We arrived to the Main Stage just before the 11am panel was about to begin. The large room was perfectly chilled by the air conditioning and that was most welcome, given our short but smoldering walk in from the parking deck.   

GiGi was able to place herself on a last remaining seat on the front row and I chose a spot a few rows back and to the side, the stage in full view. Both vantage points served us well.  

In our, almost, 15 years, we’ve gotten to experience a great variety of panels, mostly fielding questions stemming from fans favorite movies, television shows and characters. However, given the strikes of SAG-AFTRA and WGA, those kinds of questions were off the table. That left the entire room anxious to see how these Q&A’s would go. 

John de Lancie took the stage on his own, no MC or moderator to mention him, thus the crowd took a few extra seconds to react. Nevertheless, the welcome was a warm one. He carried on with leading the panel himself, which for conventions like this, was a first. The crowd seem to really enjoy the intimacy of this choice.  

He led with vulnerability, speaking of his early struggles with dyslexia and having to find his own way through those struggles to pursue the thing he always knew he wanted to, become an actor. There wasn’t a specific note on how he “got in to it”, just that, like with most actors, it’s not just something they choose to do, THEY HAVE TO DO IT. 

It wasn’t the easiest thing to navigate the work that could be spoken of but John did a great job with each question. He was even able to mention things he’d worked on with the late Leonard Nimoy (Mysterious Island) and being on stage with Patrick Stewart. 

His talk of the theater work lead to even more vulnerability as he mentioned his fondness for really connecting with the body of work as well as the audience, sighting the biggest differences between acting on stage and in anything else is that the actor is with the script for hours a day, weeks at time. They know the work intimately and can thus respond from that place, to a different audience each night, for 6-8 weeks, it becomes something all it’s own. With television shows, movies and voice work, the actor often pops in/out, in fragments of the complete work. It’s the craft and work, he mentions, just very different in it’s process and connection levels. 

This segued nicely into another peak behind the acting curtain with a, sobering, quote “95% of actors in the union are unemployed at any given moment”…We’ll let that sink in a bit. 

From this quote John went on to make some heartfelt points regarding the importance of maintaining self care habits, particularly, mental health care, sighting exercise (movement) as one of his favorite methods of caring for himself.

He again spoke of the lack of work actors experience so often and how “constantly waiting for a phone call” can greatly contribute to depression and fully admitted to “saying YES, with difficulty” to projects that perhaps weren’t such a great fit, in order to “not just be sitting at home” with his thoughts.

There is no normal day, no regular schedule for me, just caffeine and a plan of attack”

De Lancie’s catalog starts in 1975 and though we get really excited when thinking/speaking about “the things” that made him most famous, given the level of vulnerability and current climate of the industry, I found myself taking my time looking through the list with quite a bit more presence this time, remembering that to an actor, each part is of equal importance to them, no matter the scale.

In my personal viewing, I’ve made a bit of a deep dive into various animated universes and that’s reignited my admiration/appreciation of voice acting. It delighted me to see that John has done so much of it and I know I will smile a little wider when I see him in an episode of a show I’m not expecting him in, grateful that he was given the role and was able to do the work he loves.

I don’t think there could have been a better tone setting for the remainder of our panel experiences than John de Lancie’s. The actors heartcry had been sounded and we were more than ready to help them echo it!!

All the best to you, always!!