SJimbrowski here. I had an opportunity to interview Felicia Day (THE GUILD, DR. HORRIBLE SING ALONG BLOG, EUREKA) at San Diego Comic Con. We meet in the Xbox room which had so much ambient noise there was no way it was going to happen so I offered a quieter spot in the Hard Rock Hotel As we ascended in the elevator she ran her hand over the new Underworld 4 advertising adorning the elevator displaying her love for the series. I was then I realized that even with her success she is just like any one of us at Comic Con, a fan. I was real pleasure to interview her, however I did feel a bit bad as her voice was cracking from the strain of to much Comic Con, I hoped her honey filled herbal tea would help get her through.
SJ: THE GUILD season five?FD: It’s going to be a little bit of a staggered release. It’s just going to be a 48 hour window where Xbox get’s it first and then it goes to MSN. For the first time we’re doingthat. It’s just some logistical things.SJ: OK and is that going to be for the entire release?
FD: It will be for the entire season.
SJ: Can you talk about the new season at all?
FD: I mean I can say that THE GUILD goes to a convention.
SJ: Well, yes I’m aware of that (chuckles).
FD: There’s going to be a lot of things we’re going to see in the cast. I mean we had 75 speaking parts so there are a lot of actors, a lot of cameos., a lot of shenanigans. Our scope is small because of our budget. But we try to do the best kind of fan convention experience. The fan conventions have made this show so I homage to how much you know how much I love them and how much it brings together so many different kinds of people and you can just love what you love at fan conventions. So you know I think people are going to enjoy it. It’s definitely the season I’ve been waiting to write for like two or three years now. I wrote it very quickly—in like 10 days the whole script when usually it takes me five months of agony to write a season. So it just felt right. I’m just really excited for people to see it.
SJ: I did see the promo, The Vork Van makes its’ appearance. I was very like pleased to see that there was the Vork Van road trip.
FD: It always will crack me up, the Vork Van. So we’ll see a little bit of that yes, but we get into the convention pretty quickly.
SJ: How is the structure different with the convention? FD: There’s a lot to tell. I was trying to structure it so we stayed in their houses, and then I tried to structure a long, long road trip But overall the meat of it is at the convention, so we just made everything we could happen to be able to really film at the convention. Long Beach Comic Con let us use their convention to shoot at. The convention center really worked with us to be able to allow us to shoot there. We had hotels donate space. I mean all of it is favors. Anything you saw on the screen is still the same budget we did before. It was a monumental effort and my producers you know pulled it off amazingly.
SJ: That’s impressive.
FD: Yea. It seems impossible … in retrospect it was impossible, but we did it.
SJ: But you did it anyway, no wonder you have such a loyal fanbase. I’m definitely looking forward to watching it and you’ve also got EUREKA?
FD: Yea, I mean Eureka has just been great. I literally started EUREKA a year ago right after Comic Con, I’m still going back on Monday to work on it They keep writing me in, and I’m like “Thank you!” I’m in season five. I’m in season 4.5 um for seven episodes. My first episode just came out Monday night.
SJ: You were very good in it.
FD: Thank you! Well, it’s a really fun character. They wrote the part for me. So I didn’t have to audition for it. They just saw what I did with THE GUILD, and they admired it and they liked what I did. They wrote a really quirky, fun, smart character that I love playing, and I’m like anytime they want me to play Holly I’ll be there.
SJ: Yes, it is a really great character—very quirky. FD: Yes and you know that’s what I do well. But she has a lot more layers and as we get deeper in the season, and the relationships deepen she feels more comfortable with people. What I love about the show is that there are really strong women on there, and it’s funny how genre pieces tend to make that more believable—that women are in authoritative positions.
SJ: Yeah.
FD: And it’s really interesting, and you know it’s fun to be able to play a character that’s so layered. She’s very neurotic, she’s very enthusiastic and she’s very smart too.
SJ: So you’ve got EUREKA and then obviously DRAGON AGE.
