Nerd HQ is one of the coolest, biggest events at San Diego Comic-Con and we spoke with its founder and creator Zachary Levi to learn more about the changes going on this year.
If you’re unaware of what Nerd HQ is, it’s a a four-day event that happens alongside San Diego Comic-Con hosted and created by Nerd Machine creator Zachary Levi. Nerd HQ aims to give both fans and celebrities a fun, intimate space where they can hold real conversations and raise money and awareness for Operation Smile, an international medical charity that aims to help improve the health and lives of children affected by cleft lips and palates.
We spoke with Levi to discuss the changes happening at Nerd HQ this year, and he gave some great insight into the New Children’s Museum, Operation Smile and way more.
How does it feel going from your previous location in Petco Park to the New Children’s Museum this year? Do you think the change in atmosphere has an affect on Nerd HQ as a whole?
It’s interesting because this is the fourth venue in five years, and I think one of the hardest things is we’ll be in a venue and we’ll learn a lot from [it] but we won’t have the opportunity, with the exception of Petco, to go back to the same space and apply what we learned.
So obviously, we’re yet again moving into a new space and we don’t know exactly what new challenges that may or may not present but we’re ready to handle them as they come.
We’re really excited about the venue for a myriad of reasons, one of them, maybe one of the biggest to be honest, because it’s in the New Children’s Museum not only are we supporting Operation Smile with all the fan/celebrity interactions we do but we’re also, simultaneously by renting that very space, we’re providing money to the non-profit of the New Children’s Museum. It’s almost like a double-down on the philanthropic gala if you will.
Petco was an awesome place but that’s money going to a baseball park, and now we can pay money to a non-profit and it just makes it sweeter. The building itself is awesome — it’s all completely self contained — whereas in Petco we were always dealing with [a lot of different factors] because there’d be a rock show on Thursday night or the Nerdist thing going on above us or The Walking Dead experience going on across the park; [this year] we won’t have any of that.
We’ll have our own contained space that we get to do whatever we want with and we plan on making it as epic as ever. Being out on the concourse at Petco was really cool and open but it was also massive in a lot of ways. We’ve always wanted to maintain an intimacy at Nerd HQ, whether it’s in the gaming area or the panels or the parties or whatever, and logistically it became a difficult thing. You’d have people spread out so far and trying to fix a problem could take a lot longer because they were all the way at the other end of the park and the new location will help us streamline that a good bit.
It sounds like the perfect place!
Yeah, man! And what’s funny is that we’ve looked at every venue in downtown San Diego to try and look for the perfect home but we just never found it before this. What’s great is that in some ways it’s even closer to the convention center, it’s just on the other side. Again, we’ll get to have our own space and have so many cool things: AMD and Sony Playstation 4 are coming in as gaming partners bringing a Star Wars: Battlefront public playable demo for the first time ever, and we got to play it at E3 and I can’t wait for the public to get their hands on it. IGN is going to be our media partner and they’re going to be helping us live-stream all of our panels, and the list of panelists already is so epic I can’t wait to announce all that. And the dance parties! Thursday and Saturday night it’s open to the public, so everyone can come and dance with us.
What made you choose Operation Smile as the charity that gets the proceeds from Nerd HQ?
As a celebrity there are constant charitable events going on, whether it’s charity bowling or poker or golf, and you’re always being asked what’s your charity of choice. I have so many friends that have a charity of choice and they have a cause and I was so envious — I really wanted to have that one cause that I fight for predominately. Not that I don’t still offer my name or time or energy to other things but you want to have a kind of anchor in the non-profit world.
I was actually about to go sing for a Band for TV event and I still didn’t have a charity of choice and I was thinking about it and praying about it and in the course of one week I saw five billboards and five commercials, and I’ve seen them before but not in the same way. I really felt like it was God saying “hey, look at this.” So I did and I started thinking about it and researching [Operation Smile] and realized that it’s such a simple and yet profoundly powerful thing to do.
Aside from the fact that one in ten of these kids actually die from complications of cleft lip or palate, which actually makes it a mortal life or death situation, the other nine of ten might live their entire life never really experiencing happiness or joy, constantly being shunned or looked down on. It broke my heart, man. I grew up a reasonably healthy, middle-class white kid in America with no cleft lip and palate and even if I did there would’ve been immediate medical help for that.
Some kids go their entire lives and they never really experience the full depths of joy because they’re constantly judged or shunned from their village, and I just started thinking about what it would be like to be a child and afraid to show my face or smile. I was just like “okay, I think I figured it out.” I mean I make money partially based off my smile as an actor, and I think about the fact that these kids, not only are they never going to have the opportunity to make money with their physical appearance they won’t even be able to live a normal life and that’s not right, and if there’s anything that can be done to fix that I want to help fix it. That’s why I became an ambassador for them years ago and that’s why when I started Nerd HQ they’re the charity of choice.
On page two: Levi talks about fan/celebrity interactions and Nerd HQ’s unique offers
What do you think brings the actors back each year for Nerd HQ despite Comic-Con being such a crazy, hectic weekend for them?
Well, I think definitely one thing is that there aren’t a lot of places or convention-y type things where you can talk to fans for an hour and raise 4 or 5 grand. And even aside from the non-profit side of things there aren’t a lot of places that allow you to go have a conversations with your fans in an intimate, fun, off-the-cuff way. We just allow for a safe, but really fun and organic place to do that. And I think that a lot of people get that, and then you add the fact that they’re raising money for charity it makes it sweeter.
I’m all about incentive, like how do you incentivize people? How do you make it great for them? Because if you make it great for them then they want to support you, they want to come back, they want to tweet about it. I think that’s what I’ve certainly always strived to build — it’s a place where everyone is thoroughly incentivized. Even in the hectic-ness that is that weekend in San Diego people still want to make it a destination.
