Wheaton Appreciates TNG Family

"My greatest regret was that when I was a teenager - and I was very busy being a teenager - I didn't have the grace and the wisdom to appreciate the people I worked with and how good it was," said Star Trek's most overanalyzed teen, The Next Generation's Wesley Crusher, Wil Wheaton. "We all genuinely loved one another and cared about each other and looked out for each other, and we treated each other like family."

Speaking to England's Star Trek Magazine (via Sci Fi Pulse), Wheaton discussed blogging, chatting with fans and the fact that he doesn't regret leaving TNG when he did. "I was trying to prove to myself that I could do more with my career than just one movie and one series. That's something that people tell me they can relate to, that feeling of having something to prove," he said.

Even so, noted Wheaton, he took for granted the camaraderie and closeness on the Next Generation set, which the older actors told him was a rare and wonderful thing but he didn't have enough experience at the time to appreciate it. "I saw Jonathan Frakes [Riker] a few years ago and I said to him, 'When we were working on Next Generation guest would always tell me how rare it was that we all got along...was that really the way it was, or is that just the way I remember it?'" Frakes, reported Wheaton, replied, "It was lightning in a bottle. We all cared about each other and we all still do.'"

When he made Nemesis, said Wheaton, he made a conscious decision not to take the experience for granted. "I committed to paying attention to every moment as it was there, and I made sure that every moment mattered to me," he said. Though he has mostly stopped working in feature films, Wheaton voices several animated TV shows and writes a regular column for Dungeon Magazine. That and his web log have allowed him to communicate directly with his fans, as he recounts in his book Just a Geek.

"I've been able to go straight to the audience. I haven't had to worry about directors or producers or anything like that," he observed. "So I have all kinds of creative control...in ways that I was never able to when I was trying so hard to be a successful Hollywood actor." Wheaton's web site is at WilWheaton.net.

The original article is in Star Trek: Magazine, transcribed at Sci Fi Pulse.

Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
 Add TrekToday RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!