FD: Yeah, DRAGON AGE is a little bit gonna be staggered a little bit. I don’t have a current release date for that yet, but I’m thinking of early fall. We had to push it for a couple production reasons and you know I think it’s actually good because everything releasing at once it’s …Felicia Day saturation time.
SJ: Yeah (laughing), but in a good way.
FD: But I worked for 18 months on that project. I play an Elven assassin Her name is Tallis and she’s sent after a rogue Qunari mage and you know to me I love how we’re storytelling. I love the game and I wanted to do my best on a web budget to remain faithful to the sort of material in a way that video games usually don’t get treated in the translation. It’s very different. But to me the storytelling is deep enough and the characters are rich enough that I felt like I could channel that into a short form web series.
SJ: Now how many episodes is it going to be?
FD: Six episodes—about an hour of content.
SJ: Six episodes. Those are pretty long episodes.
FD: Yeah and that was what I set out to do. To make a little bit meatier episodes. I mean it’s like an hour TV show—episode show content. I think the web is maturing. There’s a big step to doing full length content for the web.SJ: Yeah, like H+.
FD: Yeah and Crackle and Hulu and they’re all looking forward to just making TV shows. Because everybody is getting their TV shows to the web anyway. So what I hope to do with this is to set the bar really high for web series and independent content because I don’t want a web content to get co-opted just into being another form of network TV.
SJ: Have you considered doing more fan sponsored content?
FD: It’s not doable. I mean it’s just not doable. The economics are not there.
SJ: Really?
FD: You know we were able to do season one because we worked for free. At a certain point people have to pay their bills. It’s unrealistic to ask people and you know we were able to raise a lot of money relatively through a kick starter kind of thing but you can’t raise hundreds of thousands of dollars that way. It’s not viable.
SJ: Well, you’ve got a big following.
FD: I mean if there was no other way to do it I would absolutely do that. I don’t everwant to get somebody in the way of my content but you know it’s just so much more. You need the guarantee. You can’t wait 12 months just to something; I mean you want to make things.
SJ: At this point Felicia’s lovely alabaster skin was getting a bit too much direct sunlight in the warm San Diego sun so we moved over a bit to a more shady area. I mean seriously how rude would it be to sunburn Felicia Day at Comic Con? Some things you just can’t live down. Look for part two of this interview next Tuesday!
Check out Bug’s panel Horror on the Paneled Page in its entirety from the con!!!
Ambush Bug announces his new werewolf comic LUNA on FAMOUS MONSTERS panel!!!
SJimbrowski brings back a ton of webseries news from Comic Con—Felicia Day’s DRAGON AGE REDEMPTION! MORTAL KOMBAT! & Bryan Singer’s H+ THE DIGITAL SERIES!
Bug sits for a lengthy chat with Marvel CCO Joe Quesada!
SJimbrowski reports from Felicia Day’s THE GUILD and Joss Whedon’s panels!
Bug talks with DC top brass Dan Didio & Jim Lee!
Bug talks with Fear.net’s TODD & THE BOOK OF PURE EVIL star Jason Mewes!
Bug talks with Zenescope’s Ralph Tedesco & Raven Gregory!
Bug talks with writer/artist Menton3 about his new IDW series MONOCYTE!
Bug has his annual chat with Radical Publisher Barry Levine!
Bug talks with Writer of Stuff, Peter David!
Bug talks with the only Caped Crusader that matters, Adam West!
Part one of Bug talks turtles with TNMT creator Kevin Eastman!
Part two of Bug talks turtles with TNMT writer Tom Waltz!
SJimbrowski reports from the CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL & NTSF:SD:SVU panels, plus a review of THE MERCURY MEN Webseries!
Bug talks with Johnny Ryan, the twisted mind behind PRISON PIT!
Bug talks DAMAGED with Sam Worthington, John & Michael Schwarz of Full Clip Productions!
Bug talks about everything from THE GOON to GODZILLA with Eric Powell!
Bug talks about the success of WITCH DOCTOR with series creators Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner!
Bug talks with Anne Rice about the new SERVANT OF THE BONES comic, vampires, and her new werewolf book!
Keep an eye out for more interviews and special reports from SDCC 2011!
