Wil Wheaton Wanted To Quit Star Trek: TNG After A Producer Tried To 'Sabotage' His Career
"Star Trek: The Next Generation" spawned numerous memorable characters throughout its small-screen run from 1987 to 1994. Among the likes of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart) and Data (Brent Spiner) is Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton), who takes on several positions aboard the USS Enterprise as he goes from a mere kid to a capable member of Starfleet. Of the seven "Next Generation" seasons, he appears at least once in all except Season 6. However, this run was severely tainted for Wheaton when it seemed to him that a producer attempted to sabotage his career.
Wheaton recalls the incident in the book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams," by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman. He had been cast in director Miloš Forman's "Valmont," which he felt could've given him a major boost in Hollywood. Unfortunately, he was told by a producer that taking the job would've interfered with a key "The Next Generation" episode. Wheaton said, "He called my house and told me, 'It's a Wesley episode, and I'm writing a scene with you and Gates [McFadden] that's going to move your mother-son relationship forward, and it's really important to the series,' and he just lied to me."
In the end, he let "Valmont" go in favor of "The Next Generation," only for him to be written out of the script entirely. Wheaton took it as a message from the producers that they felt they owned him, as well as an act of career sabotage. With that, his desire to leave the show behind was born, though he hasn't fully let "Star Trek" go all these years later.
Wheaton has returned to Star Trek post-The Next Generation
It's well-documented that Wil Wheaton had a rough time on the set of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." In addition to losing out on "Valmont" due to an apparent lie told by a producer, he had to continue navigating a strained relationship with his parents that dated back to the start of his acting career — a career he didn't want, as he explained in a post on his website. Still, all these years later, he values the experience and the enduring bonds it allowed him to form, hence why he hasn't left "Star Trek" in his past completely.
Since his time on "The Next Generation" came to a close, Wheaton has reentered the "Star Trek" spotlight multiple times. He first returned to the Wesley Crusher role in 2002's "Star Trek: Nemesis" before making an uncredited voice cameo as a Romulan in 2009's "Star Trek." Twenty years after his last Wesley performance, Wheaton reprised the role on the Paramount+ series "Star Trek: Picard," specifically the Season 2 episode "Farewell." A year later, in 2023, he again returned to the character, this time in a voice-acting capacity, playing Wesley in the "Star Trek: Lower Decks" episode "Old Friends, New Planets" in Season 4.
No matter how you slice it, Wil Wheaton is a "Star Trek" legend, and one can only hope there are more positive acting experiences within the franchise waiting for him in the future.