The sky was a drab gray as our bus drove down the crowded London streets. I leaned my head against the window and stared at passing cars and sites.
Suddenly, I snapped my head around, my attention caught by some kind of golden glow. And there, trotting down the middle of the street on a leisurely stroll, were Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. Most likely, they were in town for the premier of The Wedding Crashers. I couldn’t get over how even the backs of their heads magnetized my eyes. I just knew I was looking at people who were special, even before I saw their faces.
I don’t know why celebrities give off this kind of energy, and I don’t know if everyone senses it, or if it's just a me thing. Or a some of us thing. There are plenty of people who see celebrities as normal people, who don’t feel honored or flustered by their presence. And I know that we all poop in potties, burp, cry, vomit, etc, but I don’t know. There’s just something about celebrities that I find somewhat intoxicating.
While I have met a fair few, none of them have been through random chance. What a shame.
I’ve already covered my many Backstreet Boys meetings, so I’ll skip right over them. But see an earlier chapter.
ComicCon Encounters
From 2012-2019, Jon and I enjoyed going to NYC’s ComicCon. We thought my dad would love going, but he could never make it. So one year, I decided to buy him William Shatner’s autograph - from William Shatner. Unfortunately, autograph purchases do not include photo opportunities, but it was still a fun experience. I got to pick a headshot - I chose one from the original Star Trek era - and bring it to Shatner. “It’s for my dad,” I told him. “He loves you, and he couldn’t be here this year.”
“Oh!” he cried in that classic Shatner voice. “Well you tell him that I’m mad at him! You tell him that he should be here!”
At a time when we were glued to the CW’s “Arrow,” Stephen Amell was doing photo ops for a reasonable price, so Jon and I decided to treat ourselves to one as our souvenir. We were waiting in line when a worker started walking up and down the line making a loud announcement. “Do not touch Stephen,” she told everyone who was waiting. “Stephen will initiate any touching.”
Jon and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. There has to be a story there, and I’m sad we’ll never know what it is.
We didn’t plan anything to say to Stephen, and we’re both socially awkward penguins, so I don’t really remember what happened prior to setting up for our picture. But we flanked Stephen, and then, just before the camera flashed, he put his arms around us. Wait - was that touching that Stephen was initiating? What were we supposed to do about it? Should we put our hands around him, too? Check out the slightly pained looks on our faces in this one.
The next day, we got a photo op with Alex Kingston, aka River Song on “Dr. Who.” She was absolutely gorgeous in real life and wasn’t at all weirded out by our Dr. Who cosplay. (To be honest, ComicCon would not be the place for you if you were!) In the picture with us are our dear friends Mallory and Shaun, who unfortunately passed in late 2022. This is a lovely memento of him, as well.
We had so much fun at NYCC that we started attending smaller cons closer to home. They often offer great panels and meetings with a lot less crowd and hassle than New York. At one in Edison, totally unexpected, Samantha Newark, the voice of Jem in my favorite cartoon of all time, Jem and the Holograms, made an appearance. I think there was a small fee to meet her, but who cares. SHE WAS JEM. This show was an essential part of my Saturday mornings growing up, complete with morality tales and actually great original 80s pop music. I still listen to that music sometimes. Worth every penny.
Sometimes the smaller cons we attended were still a bit of a hike. For a while, I considered Scott Snyder a writing deity. He was the head writer on Batman. His panels at NYCC were among my favorites. He always had interesting stories and insight. While he and Batman’s artist, Greg Capulo, did do signings, they were usually special ticketed events that I could never figure out how to get tickets to! So when we found out Scotty would be signing at a small Con in Westchester, NY, we made the trek. It was one of the best events we ever attended. Jon also got to meet Denny O’Neil, his favorite Batman writer, whose wife admired Jon’s “Keep Calm and Call Batman” shirt.
We actually had the chance to meet Scott Snyder a second time at a small comic shop in Milltown. Unfortunately, he got stuck in traffic, and we ended up waiting in a parking lot for hours. But wait we did, despite how hungry we got.
Back to NYCC...
One year, a sweatshirt in the main lobby caught my eye. It was white with a painted silver belt, and the hood was Princess Leia's iconic A New Hope cinnabon hair style. I needed it in my life. While paying, the person waiting on me struck up on a conversation about the new line of clothing they were hocking, the now well established Her Universe. The idea behind it was to create cute nerdy clothes for women, fully recognizing just how much a girl could actually love series like Star Wars. Imagine! The woman behind the designs was Ashley Eckstein, an adorable blonde who leant her voice talents to the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon as the voice of Ahsoka Tano. I'm a sucker for any female character in SW; they were much harder to come by a decade ago. Ahsoka is a particularly great character; strong physically and emotionally with an amazing sense of self and morality. I swooned a little as the salesperson mentioned her character.
"Ashley is actually here," she told me. "Would you like to meet her?"
Would I ever! She was waved over - it turned out she was standing in the booth selling her clothes! She was amazingly personable. I told her how much I loved Ahsoka and that I had considered cosplaying her at some point.
"Do it!" she gasped. "You would make such a cute Ahsoka!"
I have since attended Con as Ahsoka, and I felt like I had the ultimate blessing in doing so.
