Wil Wheaton had a cameo in J.J. Abrams' STAR TREK?
So we all know Greg Grunberg-- the actor and best friend/good luck charm of J.J. Abrams since childhood who makes an appearance in everything he does-- had a little cameo in Star Trek. But we didn't see his face, we only heard him as young James Kirk's angry stepfather yelling, " That car is in an antique." .
But Grunberg wasn't the only voice cameo in Abrams' reboot of the Star Trek film franchise. Star Trek: Next Generation alum Wil Wheaton(Wesley Crusher), apparently voiced many of the Romulan henchman to Eric Bana's Nero.
This cameo appearance by the all around geek poster child and celebrity was well gaurded up until this week. Through his blog, Wheaton explained the whole experience, from the phone call, to seeing it himself on screen:
Back in the old days, before Twitter exploded into the phenomenon that it is now, I got a message from Greg Grunberg.” … “He sent me a private message that said something like, “JJ needs voice actors for Star Trek. Would you be interested in doing that?” … “I replied in the affirmative as quickly as my fingers could get the thoughts out of my head.” … “About 24 hours later, JJ Abrams called me. It was an entertaining conversation; I couldn’t believe he wanted me to do work on his film, and he couldn’t believe that I wanted to do it. He asked me if I’d be interested in playing some Romulans, and I think I held my hand over the phone so he couldn’t hear me squeal in delight before I calmly told him that, yes, I thought I could do that. I don’t recall precisely why, but we agreed that it would be extra cool to keep it a secret until the heat death of the universe, an uncredited bit of awesome that only a handful of people in the world would know about … unless we told them. (In fact, as far as I know, only a dozen people in the world knew about this until some meddling kids and their dog at Viacom found out about it this summer, and said we had to give me credit and stuff.)”
In a clip provided by TrekMovie, you can hear Wheaton clearly say, "Sir, if we ignite the red matter..."
Check out the clip, and further explanation as to how they changed his voice so it would be unrecognizable below.
“They digitally-altered my voice to sound like different people, but when I saw the movie, I could definitely tell that it was me underneath the effects. In fact, there’s one moment near the end of the movie where one of the Romulans is yelling at Nero, and it’s my plain old voice without any alterations. I bounced in my seat when I saw that in the theater just like … well, you know.”
I appreciate that Abrams didn't want to make the film a cameo fest, it would have completely taken you out of the experience. I'm glad he kept most Grunberg and Wheaton's appearances as just voices. If only he did the same with Tyler Perry.
via: /Film