And also giving to them — you know that was the whole point of the dance party. The dance party was like, okay let me give you more. I want to give you a place where you can come and have fun because this wasn’t really happening. All these parties that I would go to down at Comic-Con I would run into a lot of people and there were a lot of people there but it was never like a dance party!
A lot of us are there for a whole weekend or at least a couple days, so it’s like give them what they want, what they desire, give them a fun time. Give them the funnest time they can have while they’re there, the funnest way to interact with fans, give them the funnest parties and games and tech and food and drink, and all that. All I do with that is I look at it from my own perspective, as someone who is both fan and celebrity, and I go “What do I want?” I want a dance party, I want a party where there’s no press where no one is taking a picture of me where there’s not a camera in my face. Somewhere I can go crazy and let my hair down and get sweaty and pick my nose and I’m not worried about it.
I want to be able to interact with my fans in a fun and organic way. I would go and do panels for Chuck and there’s 5,000 people sitting there and they might get five minutes, if even that, to ask a question or two at the end of the panel. I’m like “arghhh, why are we doing this? There’s 5,000 people who probably have some fascinating questions to ask us!” You know?
All those little things combine to the question “if I was going to do it, how would I do it?” And that’s what Nerd HQ is about. And I think people have seen that and they’ve responded to that and gone mad and they thank you for creating this thing that needed to happen, a place where they can come and have fun and enjoy this time that is work time but you can make work fun!
How does it feel first coming to San Diego Comic-Con as a guest for Chuck and then now you’re organizing your own offsite events?
It’s super different. I mean, look, this year we’re going to get to do a Heroes Reborn panel in Hall H and I’ve never done a panel in Hall H, it’s really cool and it’s an experience and that feels a very certain way. But I also really love [doing Nerd HQ], and maybe I love it more not just because it’s my baby but because I genuinely like interacting with fans and having fun with them. I think that stuff goes so much farther, as far as your career is concerned and having people support you.
I believe that the fans are the producers of the art. They’re the patrons of art. If they’re not buying tickets to your movies you’re not making movies, if they’re not watching your television show you’re not making a television show. I think it’s really important to keep fostering that relationship with them and giving back to them as much as you can, and interacting with them but also, you know, setting boundaries.
I try to give as much as I can but sometimes I can’t, and people go “Why?” And I have to look at them and say “I’m a human being and I actually have to go right now,” but that starts a conversation with them and they go, “oh, yeah okay I get it!” But I tell you man, the more open and honest a conversation I have with my particular fans the more they’ve understood me and the more they’ve basically shown me respect for that.
Like, it’s weird because I know there’s a lot of people. Just the other day, as an example, I was doing a press day here at the hotel in New York and there were some fans and autograph-seekers waiting outside for various actors to walk out of the hotel. And at one point there was an actor, who I won’t name but I actually know him and he’s a very kind person, he had to get out of the building and go into his car and he didn’t have time to take pictures or sign autographs and stuff and I saw it all happen. I went out later and I was signing for people and taking pictures because I had time and one of the guys was saying, “Oh, you’re so much nicer than the other guy. He never stops for us,” and I said “Hey, everyone’s on their own journey.”
You have no idea what’s going on in that person’s life, celebrities aren’t just puppets who just give you want they want, we’re living our actual lives. Who knows, he might’ve had a family member in the hospital, you have no idea but you can’t take it personally if it’s not in their schedule. Or maybe they’re an introvert, you never know!
The more honest conversation you can have with fans, that I think just doesn’t happen enough, the more you start bridging that gap of not understanding. And then when I go to them, even in the open to the public fandom dance parties, by the way a lot of celebrities will still come to, they get it.
Which, by the way, a lot of celebrities will still come to [the dance parties]. You know we’d have a little VIP section or whatever so they’re not getting mobbed but then they’ll come up and dance near the stanchion and people start pulling out their phone the whole time and the celebrities start shying away. I’m literally looking at the people at the dance floor going, “What would you rather have? Would you rather have a weird, fuzzy, blurry photo of me or Nathan Fillion, or whoever, so you can go back and show your friends to say ‘look how close I got to Nathan Fillion,’ or would you rather have a dance for three hours with them right next to you, smiling and high-five-ing and know that you had that memory?”
You don’t need photographic evidence of it, you know you had it! And it’s weird because people are die-hards to have it photographed so they can show people but forget that! Forget having to show people, you’ll know you had the moment.
I was sitting down with this really big celebrity once, who again I won’t name, and they were talking about how fascinating it is. [Fans] would come up to him and they’d ask, “Can I take a picture?” He’d say “I tell you what. You can either have a picture and we can take that in ten seconds, or you can come sit down and we can talk for fifteen minutes.” And guess what 90% of them wanted? Pictures! They wanted the picture. And even before I was famous I would never do that, because that doesn’t mean I met that person, they don’t know who I am. I would rather sit down, pick their brain for fifteen minutes, and have a real interaction so they know who I am at the end, so if I ever did bump into them again they’d go “Hey, you’re the guy I met at that restaurant and talked with.”
I hope for a day where that does happen, and I hope for a day where we can set up really safe environments with photo booths or whatever, but when it comes to letting our hair down and dancing on the dance floor I don’t want to have stanchions or VIP sections I want people to just enjoy themselves all together! Unfortunately, though, the world we live in is one where fans can get a little fan-y and that’s fine! I still love them and I try to provide them what I provide them and I provide celebrities what I provide them and I try to interact with them all as much as I can and as safely as I can.