This is the second of five posts about working on episode four, Paradise, during season four of Criminal Minds. I spoke with CliqueClack.com about some of my production experiences, and I have a gallery of images from the shoot at Flickr. Please note that I’ve done my best to recreate my interactions with the cast and crew, but this isn’t a perfect, literal translation of the entire experience.

About a week before my episode began production, I was invited out to the studio for a table read. This is exactly what it sounds like: the cast, writers, producers, department heads, and other people involved with production get together around a big table to read the next episode on the schedule. This is a great way for the writers to hear if things need last minute tweaking, for series regulars to give some input on the script, and for guest stars to meet the people they’ll be working with. Not all shows do it, but I think it makes a difference.

We did the table read for Paradise during a lunch break while they were filming Minimal Loss. One of the regulars, I forget who, almost couldn’t make it, and Luke Perry was going to fill in for him. I thought that it would have been so cool to work with him, even if it was just a table read, but why in the world would he want to spend his lunch hour filling in for someone else when he wasn’t even in the episode? By the time I was done working on the show, I totally understood. The cast and crew of Criminal Minds made me feel like I was part of their family, and I never wanted to leave.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was the first actor to arrive, and I had about fifteen minutes to kill before they broke for lunch. We were going to do the table read in the same room where I had my audition, so I waited around in front of it, and tried not to look like I was waiting around in front of it.

Erica, who I read with during my audition, walked out of a nearby building and over to me. Again, I apologized for freaking her out during my reading, and again she told me that it was okay.

“You’re the first one here,” she said, “so if you want to go grab some lunch, it’s over there.”

She pointed to the catering truck. Over the next week, I’d eat the best food I’ve ever eaten on a set, and if I’d known then what I know now, I probably would have gone over and gorged myself, but at the time, I was too nervous to eat.

“I think I’ll just wait here,” I said. “I don’t want to go inside and be the first kid in the class, you know?” I laughed nervously.

She laughed. “That’s understandable.”

I pulled out my notebook while I waited and wrote down, “I feel like the first kid to come to class on the first day of school. And I’m new. Yipe!”

“So I hear that you’re a writer now,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“What does that mean for you as an actor?”

This is a question I’ve wrestled with a lot, and I haven’t come up with one consistent answer. “Um, I mostly write, and I only go on auditions for parts that I think are right, as opposed to going on everything that I can and hoping that something will stick.”

She nodded, as cast and crew started to come out of the stage and toward the trailer. A kaleidoscope of butterflies exploded in my stomach. This was really happening.

“I’ll see you inside,” she said.

“Awesome!” I said.

A weird and unexpected thing happened over the next few minutes: a whole bunch of people who work on the show walked over to me and introduced themselves. They were excited that I was working on the show! They read my blog! They wanted to say nice things to me! I was totally unprepared for this, and all I remember is trying not to stumble over my words too much while I said thank you.

After a minute, we began to file into the room. The same tables were there, but now there were place cards with names on them. Beneath the actor’s names, their character’s name was written. Production staff had their name and job description, and department heads had the name of their department. I found my name, back in the corner farthest from the door.

Before I could sit down, Paget Brewster walked up to me. Several years ago, Paget and I worked together on a live pilot presentation for a show called Celebrity D&D. It was a pitch for Comedy Central, I think, and it was hilarious. She and I and one other girl were the adventurers. An actor played the Dungeon Master, and lots of improvisers dressed up in silly costumes as they acted out the various scenes and challenges in a short, comedic dungeon crawl. We did it for a sold out theater, and they loved it. It was superawesome, and I was shocked that it didn’t get picked up, while dozens of less-funny, less-creative, totally stupid pieces of crap did that year. I wasn’t sure if Paget would remember me, so I had my “Hey, I don’t know if you remember me . . .” speech all loaded up and ready to run when she said, “Hey, I don’t know if you remember me but -“

“We did Celebrity D&D together!” I said. “I thought there was no way you’d remember that!”

She laughed and said, “I thought the same thing!”

We talked for a minute about actor things. She told me how excited she was that I was there, and gave me the inside scoop on all the different people in the cast and crew, which pretty much came down to “everyone here is awesome and we all like each other a lot. You’re going to have a wonderful time.”

I began to slowly trade my nervousness for excitement. I’d only been there for twenty minutes, and I already felt welcomed, and part of the team.

Paget was called away by someone from production, so I sat down, and opened my script. I looked at it for a moment, and there was a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and a smiling woman introduced herself to me.

“I’m Erica Messer,” she said, “I co-wrote this episode.”

