Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk on Firefly Fandom and Their Con Man Indiegogo Campaign
The co-stars of Joss Whedon’s beloved sci-fi western wany your help in taking Pushing Daisies down.
Whether you are a Firefly diehard or have never seen a frame of the series, you’re no doubt aware of its existence. This is an achievement in its own right, considering that the Fox show – an epic sci-fi-western-dramedy from the mind of Joss Whedon – was cancelled before the end of its first (and only) season. But it’s more of a testament to the loyalty of the show’s fan base, aka Browncoats, who done everything in their power to champion the 14-episode program since its debut it 2002. They paid for an ad in Variety to save the show. They raised more than $1 million to resurrect the series after star Nathan Fillion joked that bringing Firefly back would be the first thing he’d do if he were to win the lottery (more on his regret regarding that comment later). The official “Bring Back Firefly” Facebook page boasts more than 100,000 followers. They’ve stood in line with 10,000 fellow Browncoats to catch a glimpse of Whedon and the series’ stars at a tenth anniversary panel at Comic-Con in 2012. And in the past two weeks alone, they’ve helped Firefly co-stars Fillion and Alan Tudyk break all sorts of crowdfunding records by donating more than $2 million (and counting) to their campaign for Con Man, a would-be web series about the former starst of a cancelled-too-soon sci-fi series with a wildly rabid fan base. (Hmmm…)
And now they’ve descended on Esquire.com en masse to help Firefly in the finals of our TV Reboot Tournament where the show is squaring off against Pushing Daisies for all the marbles – and losing. But Fillion and Tudyk are fighting back on Twitter where they’ve succeeded in getting Daisies star Lee Pace all riled up – and somehow managed to involve William Shatner in the whole thing. We spoke to Fillion and Tudyk on Friday night to get their take on the situation.
As you guys know, we’ve been running a TV Reboot Tournament on the site all week, which is now in its final round. So far Firefly has beaten Tenacious D, Party Down, and Bored to Death. The only thing standing between you and ultimate victory is the fandom of Pushing Daisies
NATHAN FILLION: Oooh, Pushing Daisies. That Lee Pace is a handsome devil, that guy.
ALAN TUDYK: Yeah, he is.
He is indeed. So pretend that this is a reality show and it’s that part where each of you has to sell me, and readers, on why Firefly should win this whole thing.
FILLION: In Firefly, there were some questions raised that were never really fully answered. There were some secrets that Inara had. And Shepherd Book, Ron Glass’ character, his whole history – his whole past – he had a lot of things that were going on there that we didn’t really know about. There are unanswered questions! Come on, now. There are stories to be told. There are horses to be rode. In Pushing Daisies, we all know what happens: They die.
TUDYK: Or they live for just a short little period of time before he touches them again. And then they die.
FILLION: See? So we know what happens. They’re going to die.
But there’s pie.
TUDYK: Yes, there is pie.
I should also tell you that Bryan Fuller, who I interviewed earlier this week is using Twitter to motivate the Fullerverse. He’s even offering up some details on Hannibal‘s third season premiere.
FILLION: Really?
Yes. Are you guys prepared to up the ante?
TUDYK: Well, I really want to find out about Hannibal. I don’t know. Do I have to vote for them to get that?
FILLION: Alan! Stop it!
TUDYK: But it’s such a good show.
FILLION: You’re doing the wrong thing. Do the other thing.
TUDYK: What can we offer?
FILLION: Here’s the thing about Firefly fans: Alan, you can go on Twitter and say, “Hey guys. Why don’t you hit this site up and show them what Browncoats are all about?” And it’s over. It’s over.
TUDYK: Right.
FILLION: But you know what happens first? The Esquire site crashes.
TUDYK: You’re right. There are no Pushing Daises conventions; there are Firefly conventions. The fans are legion, but they’re also grouped together. They’re in contact with one another. It’s a fandom that is growing, and organized. We just did this crowdfunding thing and they all came out fairly quickly.
FILLION: In full force!
Why do you think the show, more than a dozen years later, still connects and is so fresh in the minds of audiences?
FILLION: The day and age we’re living in, we have access to the internet. And thanks to Netflix and iTunes and Hulu, we have access to entertainment. It’s where we want it when we want it. And that’s a very different thing. I remember having to race home so that I could catch Gilligan’s Island at 4 p.m. I got out of school at 3.30 and it was a 35-minute run home. And I made it on time, sir!
