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When I joined Brent Spiner’s (Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation) autograph line at GalaxyCon Columbus, I was nervous. I’ve been meeting actors at theater stage doors ever since I was 16 years old. But dropping by an actor’s comic con booth still felt new to me.
Within minutes, I’d reached Spiner’s table. I paid the handler, who placed a Data/Sherlock Holmes print—which I’d picked out—near the actor’s arm. Meanwhile, Spiner was finishing a joke with Picard director and writer Terry Matalas, his booth neighbor. Then he turned towards me with a polite greeting.
Catching that conversation’s tail end dispelled my momentary jitters, and I smiled at Spiner. We chatted for a few minutes about Data, Moriarty, and my West Coast trip.
On Ideal Encounters
My comic con adventure exemplifies a positive fan-actor meeting. That’s not always how these turn out for Spiner, who detailed awkward fan encounters and threatening fan mail in his fictional autobiography, Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir: Inspired by True Events. As he cautioned in Chapter 15, “the line between affection and obsession can be wafer-thin.”
Spiner joined me on Zoom just weeks after GalaxyCon for an interview. Talking about comic cons for a moment, he said, “My ideal encounter is ‘Hi, I really enjoy your work, Brent.’ And I say, ‘Thank you so much. That’s so nice of you.'”
He first shared his book idea over dinner with author Jonathan Ames, creator of the comedy series Blunt Talk. The feedback was, “You’ve gotta write this. This is really good. Do you have time to write this by yourself?”
On Bringing Jeanne Darst into the Process
Ames suggested Jeanne Darst, who wrote for Blunt Talk, as someone Spiner should meet. The Star Trek actor showed Darst what he’d written: two opening chapters. “Jeanne really liked the way I’d written it, so she said, ‘Why don’t you just keep writing?'”
Darst inspired Spiner and helped him stay organized, sending him content to consider and rewrite in his own voice. At other instances, she encouraged him to write without her initial input. He’d turn those pages in for her feedback. “Sometimes she had a really good notion or a turn of a phrase. I’d say, ‘I want to use that!'”
Spiner appreciated this collaborative effort with Darst. “She was fantastic to work with. It wasn’t your traditional ghostwriter, like I put my name on it and gave it to her to write. I wrote the majority of the book, I would say. She edited those portions and then added things of her own.”
On Fans
Exploring a fictionalized version of himself from 1991 was an interesting meditation. “I was able to sort of relive my youth in a fantasy. The character is not me but he is me. He has my name. He has the same job I had, but I don’t necessarily think the character is who I actually am.”
While Spiner enjoys meeting fans, the fan-celebrity relationship is complicated. “We’re all fans. Everyone—any actor I’ve ever known is a fan of somebody and we’re all in the same boat. In some cases, it crosses the line…[I]n the book, fandom goes to the extreme of bad and it goes to the extreme of good, too.”
“My character is always ruminating on some film or something that’s affected me—an actor or person I’m a fan of.”
On the Audio Format
While the Brent Spiner in Fan Fiction is fictional, this isn’t a new concept. Spiner did it with his The Big Bang Theory cameo, web series Fresh Hell, and short film Brentwood. “I’ve already enjoyed playing fictionalized versions of me.”
Fan Fiction is available in a digital audio format. The production team added sounds and music after Spiner and the cast, which included his Star Trek co-stars, recorded their parts. It sounded like a radio show when I listened to it. Spiner attributed that to the first-person narration and dialogue, rather than to specific classic radio influences.
Dreamland, Spiner’s 2008 CD with Maude Maggart, has also been compared to a radio show. “It is in a sense, but the radio is a character in Dreamland. There’s dialogue. It’s like a movie of the mind in what we were trying to do. The effects in Dreamland are way more sophisticated than you would ever find on a radio show.”
What’s Next?
Spiner’s 2024 schedule is booked with convention appearances. He wouldn’t confirm whose panels he’d crash, but his pranking days seem far from over. He characterized that penchant as “spur of the moment.”
“I mostly like to prank Patrick [Stewart], but he hasn’t been at conventions lately.”
Since noir storytelling is still popular, I wondered which detective Spiner would like to portray on stage or film. He said, “I think the only one I’d be really suited for—although I’m probably too old for any of them now, I could do a geriatric Thin Man with a geriatric Nora at my side.”
Incidentally, Margot Robbie’s (Barbie) production company, LuckyChap, might co-produce a remake of The Thin Man. Spiner smiled when I told him the news, and I saw a flicker of amusement in his blue eyes.
“Really? Did she say anything about me?”
Visit the Macmillan Publishers website for information about Brent Spiner’s book.
