Wil Wheaton Talks Leverage, Writing and The Age of the Geek

If anyone in this world can out geek our favorite Leverage geek, it’s gotta be Wil Wheaton. Wil sat down with reporters last week to talk about his role on tonight’s episode of Leverage and he gave us his thoughts on this being, as Hardison says, “the age of the geek, baby.”

CHAOS THEORY

In Leverage, you play a computer hacker called Chaos, this seems like the perfect role for you.

Wil Wheaton: I love my computer. I love the Internet. I would consider myself an early adopter of a lot of the Internet technologies that a lot of people take for granted these days. I was heavily involved in bulletin board culture before the Internet existed. I’ve been a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Free Software Foundation and I’m a vocal advocate for network neutrality and you know users rights and I’m one of the loud voices in the Anti-DRM movement. I absolutely love technology and, and it’s still a very, very big part of my life.

[However,] the extent of my illicit hacking activity probably starts and ends with the Activision video game Hacker on my old Macintosh in like 1984 or 1985. I was never a contributor but I read Frak religiously in the late 80s and right until the early 90s and it was not an especially long distance that I had to cover to get from myself to becoming Chaos. But I’ve never really engaged in anything that would, that would bring you down on the wrong side of the law.

On Leverage, we’ve seen Hardison do some pretty amazing things with just a computer and a wireless connection. How realistic is that?

Wil Wheaton: The technical aspects of Leverage, whether it’s the computer controlled mechanisms or it’s the slight of hand and pick pocketing or the standard grifting, is all backed up by a team of real life experts that really know that stuff inside and out because they’ve actually done it. You know Kevin Mitnick was on the set when we were doing a lot of our hacking stuff and I was like, wow, that’s like pretending to be a hockey player in front of Wayne Gretzky. I better make sure that I have all of my beats down, you know? But these guys, they’re not very different from the computer enthusiasts that I’ve known throughout my life. If you spend any time online and you are part of that, this culture that we’re part of, of course you know a guy like Hardison. He may not be turning on and off motion sensors remotely and moving the funds from a number of bank accounts around, but he is certainly sitting there quoting the crap out of obscure sci-fi movies and then being like physically wounded when nobody gets it.

How do Chaos’ skills compare to those of 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 there’s a ton of really funny 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.

If you could be any character on the Leverage crew, who would you be?

Wil Wheaton: In real life, I’d like to be a guy like Eliot because he’s unstoppable. I’ve been a skinny nerd my whole life and I would love to finally be the guy that nobody can push around. As an actor, I would love to play a character like Nate Ford because he is so complex and so layered and so haunted and you know there are not a lot of actors who could do what Tim Hutton does with that character.

THE WRITER WITHIN

In addition to acting, you’re also an author.

Wil Wheaton: Yes I just recently published a book called Sunken Treasure that is a collection, of all the different things that I’ve done and it’s the first time that I published a book on demand online. I wanted to see if it was possible to do that and have it be financially viable and it’s been a runaway success that has totally exceeded what I thought it could ever possibly do. It’s been really fun to see that happen.

I have a couple of books coming out in the next very, very, very near future. One book is a collection of episode recaps and behind the scenes memories. It’s a humor book about my time on Star Trek The Next Generation that actually started out when I was a blogger for TV Squad. And that’s called Memories of the Future and that should be out really soon. And then I am putting together a short collection of short fiction that I’ve written.

Fiction is a new venture for you, isn’t it?

Wil Wheaton: I have wanted to write and release fiction for a really long time, but I’ve had to struggle overcoming the voices of self-doubt and uncertainty, taking the plunge out of the narrative nonfiction world where I feel very comfortable and I’ve found some measure of success. I’m sure that a lot of you who are writers know what I’m talking about where there’s that fear that like you know you’re going to be Carrie at the prom and they’re all going to laugh at you. So I am hoping that when this little collection of short fiction is published in the near future it doesn’t end with me covered in pig’s blood burning down a high school gym.

Have you ever considered writing for television?

Wil Wheaton: You know not really. I don’t know if that’s really right for me. I have spent a lot of time with TV writers and they have a stamina and a skill level that is just intimidating and blows me away. I don’t know if that’s something that I would be successful at if I tried to do it. And since I kind of don’t want to mess up a good thing, do you know what I mean? It’s just like, I feel like I’m playing the longest, tallest game of Jenga ever and every time I manage to stack a new block on top of the tower and it doesn’t fall down I’m like, oh thank God. You know so I don’t want to risk bumping the table.

Come back tomorrow when Wil talks about life as a geek, his love of scifi conventions and about a strange incident that happened while shooting Leverage.

Wil’s episode of Leverage, “The Two Live Crew Job” airs tonight at 9:00 on TNT.

Photos: TNT