Some of you may know her from her TV work on shows such as, Monk, Lie to Me, House, Eureka, Dollhouse and most notably a little known show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  On the set of Buffy she met some guy named Joss Whedon.  Joss was also working on another little known (hope you guys are catching the sarcasm) show called Firefly (best sci-fi show ever! damn you fox!)  What makes me think you should know her?  Well, for one, I have never heard a bad thing about her, and every interview I have ever seen she is the nicest person you could imagine.  Two, in my opinion and in the opinion of many others, she is the pioneer when it comes to web shows or web series.  Third aside from being cute, she also is one of the few people that truly are a nerd do well story, and I mean that in a good thing.

So lets skip the TV acting stuff and go straight to the reason I think she is someone you should know.  If you’re reading this blog you probably have an interest in computers, games, comics, sci-fi basically general nerd/geek stuff like me (or you’re one of my friends just trying to humor me)  As a youth and to this day she also had some if not all of those interests.  One day back in the mid 2000’s (not sure exactly when, I would ask, but I’m pretty sure I probably wouldn’t get an interview to find out things like this) She started playing WoW (World of Warcraft for you norms)  Through her time playing she started to have an idea for a show about people that play MMORPG’s (Massive…..oh you know what, if you want to know what it stands for look it up) Thus The Guild was born.  The Guild focuses on the online and real life adventures (sometimes misadventures) of a group of  6 MMORPG players.  She started writing the script for TV but eventually started to film episodes herself with the help of Jeff Lewis, Sandeep Parikh, Jane Selle Morgan and Kim Evey.  The rest of the cast Vincent Caso, Amy Okuda, Robin Thorsen, were found through auditions.  After 3 episodes they ran short on cash and she asked for donations through Paypal.  Eventually enough money came in to finish the first season of The Guild.  She was so dedicated that she even handed out fliers at comic conventions promoting the show, it found an audience and now has over 69 million views, 5 awards and 7 nominations.  I think that part of the success is due to how much they seem to squeeze into and episode that is less then 10 minutes long.  The amount of character development shows to me that she really cares about her creation and is in it for more then just money, she wants the fans to enjoy it also.  This shows even more then you would think, when casting for extras for I believe season 2, they invited fans off of their forums to be the extras, that’s pretty kick ass.  The Guild has since expanded into the comic book realm also and has been called the inspiration for “Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog” by Joss Whedon.  She is doing what everyone of us nerds would like to, make a living on something we like to do.

It doesn’t stop there though.  She also did some voice over work for video games.  Then it came out that she was a big Dragon Age fan.  She then wrote and starred in the Dragon Age:Redemption webseries, Bioware liked the series script enough that they even gave her Elven assasin Talis her own DLC for the game.  Felicia was not only the voice over for the character but it was also modeled after her.

She also seems to be genuinely nice to her fans.  My wife and 2 of our friends went to Wizard World Chicago in 2011.  We stopped in at the Rock Jocks (its a movie that Felicia is currently working on) panel.  She was very sweet and pretty gracious to everyone that asked her questions and even talked a little bit about the guild and Buffy.  Either she is the greatest Thespian ever, or she really is the person you see in all the interviews.  She was shy, funny and even at times somewhat awkward, but always she seemed completely honest.  Outside of the convention center we almost met her.  Except that all four of us were too chicken shit to go say hi.  we saw her, Jeff Lewis, and I believe two other people walking out and right past us, within like 20ft (I later found that they were going across the street to Gibsons for dinner) but none of said anything, we just all kind of stared with awkward smiles!

So anyway, if you are a nerd, geek, wanna be producer, director, actor, writer or anything else related, you should take her example.  I believe I heard her say once (I think on The Nerdist Podcast) that you should just keep putting content that you want to make out there, don’t try to please anyone else, and eventually something will stick.  She is one of the reasons (along with a few others like the boys over at Nerdist, Chris Hardwick, Jonah Ray and Matt Mira) that I started blogging again and started my own webseries about beer (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF257ED14691B4177) come on, I have to plug myself!  I have two other ones in the works, just need the time and some cast members.  So I highly recommend watching some of her interviews, listening to some podcasts with her, follow her on twitter (she does answer) and if you like games, give The Guild a try along with The Jeff Lewis 5 minute comedy hour (she guest stars on one)  So thanks for reading!

P.S. Felicia Day if you happen to read this, I would love to be able to do like an email or chat interview with you!