For fans of horror, thrillers, and just plain weird films, Rent-A-Pal is one for you.
Featuring Wil Wheaton, best known for his roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stand by Me and The Big Bang Theory (among countless other credits), the quirky movie keeps viewers guessing until the very end.
With the film recently celebrating its home entertainment release in Australia, we caught up with Wheaton to discuss his character Andy and more.
What drew you to ‘Rent-A-Pal’?
“I like weird, little movies that are not afraid to take some chances and to be unapologetically what they are. And when I read this script it was telling me from the first page, ‘I’m a weird, little movie’ and there’s some stuff going on here, it could be supernatural, it could be psychosis in the mind of the primary narrative character. There are all kinds of things going on in this story that could all be interpreted by me in one particular way, and by the audience in one particular way. And it just had all of those wonderful elements in it.”
What was your favourite part of filming?
“My favourite part of this entire process wasn’t really being on the set. [It was] the fun and the creative work and the discovery of the character and my conversations with John [Stevenson], the director, leading up to actually beginning work. My favourite part of the entire process was all of the time I spent with John when we were talking about what the audience never sees.”
Are there any funny moments from set that we don’t see in the film?
“There is one moment in the film, [when] Andy is playing the guitar, and they make it sound like he’s doing a great job. And that guitar was so unbelievable out of tune, and I tried to tune it myself, but I couldn’t get it to go perfectly. And I’m not a particularly competent guitar player anyway. So the actual audio of that take is hilarious.”
As someone who has been a part of the Star Trek legacy, what are your thoughts on the ongoing use of the world?
“I think Star Trek: Discovery season three is some of the best Star Trek that’s ever existed in film or television. The storytelling, the writing, the performances, the directing, all of it is just flawless. And I’m crazy about it.”
“I love the new animated series Lower Decks. It fills a space in Star Trek canon that I don’t think any of us realised we desperately wanted to explore and it does it in a really fun and entertaining way. I’m so excited to find out where the story goes in Star Trek: Picard. I think Christophe Pike might be one of the greatest captains in the history of Star Trek. I would definitely put him there with Picard for sure, just in terms of how brilliantly Anson Mount performs him. Because of that, I can’t wait for Strange New Worlds.
“We just had these years of nothing happening in the Star Trek world. There wasn’t much new being created. I love that there is so much being created right now. And I love that Star Trek: Discovery is rising to the promise of infinite diversity in infinite combinations, the representation, of all kinds of different people and different types of people is so important and is so groundbreaking. I just love it. I just think that it’s all fantastic and in general I think more Star Trek is always a good thing.”
You can find more details about ‘Rent-A-Pal’ here.
