and comic con is upon us
Comic Con season is upon us, really. I'm doing San Diego, Salt Lake, and also Dragon Con. I'm in talks to do a few more starting in September and moving into October - around my shooting schedule.
Cons are exhilarating and joyful and painful and stressful and wonderful and judgemental and honestly ... I'm never sure how I feel until I'm there. But, they are part of the world of actors who do anything at all related to sci-fi or fantasy and well, I've got a couple of things under my belt for that.
My first con ever was right at the beginning of season 2 of King's. I wasn't exactly in a great place, emotionally, as you can imagine considering things that had happened at a certain cast party at the end of season 1. And the show had gone from "Hey, go watch this brilliant thing" to "HOLY COW EVERYONE IS WATCHING IT AND GET CAUGHT UP BEFORE SEASON 2!!" and the lines and the panels were so busy and so packed. Overnight I went from working actress to someone who stood in front of a backdrop for three hours so people could hug me and get a photo taken and beg me to marry Doug. Yeah, there was a lot of that. And I was so overwhelmed that I just went where I was supposed to go and I learned how to answer questions and also, I learned to remember scripts so that when I got show questions, I could answer them. Fans love that. When you can say "Well, Meredith knew full well that the castle walls were slick because ..."
Carrie used to call the cons "lap dances." She's not wrong. There's a fee for participants and they pay it and we do our dance of answering questions and posing for photos and signing pictures of our faces. There's one I still always sign, every year ... Meredith looking longingly at Kallon ...
Doug hasn't done cons in a while. I get blamed for that. But mostly, people seem to think that the whole thing has blown over and I hear "Someday, I'll have both your signatures on this same picture! It'll be so exciting!" I also hear "You're the reason he doesn't do these, right?"
Of course I hear other things too. Woman after woman ... some of them still girls ... taking up extra time with the photos, with the autographs, with the questions at panels. Tears streaming down their cheeks as they talk about how my speaking out helped them speak out. How they thought they were alone until I said something. How Meredith helped them survive their own abuse. How because I left an abusive situation on set, they felt empowered to do the same. I'm always so humbled, so floored.
I can have all the therapy I need, it's these stories that help the most. We aren't alone. We are stronger together.
This year at Dragon Con, we're actually going to have an assault survivors panel with crisis workers in the room to help if someone breaks down. There was no problem finding enough of us in the industry who could speak.
This is longer than I expected it to be. I don't care.
Of course, there are more than panels for King's. There are also solo talks and meetups with The Silmarillion cast - whom I adore so much and we only get to see each other at cons and believe me, that's a lot of the draw for actors to go. We get to see our friends. We get to tell stories about life on set and laugh about how we pranked each other or how we couldn't stop laughing.
I'm always so very touched by the people who come through the lines to say hi. I mean ... what have I done other than be on the screen? Reading my lines? But something I've done has connected to them. And yes, I can tell the autograph sharks who are there to get my name in gold sharpie and then resell and the ones who have a book of nearly-naked actresses for their own uses. And that's okay, too. They're willing to stand in that line on the hopes that I won't get exhausted and need to step away. They paid their money. It's their lap dance.
So here I am, on the way to SDCC. I have to keep my stuff early in the day so I can be back in LA in time for curtain and I can't do any of Saturday's events - which takes me off of a couple of potentially fun panels but alas. So I've got my autograph and photo stuff today and a couple of panels tomorrow. And enough coffee to keep me fueled. And a husband who is rolling his eyes at me while he drives but also doesn't mind the chance to, you know, go find geeky things. ;) It's a win-win, really.
Cons are exhilarating and joyful and painful and stressful and wonderful and judgemental and honestly ... I'm never sure how I feel until I'm there. But, they are part of the world of actors who do anything at all related to sci-fi or fantasy and well, I've got a couple of things under my belt for that.
My first con ever was right at the beginning of season 2 of King's. I wasn't exactly in a great place, emotionally, as you can imagine considering things that had happened at a certain cast party at the end of season 1. And the show had gone from "Hey, go watch this brilliant thing" to "HOLY COW EVERYONE IS WATCHING IT AND GET CAUGHT UP BEFORE SEASON 2!!" and the lines and the panels were so busy and so packed. Overnight I went from working actress to someone who stood in front of a backdrop for three hours so people could hug me and get a photo taken and beg me to marry Doug. Yeah, there was a lot of that. And I was so overwhelmed that I just went where I was supposed to go and I learned how to answer questions and also, I learned to remember scripts so that when I got show questions, I could answer them. Fans love that. When you can say "Well, Meredith knew full well that the castle walls were slick because ..."
Carrie used to call the cons "lap dances." She's not wrong. There's a fee for participants and they pay it and we do our dance of answering questions and posing for photos and signing pictures of our faces. There's one I still always sign, every year ... Meredith looking longingly at Kallon ...
Doug hasn't done cons in a while. I get blamed for that. But mostly, people seem to think that the whole thing has blown over and I hear "Someday, I'll have both your signatures on this same picture! It'll be so exciting!" I also hear "You're the reason he doesn't do these, right?"
Of course I hear other things too. Woman after woman ... some of them still girls ... taking up extra time with the photos, with the autographs, with the questions at panels. Tears streaming down their cheeks as they talk about how my speaking out helped them speak out. How they thought they were alone until I said something. How Meredith helped them survive their own abuse. How because I left an abusive situation on set, they felt empowered to do the same. I'm always so humbled, so floored.
I can have all the therapy I need, it's these stories that help the most. We aren't alone. We are stronger together.
This year at Dragon Con, we're actually going to have an assault survivors panel with crisis workers in the room to help if someone breaks down. There was no problem finding enough of us in the industry who could speak.
This is longer than I expected it to be. I don't care.
Of course, there are more than panels for King's. There are also solo talks and meetups with The Silmarillion cast - whom I adore so much and we only get to see each other at cons and believe me, that's a lot of the draw for actors to go. We get to see our friends. We get to tell stories about life on set and laugh about how we pranked each other or how we couldn't stop laughing.
I'm always so very touched by the people who come through the lines to say hi. I mean ... what have I done other than be on the screen? Reading my lines? But something I've done has connected to them. And yes, I can tell the autograph sharks who are there to get my name in gold sharpie and then resell and the ones who have a book of nearly-naked actresses for their own uses. And that's okay, too. They're willing to stand in that line on the hopes that I won't get exhausted and need to step away. They paid their money. It's their lap dance.
So here I am, on the way to SDCC. I have to keep my stuff early in the day so I can be back in LA in time for curtain and I can't do any of Saturday's events - which takes me off of a couple of potentially fun panels but alas. So I've got my autograph and photo stuff today and a couple of panels tomorrow. And enough coffee to keep me fueled. And a husband who is rolling his eyes at me while he drives but also doesn't mind the chance to, you know, go find geeky things. ;) It's a win-win, really.