Wil Wheaton Talks ‘Rent-A-Pal,’ Celebrating ‘Stand By Me’ And Returning To ‘Star Trek’?

Set in 1990, the tense and unique retro indie thriller Rent-A-Pal is a trip.

Caregiver David, played by Brian Landis Folkins, is a lonely single guy looking for love via a video dating service. While at the agency’s offices to record a profile, he spots a VHS tape called Rent-A-Pal, which features a guy called Andy, played by Wil Wheaton.

“Andy, at his core, is so insecure, so manipulative, and so controlling. The North Star for the performance was to keep control of this person watching the tape,” he enthused. “I deliberately did not identify who that person was; that person was my pal. If you want to get existential about it, he’s trapped in a videotape and begging someone to give him some companionship. Being trapped on this magnetic tape, which makes him more sympathetic than he deserves to be, I just kept him as real as I could.”

“I’ve been around manipulative people in my life. We listen to a manipulative person speak every f***ing day in America right now. It was just a matter of keeping those choices real and never forgetting the stakes for Andy are, ‘I’m alone. I don’t want to be alone,’ and he will do anything to stop himself from being alone. That’s powerful.”

Rent-A-Pal lands in select theaters and on VOD at the tail end of a year where most of us have faced some form of isolation. Ironically, that was something Wheaton had already embraced and endured as part of the process.

“I flew into Denver and back when you could fly into a city for one day. I spent the night and then went to the set, a really simple stage, the next day, and we shot everything, all of Andy’s dialogue,” the actor recalled. “Thinking about it now, at every step of the way, every time we physically manifested something from the script, it came out exactly the way it was in my imagination. The wardrobe was exactly what I saw this guy wearing, and the set was exactly the way I saw it, it was all there, perfect.”

“Brian, who plays David, gets a ton of credit because I did all of my stuff in isolation, he did all of his scenes with Andy without me there. I even don’t know if they played back my performance for him.”

Wheaton added, “Brian came to the set when I was doing all of my things so that he could watch what I was doing. We talked about it, actor-to-actor, I let him in on some of my tricks, some of the choices that I was making that hopefully would be subliminal so he could react to them if he chose to. Brian made it very real, he makes you realize the relationship’s stakes, and he did a ton of work for that. I appreciate it if my performance was believable because it’s menacing, but I don’t get to own all of it.”

With multiple takes of the dialogue, and the film’s retro setting, did the Rent-A-Pal’s writer and director, Jon Stevenson, approach the final cut like a Choose Your Own Adventure book?

“That’s a really interesting observation and a question I’m going to have to ask him the next time I see him. I honestly didn’t know,” he mused. “Did they use different takes with clearly different performances, to keep David, as a character, and the audience, as a participant, off-balance? I don’t know the answer to that, but that’s a fascinating idea.”

At a time where studios and distributors are hungry for franchisable ideas and Rent-A-Pal being set in the 1990s, there is no reason why Andy couldn’t return in a sequel set decades later, shifting from VHS to digital. Did Wheaton see it as a standalone project or as potentially something more?

“It’s a good point, but I didn’t think about that at all. One of the things that I find very attractive about the story is that we don’t know if Andy even exists,” the actor theorized. “He could exist exclusively and entirely in David’s mind. Andy could be a manifestation of his psychosis. That freed me up because Andy isn’t necessarily tethered to reality. All I can think about is that David is lonely and desperate; therefore, Andy is lonely and desperate. The unhealthy, codependent relationship they have reflects that.”

Wheaton has been around for decades and boasts a resume that includes several iconic, and incredibly successful IPs, on both the big and small screen. Among them is the 1986 movie Stand By Me, which turns 35 in 2021.

“It’s not something that I’ve been counting down to, but I figured that we were around that time. That film is very important to me in a lot of ways that go way beyond what it means in the context of my career,” he explained. “I know how much it means to so many people. I know that young people are discovering it today for the very first time. The fact this film is going to speak to generations I could not even imagine existing when we made it is deeply meaningful to me. I’m super proud of the film, and I’m super grateful to be part of it.”

Both a critical and commercial success, Stand By Me grossed $52.3 million against an $8 million budget and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

He added, “We tend to mark anniversaries that are divisible by five because we have our fingers on our hands. I don’t personally think there is a huge difference between right now, when it has existed for 34 years, and next year, it will have existed for 35 years. I’m just so proud of it, and I’m so grateful that it endures.”

Could next year’s milestone anniversary see the surviving cast reunite for a table read of the original script? It’s not something that occurred to Wheaton until now.

“Now that you mention it, I would absolutely love to do that. We could do one of those PaleyFest reads where we would feature some young actors, find those young actors that are remarkable that haven’t broken through yet. I’ll read all of adult Gordie’s lines,” he considered. “I’ll do the narration. We could then let people who are remarkable give us their take on those characters. That’s actually something I’d really like to do. That’s seriously a great idea. I would genuinely love to see that. If we wanted to do it with people we do already know, I would love to see Finn Wolfhard play my role because he would be amazing as Gordie in that project.”

And could a return to his Star Trek: The Next Generation character, Wesley Crusher, be on the cards following cameos from his former co-stars on Star Trek: Picard?

“Can you imagine if I said, ‘No, I’m good. I don’t need to put on the spacesuit and be with my family again. I’m set. I’m fine.’ I’m a massive fan of Star Trek, and I have been my whole life. I was a fan long before I was part of the universe,” he laughed. “I love what I do now with the writers’ room. I love the bridge I am between behind the scenes and the fandom because I have one foot in each world. I’m very grateful that I get to live in that place and share it with the audience. If they asked me to work on Picard, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, and if they asked me, I would do everything I could to get to yes.”

“Just for the opportunity, the incredible gift to get to work with these people who are so important to me. To get to share some space with them again would be incredible. The dream is to be directed by Jonathan Frakes in a scene with Patrick Stewart. That’s the dream. Not that I’ve written fan-fiction about that already or anything like that.”

Rent-A-Pal opens in select theaters and on VOD on Friday, September 11, 2020.