ECCC 2018: FELICIA DAY ON SUPERNATURAL, MST3K, AND THE MAGICIANS
Felicia Day is the queen of geeks. Starting with her early webseries The Guild, about a World of Warcraft guild, she has had the glorious career that most of us dream of, like starting her own YouTube channel that grew into a website, Geek and Sundry, or taking part in some of the geekiest TV projects around. Day has also had recurring roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and The Magicians. As such, she’s a convention mainstay, so it is no surprise that she showed up at Emerald City Comic Con for a lengthy Q&A session.
During the session, a lot of the questions she was asked had to do with how to get a career like hers. Day’s advice: Do a project because you love doing it, not just because you want the end result or the accolades. You have to do the work to get there, and you should love the work that it takes.
When she started The Guild, there was no plan and no goal. Day just got some friends together and did it. She loves that the show helped make gaming more mainstream. So mainstream, in fact, that when she had a panel at San Diego Comic-Con, the only room available held just 200 people. More than 1,000 showed up. “That’s how I knew we had arrived,” she says.
One of her most iconic parts has been her recurring role as Charlie on Supernatural. When asked what her favorite episode was, her response was immediate: “The LARPing episode,” Day said, referring to the episode “LARP and the Real Girl.” “The set design was so incredible,” Day enthused. “I’m obsessed with renaissance fairs.”
The guys on Supernatural, Jared Padalecki and Jenson Ackles, are famous for their pranks, but they never pranked Day. They did, however, tease her mercilessly — but in a fun, good-natured way. “They tease me like a little sister.” Charlie may have died a few seasons ago, but Day hopes that she will get to play her again. After all, nobody stays dead on that show.
We also learned that writing riffs for MST3K is very different from writing other projects. “You are never as funny as you think you are during a movie,” she laments, suggesting that maybe, on a good day, you might have one funny joke every 10 minutes or so. For Hercules, Day wrote a riff comparing Jayne Mansfield with purple hair to My Little Pony, but it didn’t make it into the episode.
A few other fun tidbits:
- Day likes playing Poppy on The Magicians because that character is different from anyone else she has played. “She’s peppy and happy, but also a little psychotic,” Day remarks, “I got to do a bunch of things I’ve never done before.” This is her first big role since becoming a mother.
- Her favorite role was Codex on The Guild because “It was me in real life.” But she also loved playing Charlie because it resonates so much with people. “It made me a braver person, confident in a way that I wasn’t.”
- She was homeschooled for most of her life, so “[She] never realized what [she] liked was weird until [she] got out into the world.” Her grandfather was a physicist and her parents loved sci-fi, so to her, all her nerdiness was normal. “It was great having that support.”
- Day looks up to Joss Whedon as a storyteller.
Original article at SYFYWire
