wilwheaton

Question: "Hey Wil! Growing up, Stand By Me was an incredibly meaningful and important movie for me and still is to this day. I was curious to know what kind of an experience you had while making this movie. Was it a positive experience or was it more akin to the shitty child actor experiences your talked about before? I'd just really like some more insight into a very important movie from someone I really respect and admire."

Answer: It was one of the best experiences, ever. Rob Reiner treated me like a professional, and even though I was a kid who had minimal experience, he never made me feel that way. I always felt like I deserved to be there, and I trusted him and the other actors to make it possible for me to do my best work.

We all grew a lot as people and as actors during production of Stand By Me, and Rob was a father figure, mentor, guidance counselor, and motion picture director, in that order.

It was a huge shock to go from that environment, where I felt cared for and respected to the profoundly abusive experience on the set of The Curse. I’m still upset with my parents for forcing me to do that shitty movie and endure that awful experience. Between the abuse (physical and emotional) I experienced on that set, and the emotional abuse and manipulative treatment at the hands of Rick Berman when I was on TNG, it’s no wonder that the moment I turned 18, I didn’t want to have anything to do with the film industry.

Dan Petrie, Jr., who wrote and directed Toy Soldiers, was like Rob Reiner, and he and the cast of that film were wonderful, but Mark Burg, who was the producer on that film, was just as abusive and shitty as Berman was. It wasn’t until I worked on Leverage, over a decade later, that I learned firsthand that producers were not automatically abusive assholes.

I am on BBT this week, and tomorrow I am preshooting a scene (we can’t do it in front of the audience because there are so many people in it) that I can’t believe I get to do. It’s probably the last time I’ll get to work on the show before it ends in six weeks, and I’m super sad that it’s ending, because the cast, crew, producers, and writers, have been amazing, kind, generous, professional, wonderful people. In a lot of ways, they make me feel as good and as loved and as valid and respected as Rob did on Stand By Me. I’m so grateful for the years I’ve been able to work with them, and my memories from BBT will be as cherished as my memories of Stand By Me.