“Really?” A gaming company that would pay for the show and be okay with my anarchist demands? I decided to take the meeting. Because if nothing else, I thought, Maybe I can scam a free Xbox!
And over pancakes (because I ALWAYS take meetings over pancakes), surprise, surprise, the Xbox guy seemed . . . flexible. And not condescending. They didn’t need to own the show, they’d leave creative decisions up to us, and they would give us a decent budget so we could pay everyone reasonably and feed them something besides cheap hoagies. In fact, they replied to literally everything I asked for with, “Sure, that’s reasonable.”
It made me flustered. Because it’s one thing to ask for what you want and another thing to GET it.
Checkmate, Felicia Day.
And that’s how we made four more seasons over four years with Xbox. Because I dug in my heels and was unreasonable, and got rewarded for it. (Definitely adding that to the coffee mug slogan bin.)
We started shooting the first two episodes of season two the weekend after the meeting, knowing that we would be 100 percent guaranteed to shoot the rest of the season, and no one on set would be working for free anymore. In a quiet moment during filming, I pulled Kim aside with tears in my eyes and hugged her.
“No more hoagies!” I whispered into her ear.
She nodded. “No more hoagies.”
Over the next several years, we found more ways to pioneer in the world of web video. I wrote a Guild comic book series, the show was the first web series released on Netflix. We even released a music video single that was number one on iTunes for a week. Beat Taylor Swift. (A song that was recorded in a friend’s closet, staring at his socks.) Sure, all the business things we did with The Guild are cool, but it was the relationship that developed between us and the fans and, for me, my own family, that made every rebellious step of the way worth it.
One of the drawbacks of being a homeschooled kid was that I don’t think I learned to be as independent as regular kids. My mother got me into violin, my grandfather got me into math, I killed myself getting a 4.0 in college; a lot of my life I did things because OTHER people guided my behavior. When I dove into acting with such na?ve confidence, for the first time I was following something for myself. Problem was, my family didn’t understand the movie business, so they worried. A lot. Chances were high in their minds that I might end up becoming a porn actress and/or a heroin addict. (They had seen that happen once on Law & Order.)
When I tried to prove to them, “Hey! This is the thing I’m meant to do!” I’d frequently get egg on my face, like when I made everyone stay up until 12:01 a.m. to watch my first professional job, a Starburst commercial, not knowing I’d gotten cut completely out of it. My mom was confused.
“Where were you? Did I miss you?”
“No. I guess I got cut out of it, Mom.”
“Oh, honey. What happened? Were you bad?” Mortifying.
Over the years, when my career didn’t seem to be building to anything significant, my dad in particular became a fan of the “backup plan.” He’s a very practical and business-savvy guy, and in a helpful way he hinted here and there in phone calls, “If you need to come home, I’ll pay for your law school . . .”
In the lowest days of my career, I thought about taking him up on it.
But then The Guild took off, and it finally seemed to prove that I’d chosen the right path. The problem was that the internet world was so new, it was hard to make my family understand, “We’re on YouTube and Xbox now! It’s a gaming console. Yes, it’s for games but they also have video . . .” meant I was guaranteed to not move into their spare bedroom anytime soon.
I was in Austin, Texas, visiting my dad around season three of The Guild, and we ended up going to Bed Bath & Beyond together, probably for a new griddle because he’s a real “cook the sausage until they turn into meteorites” kind of guy. I could tell he wanted to talk to me about something serious. He’s always trying to get me to save money for some reason, so I thought, Ugh, another time where I have to pretend to understand what he’s talking about with 401(k)s.
As we wandered the aisles, of course I shoved things into the cart I wanted for myself so he’d pay for them. (I don’t care how old you are, that’s a daughter privilege.) He cleared his throat, and I knew he was going to launch into it.
“Honey, I want you to know you can always come home. Uh, you know. If things aren’t working out.”
I stopped the cart and rolled my eyes. I definitely would have rather talked with him about a 401(k) thingie. “Things are working out, Dad. I’m fine!”
“You haven’t been on TV as much lately.”
“Well, I’ve been working on all my internet stuff.”
“That sounds fun, but are you making a living at it?”
“I . . . kinda.” Technically I was still paying most of my bills with commercial acting, but unless I was phoning home for a check, he didn’t need to know that.