Today on Too Opinionated we talk with the Iconic Wil Wheaton!
From starring in Stand by Me to playing Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation to playing himself, in his second (third?) iconic role of Evil Wil Wheaton in The Big Bang Theory, to becoming a social media supernova, Wil Wheaton has charted a career course unlike anyone else, and has emerged as one of the most popular and well-respected names in science fiction, fantasy and pop culture.
So… how did this story begin? How does it continue? Well, Wil Wheaton grew up. Ideally, this is what everyone does. But most of us don’t do it in front of millions of people. Most of us don’t get famous for being kids.
Wil Wheaton was a very famous kid—right up until he wasn’t. After that, he wasn’t sure who he was at all.
So, in 2001, Wil started a blog. It was less about being a famous kid than about being a not-so-famous grownup. He wrote about his pets and his hobbies, punk rock and parenting, board games and birthdays and (most importantly) burritos. He thought he was writing for an audience of one: himself. To be fair, he was only off by about 3 million people.
In STILL JUST A GEEK: An Annotated Memoir (William Morrow; on sale 4/12/2022; $28.99), an older, somewhat wiser Wil revisits Just a Geek, his 2004 collection of those blog posts, with all-new reflections that show just how far he’s come. In this vulnerable, honest memoir about trying and failing and trying again, Wil opens up about love, trauma, tragedy, and confronting the worst parts of himself. Equal parts funny and poignant, Still Just a Geek weighs the folly of youth against the pain of experience—and celebrates all the strange, awful, beautiful adventures in between.
So, in fact, to say that Wil Wheaton grew up would be to miss the point entirely. The point is that Wil Wheaton is still growing. Hopefully, he’ll never stop.
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