My girlcrush of the year!
Wired magazine interviewed Felicia Day here. I think her “isolated” success is very telling about how media industry folks do NOT understand how the game is changing right beneath their feet. Perhaps the huge swell of interest that the new season of The Guild is generating will FINALLY translate into interest from the trad folks. Felicia Day is the talented, 2.0 version of Steven Spielberg people. Pay attention to the numbers! She has MILLIONS of fans but can’t get cast as anything other than the cat lady, still, to this day???
Felicia Day’s stardom wasn’t handed down to her from on high by Hollywood. She’s guest-starred on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and House, but most of her legions of fans still know her because of a show she wrote and produced herself that doesn’t air on any network.
Now in its third season, The Guild — Day’s microbudget comedic web series about a group of online gamers — enjoys financing from Microsoft as well as cushy placement on the Xbox 360 dashboard. But fans are still discovering Day and her nerdy ways online.
Wired.com: Did the impetus for creating The Guild stem from being a struggling actress and writer in Hollywood?
Day: I’d been in Hollywood for five years before I started writing The Guild. I worked enough to pay all my bills. So I was very lucky in that respect. Most people don’t make a living acting. But being the kind of girl who is stereotyped as the secretary — or I’ve played a crazy cat lady five times, which is fine because I do that very well — but at a certain point you’re like, “I am more than this.” That’s why I wrote Codex (her character in The Guild). I sat down and was like, “What role would I have the most fun playing and would never be offered to me.” I think Codex, in a mainstream world, would have a perfect nose and great highlights, but that’s not reality. And I wanted to, somehow, infuse reality into what I was doing.
Wired.com: People respond fairly enthusiastically.
Day: When our music video hit the top 10 on iTunes over all the label stuff, I have to admit that I was definitely heartened. I do like breaking the common patterns of behavior. When we have a victory like that, it’s very fulfilling. We’re going to be in stores with the DVD right next to major TV shows. We shoot in my shed. So, I don’t know, that’s just a cool message. And when I have people come up and say, “Because of you I started composing again. Or, “I’m making my own website without waiting for funding.” That’s awesome.
Born Curious 
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