I stood up, shook her hand, and thanked her for hiring me. She said some really nice things about my audition. I wanted to ask her a million questions about writing, but put that shit in check; I was there as an actor, and I could be a geeky writer some other time. (I wrote a little bit about this in a post called changing gears for criminal minds.)

We talked about Floyd’s pathology as the room filled up. I was pleased and relieved to discover that my take on Floyd was essentially in line with hers.

“This is going to sound really horrible,” I said, “but when I was a kid, I was just fascinated by serial killers. I think it’s because I grew up during the whole Night Stalker summer. When I was in my teens and early 20s, I read way too many true crime books, so I think I have a slightly broader knowledge of these bad guys than the average person.”

I don’t recall what she said, but she didn’t look mortified, which I took as a good sign.

“We’re really happy that you’re here,” she said, reaching up and squeezing my shoulder, “I’ll see you later.”

“Thanks!” I said. She walked over to the other side of the room, and I sat back down.

I felt a presence to my right. I looked over, and saw a beautiful woman with incredible red hair sit down.

“Oh my god,” I said. “Robyn Lively.”

She looked at me.

“It’s Wil Wheaton,” I said.

“Oh my god! It is!” She jumped up and hugged me. We knew each other when we were kids. We always seemed to end up at the same Teen Idol things, and I really liked her. She was normal, not into being famous, and was always incredibly kind to me.

“Are you playing Abby?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Floyd.” I said. “I’ll be your kidnapper and torturer for the next five days and four romantic nights.”

We looked at each other for a second and giggled. Before we could say anything else, someone on the other side of the room called the table read to order, and we went around the table introducing ourselves. I kept it together, and my voice was steady when I introduced myself. We continued clockwise around the table. All the way down, on my left, an actor who I recognized but couldn’t recall in my mental imdb said, “William Mapother, playing Ian Corbin.”

“Hmmm . . . Ian . . . that sounds kind of like . . . Ethan! OMG ETHAN! That’s Ethan from Lost! CREEPY! AWESOME!”

Luckily, these were inside thoughts, and they stayed there. I may have surreptitiously scribbled “OMG ETHAN FROM LOST” in my notebook.

Once everyone was introduced, we began to read the script.

Floyd didn’t make his first appearance for several pages, so I was able to observe the room while everyone else did their thing. The regulars were relaxed, and cracked some jokes. In my notebook, I wrote, “Lighthearted – they do this every week.”

I noted that all of the actors were conserving their energy, reading their lines quietly, while my instinct was to project enough to the entire room. I thought about the differences between us: these guys work 10 to 12 hours a day, five days a week. They’re used to performing for the camera, which is considerably more intimate than what I’ve been used to. For the last couple of years, most of my performances have been on stage, to audiences that average a couple of hundred people. I was glad I picked up on this before I read my parts, because I think it saved me from what could have been some embarrassing over-projection.

The whole thing took about 45 minutes, and when we were done, I got to meet some of the cast who came in after I was in my seat. Kirsten Vangsness and Matthew Gray Gubler, it turns out, are real-life geeks who thought my “I’m uncertain about quantum physics” T-shirt was funny because it’s true. Joe Mantegna didn’t freak out at me when I slimed him – just a little bit – about playing Fat Tony. Thomas Gibson had a disarming kindness that makes the intensity he brings to Hotch even more impressive. I didn’t get to meet any of the other actors before the first AD called them back to work, but when I eventullay did, I wasn’t surprised that they were all as friendly and gracious and wonderful as the people I met during the table read.

It was going to be four or five days before I got to bring Floyd to life. I couldn’t wait. I felt like kid counting down to Christmas.

Next: Run Floyd, Run!

This is the first of five posts about working on episode four, Paradise, during season four of Criminal Minds. I spoke with CliqueClack.com about some of my production experiences, and I have a gallery of images from the shoot at Flickr. Please note that I’ve done my best to recreate my interactions with the cast and crew, but this isn’t a perfect, literal translation of the entire experience.

Working on Criminal Minds was one of the greatest experiences of my professional life. Over the next couple of days, I’m going to publish a series of posts here, in which I will attempt to document, as accurately and thoroughly as possible, what it was like to work on the show. I will begin with the audition.

I wrote a little bit about my audition right after it happened:

When I was in the room, I didn’t think about the people there, I didn’t think about what was at stake (directly or indirectly) and I just focused on the person I was reading with. I didn’t do anything fancy, just gave them my simple-but-deliberate take on this guy.

