"I thought it was brilliant satire, not only of Trek, but of fandom in general. The only thing I wish they had done was cast me in it, and have me play a freaky fanboy who keeps screaming at the actor who played 'the kid' about how awful it was that there was a kid on the spaceship. Alas." Writer, actor,
geek,
blogger
,
paper collator
, and all-around nice guy.
Born in Burbank in 1972, he became a full-time actor at the age of 8, scoring small roles and a large voice-acting credit for the classic
The Secret Of NIMH. Then in 1986, he was cast as the lead in the Rob Reiner movie based on
Stephen King's novella
The Body, called
Stand by Me. This got him plenty of public exposure, enough for him to land the job that he's most known for:
Wesley Crusher of
Star Trek: The Next Generation.Imagine that you're playing a character that you know is
hated by the fandom that
you're a part of. Imagine reading the hate mail it gives you, despite the great feelings you have of the cast, the crew, and the creator himself. Now, imagine you're 15, and thus interpreting all the hate as
hate against you (which, unfortunately,
some of it was). Now you'll understand Wil Wheaton's demeanor towards fans until his epiphany in the late '90s (as chronicled in his story "The Saga of Spongebob Vega$pant$, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
Star Trek").
Believe it or not,
he hates Wesley. Or rather what the writers had him do as Wesley.
His reviews
of the
Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes are sure to mention exactly how annoying Wesley is each time he appeared in the show. Unfortunately his review column was discontinued in early 2008 when TV Squad was bought by AOL, but he has collected his reviews of the first 13 episodes, expanded them and put them in a book called
Memories of the Future: Volume 1 released in late 2009.
Memories of the Future Volume 2, due to be released whenever, will cover the rest of the first season, most of which he didn't get the chance to review before the aforementioned discontinuing.
Since embracing his inner geek, he's written four compilations of memoirs, has a world-famous blog, and is embraced by geekdom as their avatar. It doesn't hurt that many of the mostly guest acting gigs he's scored these days are as geeks or voices of comic book heroes such as
Aqualad and
the second Blue Beetle. He was a caustic comic book collector on an episode of
NUMB3RS that took place at a comic convention(!), a supremely creepy unsub (as if there's any other kind) on
Criminal Minds and a
Jerk Ass computer hacker on
Leverage, a role which he will be reprising at least once.
He also did a hilarious take on
Kent Brockman News as Richard Burns on
GTA Radio, plays
Nietzsche Wannabe Fawkes on
The Guild and is a frequent guest on the
Dungeons & Dragons podcast alongside his fellow geek luminaries from
Penny Arcade and
Pv P. He's a semi-recurring character on
The Big Bang Theory, where he plays a
fictional version of himself, a
Manipulative Bastard and Sheldon's
Arch-Enemy. He also plays Darkstar (imagine if Wesley was more obnoxious and villianous) in
Ben 10: Alien Force and
Ultimate Alien. He currently has a recurring role as Dr. Isaac Parrish, a
Jerk Ass Ace,
unsuccessful astronaut candidate, and Fargo's
long time rival, on
Eureka.Offscreen (well, and on, really), he's become pretty much the poster boy for
One of Us.
At PAX 2007, he coined what has become known as Wheaton's Law: "Don't Be a Dick." The irony of this, considering most of his TV roles are
Jerk Ass characters, has not been lost on the fandom.
He's quite active on both
Twitter
(incidentally,
Jeph Jacques drew his profile image) and, these days, on
Tumblr
.