TUDYK: They might get off the island, for chrissakes! You don’t want to miss that.
FILLION: Today might be the day!
Or the Harlem Globetrotters might show up
FILLION: Exactly!
TUDYK: Or Wrongway lands his plane back on the island. That’s always good for a few laughs.
FILLION: Mmm-hmm. So it’s a very different time. Firefly, as short-lived as it was, never had an opportunity to suck. It didn’t have that, “Oh, well. Season two was kind of slow. It picked up in season three and season four was great.” It didn’t have that quality. It was just this wonderful introduction to this incredible world where everything is new and everything’s different and everything’s great. In every episode we learn something, we see something, we experience something. It’s a slow build and it’s going somewhere… and then it dies a horrible death. So we can never make it suck. We didn’t go back and change anything; we didn’t put any extra CGI in it or change any story points or character points. We have that advantage. So along with the opportunity of never having been able to suck and people having access to it, people are coming to Firefly all the time. I love it when I’m on Twitter just screening through all these millions of replies. Someone will say, “I just watched Firefly for the first time yesterday. I can’t wait to see how it ends.” And I think, “You’re going to be disappointed.” [Laughs]
TUDYK: “Just wait until season two.” That’s what I like to tell them. “Season two is where it really picks up.”
FILLION: People ask, “What should I get for my friend who hasn’t seen Firefly yet?” I say a box of tissues.
It’s also amazing to look at the lengths to which Firefly fans went to bring the show back, writing letters, taking out ads. Looking at the difference between now and then, and given the importance social media plays today, do you think the fate of the show would have been different had Twitter existed?
TUDYK: Absolutely. But it didn’t exist in even the same way. There were just a few places fans of the show could go afterwards and they, at that point in time, weren’t viable… The Internet wasn’t the same. And I don’t think that studio heads really saw the power of the Internet yet, and they definitely didn’t see the power of sci-fi fans at the same time. Hollywood descends upon Comic-Con now. They show off their shiniest toys for everyone to see, and hope to get the fans behind them. They weren’t listening to the fans as much back at that time.
FILLION: I think there’s a bit of a paradox, too. Would the fate of the show have been different if I had been Twitter back then? I don’t know. Because back then we didn’t have the following. We have the following because of Firefly.
Speaking of Comic-Con, you guys have reunited with Joss and the rest of the cast over the years for various panels and events, including the 10-year anniversary panel. Have you ever had any serious discussions about rebooting the show or bringing it back in some way, separately from Serenity?
TUDYK: Please don’t say yes, Nathan. Because if you say yes, that means you’ve had these discussions when I wasn’t around. And that would really suck.
FILLION: We always joke about it. But it was 12 years ago. I honestly don’t think that there’s going to be another Firefly iteration. I had an amazing time on Firefly. It was the best job I’d ever had. It was a lot of firsts for me, and it was the most incredibly collection of people I’d ever had the pleasure to work with. And when it was torn away from me so abruptly, I was quite literally broken-hearted. But I had a chance to go back in the biggest way possible with [Serenity], a major motion picture. We all did. So we were able to have a nice kind of final goodbye. We had closure, which is more than a lot of people with cancelled shows can say.
What are your thoughts on TV reboots in general? Are they a good thing, a bad thing, a little bit of both?
FILLION: I’m all for it.
TUDYK: I’m for a Firefly reboot, personally. But it’s going to have to be in a while. It’s going to take a little time. I like the idea of it in another 10 years or so. We can pick up with Captain Mal, living on a moon somewhere… What was this? You showed me this idea, Nathan. Was it a fan fiction or something? Anyway, it picks up in another 10 years, so Mal’s going to be a little bit older. And someone comes knocking on his door and says, “You’re needed.” Really, you just need the Captain. Then he can put the band back together. And you’re going to need some young people, because at that point you’re going to be old.
FILLION: We’ll get Wash’s brother, Rinse, to help us.
TUDYK: Rance! Rance! He hates that joke. Never call him that.
Nathan, you once joked that if you won the lottery the first thing you’d do is buy the rights to Firefly and turn it into a web series. Which, of course, prompted fans to immediately start raising money.
NATHAN FILLION: Yeah, I paid the price for that, didn’t I?
Any regrets about making that statement?
FILLION: Yes. I thought it would be funny. That people would go, “Aww, that warms my heart.” And I accidentally rallied the troops. So I’m really careful about that now.