I felt better than I felt after I sucked out loud last week. I didn’t know if I nailed it, but I’d made my deliberate-but-risky choices, and I’d committed to them entirely. Whether I got the job or not, at least I had that to take home with me and keep in a box on the shelf for the weekend.

A few hours after I got home, my manager called me.

“Well, I have some feedback,” he said.

“That was fast,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess they wanted you to know right away that you’re hired.”

“Really?!” I said. I always say that, even though I know that my manager is never going to call me up, tell me a got a job, and then say, “Ha! PSYKE!”

“Yes, really.” He said.

Now that the show has aired, I can talk more specifically about the audition process. I prepared two scenes, the scene with Hotch where I totally fool him into thinking I’m just a normal, non-killing kinda guy who owns a spooky motel, and a scene where I’m about to do very bad things to Abby.

The audition was in a one room trailer at Quixote studios in Glendale. It was probably 30 by 50 feet, with several conference tables arranged around three sides. The writers, producers, casting people and the director were all behind one of them. The size of the room could have made it very intimidating, but everyone in it was friendly and welcoming as soon as I walked in. I should note that auditions are not as frequently like this as you’d think.

The audition scenes were very short and fairly simple, and I’d been able to memorize them[1]. After I said hello to everyone, I put my sides in my pocket, and began the first of the two scenes. They weren’t taping the audition, so I was free to move around and, as they say, “use the space” as much as I wanted.

In the first scene, I was friendly, I was concerned about these two people, and I made a genuine effort to be helpful, because that’s what I figured this guy would do if he was interviewed by an FBI agent. I felt the scene went well, and my Spidey sense told me that the other people in the room were pleased.

We moved to the second scene, where I do Very Bad Things to Abby. It was different in the audition draft of the script than what we eventually filmed, but the essence of the scene was the same. I was cruel, I was sadistic, and I enjoyed her suffering.

There was much less dialog in the second scene than there was in the first. I think it was just under a page and a half. I figured that this scene would really live in the gaps between the words, so I took my time when I performed it, and didn’t rush my reactions. Because I didn’t have the sides in my hands, I could move around a little bit, and I could be physically menacing.

There was one exchange where I ask her, “Are you ready?” and she doesn’t respond, so I ask her again, a little more forcefully. When we got to that part of the scene, I looked at Erica, the casting associate who was reading with me, and asked her the question. In my mind, I was planning some very awful things. I mean, I was disturbingly committed to this character. I could see the things I was planning to do. I could feel the excitement and satisfaction. It really lived in me, and I could tell that it made her uncomfortable. As Floyd, I enjoyed the hell out of that. It turned Floyd on. When she didn’t answer, I took a couple of steps toward her, crouched down close to her, and leaned in, so she was forced to look at me. This was an incredibly risky thing to do, because it nearly broke an unwritten rule about auditions: actors can interact with casting, but only to a point. But at that moment, I had let Floyd take over me.

“Are. You. Ready?” I said, Floyd’s pure evil flowing freely through me. She shook her head, and I saw tears forming in her eyes. As Floyd, that was awesome. I forget precisely how I reacted to it, but I let the moment linger, and then the scene was over.

“Very nice,” said Scott David, who is the casting director (and, coincidentally, one of my favorite casting people in the industry. He’s up there with Tony Sepulveda.)

Scott turned to the director, John Gallager, and said, “Would you like to see anything else?”

“No,” he said, “but why don’t you tell Erica something nice about yourself?”

The entire room laughed, like a huge release of tension. I was thrilled that I’d been able to create that moment. I smiled at her and said, “I’m really a nice guy! I’m a total geek, I have two kids, and I’d never hurt anyone, especially you.”

She blinked back tears and joined in the laughter.

I thanked everyone in the room, and Erica walked me out. As soon as the door closed, I said “I’m really sorry. I couldn’t have done that if you hadn’t given me so much to work with.”

“Don’t be!” She said. “Thank you!”

I walked back to my car. I felt good. I felt satisfied. My job as an actor is to go into that room and make an impression. I was pretty confident that I’d done that, and that the impression wasn’t “oh man, Wil Wheaton sucks!”

On the way home, I deconstructed the experience. I owe a great deal of gratitude to my friend David Lawrence for inspiring me to take such a big creative risk in the audition. David Lawrence is playing Eric Doyle on Heroes this season. He plays a very creepy, very evil, very bad man. Kind of like the character I played on Criminal Minds, maybe without the raping and torturing.

