Amy glided through the curtain like she was on a catwalk. She blew kisses, made heart shapes with her hands, and then took a selfie onstage—but oddly, didn’t include the audience in it.
“Last but certainly not least, you know him as the lovable, nerdy, and quirky quantum physics expert Dr. Webster Bumfuzzle! Please give a warm WizCon welcome to the one and only Caaaash Caaaarter!”
Before the announcer was finished, the audience was screaming so loud Cash could barely hear his cue to come out. He stepped onstage and was hit with a tsunami of affection. The audience roared twice as hard as they had for the others. The stage lights made it very difficult to see anything and a tardy spotlight practically blinded him. All Cash could see was the manic flashing of cameras in the audience, as if he were facing an endless, pulsating galaxy.
When his eyes finally adjusted, he saw Wizzers shaking, crying, and jumping hysterically throughout the theater. He politely waved at the crowd, only causing the commotion to magnify. Cash found his seat at the table beside his coworkers, but the audience continued cheering until their voices went hoarse.
“Please welcome the panel moderators. From Entertainment Weekly, Jennifer Smalls; from The Hollywood Reporter, Terrence Wallem; and YouTube personality Kylie Trig.”
Lights came up on the front row of the audience, where the moderators sat. Each had a handheld microphone and a Wiz Kids notepad with their questions.
“We’ll start the panel questions with Jennifer Smalls,” the announcer said.
“Thanks for having me, WizCon,” Jennifer Smalls said into her microphone. “First off, it’s so wonderful to be back at WizCon!”
If there was one thing the cast of Wiz Kids agreed on, it was that Jennifer Smalls was Satan in black leggings. Before she reported for Entertainment Weekly, Jennifer worked for a website called Gotcha, a gossip blog devoted to outing closeted gay actors, breaking up celebrity couples, starting pregnancy rumors, leaking nude photos, and making life as difficult as possible for anyone in the public eye.
When Cash bought his first home, Jennifer Smalls posted his address online, which was practically an invitation for paparazzi, Hollywood tour buses, and five very delusional people who refused to leave. It cost Cash hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire full-time security for his property and to expedite restraining orders. Needless to say, he wasn’t Jennifer Smalls’s biggest fan. The only reason she was invited to WizCon was because in 2004 she wrote an article claiming Damien Zimmer was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor Emmy nomination for Who’s the Parent?
“You’re always welcome here, Jennifer,” Damien said into his microphone.
“My question is for Cash,” she said. “We’ve noticed there is more and more stunt work each season. I was wondering what it was like to film episode 908—‘Atlantis Falling.’”
“It was wet,” Cash replied—and that was all she got.
His shortness was not just a tactic for Jennifer’s questions, but for the convention in general. The less he spoke, the fewer pictures would surface of him in midword—those always made him look like he was having a stroke, and also seemed to be the only photos publications used with their articles anymore. Luckily, the audience found his shortness very amusing and no one was the wiser.
“Now we’ll go to Terrence Wallem for the next question,” the announcer said.
The Hollywood reporter from The Hollywood Reporter aggressively flipped through his notes as he formed a question. He was in his late sixties and one of the most feared television critics in Los Angeles. Terrence was infamous for finding something to dislike in everything he watched. He said Game of Thrones was “too soft,” Downton Abbey was “juvenile,” and The Big Bang Theory was “an insult to intelligent people.”
Judging by the irritated look on Terrence’s face, he would rather have been having a colonoscopy with no anesthesia than be sitting at WizCon among the Wizzers.
“My question is for Mr. Zimmer,” Terrence said. “With all due respect, this show is all over the place. In the same episode your characters were swimming in the rivers of Ancient Mesopotamia during one scene, and then hiking through the craters of Mars in the next. What exactly inspired you to create this show?”
“I’ve always been a huge fan of science fiction and history, and no one had intertwined them yet—at least as well as I thought I could,” Damien said, and ran his fingers through his hair. “Originally I wrote it for myself to star in, but once I began developing it with the studio, I decided the part wasn’t right for me. I told them it would be better for the show if I stayed off camera and put all my creative energy into the writer’s room.”
“Right,” Terrence said, and made a note of it. So far, the creative side of this panel wasn’t impressing him.