Really, this conversation couldn’t be more timely considering that you just launched your Indiegogo campaign for Con Man, which has broken all sorts of crowdfunding records and earned over $2 million – more – in just over a week. Clearly the world wants to see you two make this happen. So what point are you at now in the fundraising process? What are you promised to do, 12 episodes of it?
TUDYK: Yes, twelve 10-minute episodes. It’s a comedy, and it’s sort of written in a half-hour format, but they’re 10-minute episodes so each one is an act. Each 10 minutes is an act… Wow, I’ve never said it this poorly…
Yes, I tend to bring out the best in people.
TUDYK: It’s 120 minutes divided up into 12 episodes, but they’re written in a half-hour format, so every three episodes creates the beginning and end of one story. So the first three episodes are one convention, the next three episodes are another convention. We’re going to make all 12 episodes. And in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth episodes we’re going to see the show within the show. When Nathan and I go to conventions you meet fans from a lot of different projects, but usually Firefly is the main one. So Wray Nerely, my character in Con Man, is at these conventions for Spectrum, which is the show within the show. So in the last three episodes we’ll get to see the lost episode of Spectrum. When we shot Firefly, we were cancelled two or three days in our final episode. Word came down and Joss came down to the set and said, “We’re done.” So we had a few days to really enjoy working together as we finished the last episode. But in the fiction of Spectrum, when they were told they were cancelled, the creator went crazy and took the dailies from the first two days of shooting that episode and left the country with them. So everybody’s been wondering where the footage is because they want to see the lost episode. And it gets released, so you get to see pieces of the lost episode of Spectrum that were shot with the original cast but then also with fill-in actors and puppets that make the show work. It’s a serious show within a comedy.
Crowdfunding can be a bit of a crapshoot. Were you surprised by just how well you met that goal?
FILLION: [laughing] Yes! When you’re looking at over $2 million, you’re not going to go, “Yeah, pretty much what I expected. No big whoop, really.” We were shocked. Alan and [producer] PJ [Haarsma] were together; I was here [on the set of Castle] working. But I was sharing texts while I’m sure they were sharing looks. “Oh my god, what are we going to do?” looks.
Obviously there are parts of Con Man that are semi-autobiographical, but at the same time it sort of pulls the curtain back on life behind the scenes and after Firefly. Before Better Call Saul premiered, Vince Gilligan spent a lot of time making sure that people understood that it would not be Breaking Bad: Part 2. What do you guys want Firefly fans to know about Con Man?
TUDYK: Well, it is not Firefly: Part 2. [Laughs] There was a point where I was thought that maybe we should get everyone from Firefly involved and we could all be on a spaceship together again, because it sort of works out character-wise: He could do that, she could do that, this person could play this character. But then I realized that would be a bad idea. Because then it would immediately be compared to Firefly and we’ll immediately be found wanting because Firefly was written by Joss Whedon. And I wrote this. And I don’t create space shows like Joss does. I’ve created a comedy with a space show in it, which is really funny and people are going to like it. But I wanted to make sure we didn’t try to…
FILLION: Put lightning in a bottle?
TUDYK: Yeah. Catch lightening in a bottle. Or catch Firefly in a bottle. Or a jar. I don’t know, there’s some joke there… Joss would be able to come up with it.
FILLION: “Put Firefly in a bottle and you just get burned?”
TUDYK: [Laughs]
Short of Firefly coming back to television, online, Netflix, or the like, do you think that fans of the show will ever stop rooting for its return?
TUDYK: No. Why would they? Have you seen it [laughing]
FILLION: No, but seriously, have you?
TUDYK: I re-watched it for the tenth anniversary and walked away wondering, How could they have cancelled this show? It was so funny. And it was a drama! It’s what Joss does with Marvel movies. What makes The Avengers so great is Joss’ sense of humor, his direction, and his storytelling. And all of that was in a television show that you could just tune into every week on television. Are you kidding me? Plus it had all those actors.
FILLION: When I meet these fans at conventions and they are longing for Firefly and they can’t believe it was cancelled and their hearts are ripped out, I’m grateful. I’m vindicated. Because that’s how I felt! That’s exactly right. So I’m not stupid. I’m not weird for liking it – for loving it. I’m right on the money. [Pause] And now I’m going to Tweet your link and see if I can crash your site.