David had his Heroes audition right before I had my Criminal Minds audition. David and I rarely talk shop about acting, but when someone you know is on a show like Heroes, you kind of want to know how it all went down, you know? He told me how he created a very lucid reality in his head for his reading. He’d seen and felt what it was like to control people, and let that inspire and guide him through his audition. I thought about that level of total commitment a lot while I prepared my Criminal Minds audition. When I saw that I wouldn’t be stuck in the obligatory audition chair or tied to my sides for the reading, I decided to commit to the role completely, physically and emotionally, in ways that usually aren’t possible in auditions. I took a huge creative risk, and it paid off.

I’ve written extensively about how I believe actors have to find a way to enjoy themselves whether they book the job or not. I guess it’s kind of twisted to say that I enjoyed myself by being such an evil man, but committing to something completely, and refusing to look back until it was all over, was tremendously satisfying.

I would soon find out that I had the job before the door had closed behind me.

Awesome.

Next: The Read Through.

[1] We call this being “off-book” and though it’s not required, I prefer to be as off-book as possible when I audition, so I can make lots of eye contact and give something that’s closer to a performance than a reading. Sometimes, though, this just isn’t possible because there’s a lot of material or real life doesn’t give me enough time to rehearse it enough to feel like I can do it without referring to the sides. It can also really suck if I’m reading with someone who isn’t giving me anything to work off of, so even when I am off-book, I usually keep my sides in my hand.

“wilw: I think I may die from too much fun today. I’m working on Naruto this morning, then Family Guy this afternoon.”

This morning, I finished my arc on Naruto. I can’t say anything specific (I actually shouldn’t have said I was working on it at all until it aired. Oops.) but my shows will start airing in about a month, and I can tell some behind the scenes stuff then.

After I finished recording, I had about 2 hours before I was scheduled to work on Family Guy, so on the way I stopped at this pizza place I’ve always wanted to eat at in Burbank called Dino’s. Oh my god. I had this pizza called the caponata: roasted eggplant, green olives, garlic, onions, tomatoes, capers and fresh basil. OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM.

While I was there, I read an actual newspaper, which was a rather exciting and retro experience. I used to read the Los Angeles Times and the Daily News every day, and the New York Times on Sundays, and today was the first time I’ve held a newspaper in my hands that wasn’t The Onion in over a year.

After lunch, I drove down to Hollywood for Family Guy. On my way down Highland, I saw at least a dozen different street corner prophets, hollering at traffic about one thing or another. In the median at Highland and Melrose, I saw legendary Hollywood crazy person Melrose Larry Green. He had a political sign, but he was waving it around so much, I couldn’t read it. Dang.

I record Family Guy (and Cavalcade) in an office building down on Wilshire near LACMA. It’s a really cool place, where the Evil Monkey tells people to recycle, a Family Guy pinball machine is available on free play, and a ping pong table takes up much of the waiting area near the recording booths. There were two people playing when I got there, and after I read my sides (holy shit is it a funny scene) I looked up to see Seth Green playing.

I sort of knew Seth when we were much younger, because he was one of those guys I’d run into at auditions all the time. He was a little nerdy, and always really nice and unassuming, with a great sense of humor. I remember once, back in 1998 or 1999, I said to him, “You know, Seth, you’re a little nerdy, and you’re also nice and unassuming, with a great sense of humor. You should do a TV show where you satirize movies and popular culture with animated action figures.”*

I wasn’t sure if he’d remember me since it had been so long, but it turns out that he did, and after talking to him for a few minutes I was really happy to see that he’s the same exceedingly nice and easygoing guy I sort knew all those years ago. Before I left, we played some ping pong, and discussed the awesomeness of being on Team I Have An Awesome Beard. He recently moved to team I Don’t Have A Beard Because It Was Too Itchy, but the bond between bearded and formerly-bearded brothers was still strong. And awesome.**

When I recorded my lines, Seth MacFarlane directed me. My scene was with Peter Griffin, and I am as proud of myself as I’ve ever been that I didn’t lose my shit when Seth read me into my first line in Peter’s voice. I also told him that I’m still laughing about Surfin’ Bird, and nearly convinced him that members of The Trashmen were all deadbeat dads to the same former groupie, so the increased sales on iTunes was finally feeding her numerous bastard children. (This was way, way funnier than it seems now. Making outrageous shit up like that and committing to it completely is one of my favorite ways to amuse myself.)

On my way home, I hoped to complete my strange trip into Hollywood with an Angelyne sighting, but I got to see a hobo getting all Office Space on his shopping cart instead, while a bunch of other hoboes watched . . . and guarded theirs.

There was no traffic on the freeway, and I got home in 27 minutes.

I think it’s safe to say I had a very weird day.

*This never actually happened.

**Awesome.