Fans joined Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk for a laugh-filled hour on Saturday at 1PM in Hyatt Centennial II-IV. When moderator Ryan Segur turned the panel over to the two guests and exited the stage, Fillion immediately turned to Tudyk and asked, “How long has it been?” Tudyk said they’ve been doing cons for 21 years now. “Before phones were cameras,” Fillion joked. Although they’ve been friends since they worked together on Firefly, they actually met before that, when Tudyk was working at Harry’s Burritos in New York City. “I was broke,” he said, referring to it as the time before he was “movie-star Alan” and was still trying to become an actor. Tudyk swears he remembers Fillion as the guy who wanted black beans. Their close bond was apparent from the moment the panel began.
While reminiscing about the early years of their long friendship, Fillion described Tudyk’s apartment in New York as filled with oddities, like a smallpox-diseased wax leg and an eclectic collection of taxidermy specimens. Tudyk offered to let Fillion stay while filming nearby. Fillion said all he could think of was that smallpox leg. At some point, he did stay with Tudyk and his menagerie. Among them, was Tony the red squirrel. Fillion said he’d pose the squirrel in different places and situations in the apartment while Tudyk was out, as if Tony were having adventures while Tudyk was away.
That led Tudyk to recount the time he house-sat for Fillion. This was back when Tudyk used to smoke, which he proudly said he’d quit in 2006. Fillion used to offer him different lighters that would zap him when he tried to use them. He got wise to the joke and would only use matches in Fillion’s home. So Fillion left a paper and pen on the table. On the last day, Tudyk decided to write him a note. The pen, of course, sitting there innocently until the end of his stay, zapped him.
Fillion smilingly recalled waiting a much longer time to play another joke. Tudyk once left a family photo album behind and promptly forgot about it. While filming the bar scene in Serenity, Fillion printed out a bunch of “goofy pictures” from Tudyk’s childhood and, on Tudyk’s birthday, posted them above the bar. According to Fillion, after a where-how moment, Tudyk immediately said, “This was Nathan!” Tudyk replied, “Who else could it be?”
Fillion looked at Tudyk and said it’s been fun, us being pals. They smiled, warmly shook hands, and then gave each other a big hug in a sweet moment that resonated with the crowd more deeply than words could ever do.
After that, they opened the panel to questions from the audience. Various topics arose, such Tudyk’s amazing career in voice-over acting. Fillion says it seems that whenever he’s watching something from Disney, he realizes, “That’s Alan!” Fillion would love to voice something in Star Wars. He noted that when he had Tudyk as a guest on his show, they gave him a nice funeral after his death, but when Tudyk had Fillion on his show, he says Tudyk told him, “You’ll be on the menu.” In his defense, Tudyk joked that he’d tried valiantly to save Fillion’s character, the octopus-alien named 42, and ate him only because it was 42’s last request. But why, Fillion wanted to know, did he ask for extra butter?
At one point, they talked about writing their own shows. Fillion says Tudyk quickly wrote a whole season of Con Man, while Fillion only wrote about three scenes of his own idea. But “the scenes were gold,” Tudyk said. When Fillion replied, “Hey, you’re my favorite,” Tudyk shot back a well-known line in his Dr. Vanderspeigle voice from Resident Alien, “This is some (expletive deleted).”
When asked about the first time they got recognition from fans, Tudyk says what he remembers most is while making Firefly, they did a photo shoot for TV Guide and were told a few fans were waiting outside to meet them just because it was a Joss Whedon show. It hadn’t even aired yet. Fillion recalled Whedon taking him to Comic Con. When Whedon started talking about a new show called Firefly, the crowd went so crazy that Fillion “thought there was an earthquake.” Tudyk said in agreement, “We’re never gonna get cancelled!” How we all wish that had turned out to be true. Fillion summed up the show, the panel, and their friendship, when he said, “We were living a dream.”
After the panel, Tudyk stopped for a moment to tell us if he’s having a good time. “Absolutely,” he said. “It’s great. The energy is really great. People are very generous. I love the costumes. Everybody’s in it to have fun.”
