigated around that and made him more relatable, instead of like an idea, but they had a hard time overcoming a lot of that stuff. And when I was a kid it was very hard. It was hard not to take that personally. Kids are awkward. Kids are insecure. I spent 50 hours a week doing Star Trek when I was a kid. That was really my life. To go to conventions back then and have people criticizing me and attacking me personally instead of maybe talking about the writing, it was hurtful.

Are you in Los Angeles? Are you looking for something to do tomorrow night? Well, you're in luck, person-I-just-made-up! Come on down to the ACME in Hollywood to see me join my pal J. Keith vanStraaten for The Fix-Up Show!

Time is running out to get your very own How We Roll v2.0 T-shirt from shirt.woot. I'm not sure if it will go into the reckoning, or the Land of Wind and Ghosts on 12/10, but either way, you should really buy 100 of them right now, just to be sure. 

I'm putting together a Wil Wheaton Holiday Gift Guide that should be published tomorrow, but here's a preview:

• My Lulu store for books and audiobooks. Lulu just e-mailed that if you use the code HOLIDAY305, you can have free ground shipping until 12/12/10. Yay!
• The Memories of the Futuremug.
• Wil Wheaton shirts at Jinx.

If you're looking for really awesome Christmas music, go so SomaFM and tune in to the Christmas Lounge. It rules the yule, y'all.

I'm doing a new Radio Free Burrito today, which will include a sample of my performance from John Scalzi's The Android's Dream, which was just released as an audiobook.