In the thick of my Mugglenet podcast obsession, the fall before Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was released, actor Dan Fogler attended Comic-Con. We knew him from the offbeat comedy Fanboys, and we anticipated his role of Jacob Kowalski in Beasts. Even though the upcoming Wizarding World movie had a central display of costumes and props on the Con show floor, Dan was going to be at a small scale table selling an anthology horror comic he wrote and edited. I couldn’t believe we had the chance to meet him! Finding his table proved quite difficult since it was such small potatoes. He also wasn’t AT the table when we arrived, which didn’t help. The person manning it said he’d be there shortly.
A few minutes later, a beyond average looking guy in a baseball cap lugging a big box made his way to the table. THIS was Dan Fogler. Absolute average Joe. Nice as pie. I said to him, “This must be so weird. In a few months, your life is going to totally change. What was working on Fantastic Beasts like?”
“It was a dream come true,” he said.
I read some of the book on the way home that night and it was… super weird. Mallory went to Con with us the next day and wanted to meet Dan. I told him I’d read, and he asked, “What’d you think?”
I made a face.
“Too weird?” he laughed.
It was.
As was The Crimes of Grindlewald and The Secrets of Dumbledore. At least Dan remained a treasure throughout the doomed series.
Broadway Bound
Another great place to meet celebs is the Broadway stage door. I saw Beauty and the Beast on Broadway when I was maybe eight, and I think that was my first stage door experience. One of the actors who came out to sign our playbills was unrecognizable. He teased those of us waiting about who he was before he revealed he had played Lumiere. No wonder we didn’t recognize him without his costume!
In 2003, Wicked flew onto the Broadway scene, and my family fell head over broomstick in love with it. My parents saw it in October and loved it so much they took me for my birthday in December, and I loved it so much I made them take me back with Jon in June. Each time we had the absolute privilege of seeing the original cast. I listened to the soundtrack so much that by the time I saw it again, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenowith were my veritable idols. I could not wait to meet them. This was before Frozen and the stage door was crowded enough! I can’t imagine what it would be like to try to get to Idina now! She was quiet but gracious when she did her signing, dashing quickly down the line, not posing for pictures, but not refusing to sign, either. She must have been exhausted after her performance every night! Kristin, meanwhile, was a tiny little ham of a woman. She waved and blew kisses, even sticking her head out of the SUV door as it drove her off.
Having gone to college for theater, a few friends of mine have sort of made it big in the world of theater. It was fun to see Rob McClure after his Tony nominated stint in Chaplin; more fun when Jelani Remy took us backstage at The Lion King to show us all the ins and outs of how the show worked.
With Rob McClure
On stage with Jelani
For my college graduation, Jon offered to take me to the Broadway show of my choice. I picked Curtains since David Hyde Pierce was starring and I wanted to meet him. Using a discount code, we purchased second row, center seats. They were amazing, although some of the production numbers were so big that I wished we were a little further away to take in the whole shabang. When we went to the stage door, we literally had actors say to us, “You guys had great seats!” That was a first. And I got my picture with DHP, although I have no memory of what we said to each other.
In college, I took a class called “Theater Scenes in NY and NJ.” For spring break, we traveled to London and saw eight shows in seven days. We went to our first show jet lagged as hell as it was the same day we flew in. It was Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” starring Patrick Stuart. I love a good Shakespeare play, which I don’t really think “The Tempest” is. But it was fun to see Sir Pat Stu in his element.
I didn’t know if stage door-ing was a thing in Britain, but a few of us decided to try it for Captain Pickard. There wasn’t a big crowd, and eventually, he had to come out of the theater. When he did, he looked at us and gave a gruff, “I’ll sign autographs, but no pictures.” A few seconds later, a woman near me reached her camera up into the sky and snapped one anyway. I don’t think English was her first language. Pat Stu went down the line signing, and when he got to her, he said, “You took a picture, so you don’t get one.” It was a pretty wow, you’re grumpy moment. Apparently there had been a press event that afternoon, so he must have been exhausted. The picture woman chased him to his cab and attempted to pay; she must have felt badly about the incident. All in all, it was a strange interaction.
While I was studying abroad in London, The Wedding Singer was released as a Broadway show. Stephen Lynch was cast as Robbie Hart, which was a genius move. I had been a fan of Lynch’s since a friend of mine played his Superhero album for me freshman year of college. He is an extremely inappropriate singing comedian who appeals to my bizarre sense of humor.
And he’s kind of hot.
When I got home, I was excited to see The Wedding Singer. It’s my favorite Adam Sandler movie, one that regularly makes me laugh out loud. I actually loved the show. The songs are fun and catchy, the plot is hilarious and sweet at the same time. It’s in my top 10 favorites of all time - though most of you probably never had the privilege of seeing it.
I don’t know why we didn't stage door after the performance - I think it was Tuesday and I had class the next day, so I was paranoid about being out late. But a few weeks later, my friend Tracie and I became mildly obsessed with Stephen. We decided to go to the stage door without even attending the show to meet him. The night I had gone to the theater, the show had gone on at 7:30, so I thought this was their nightly practice - but it wasn’t. We ended up at the stage door before Act I even ended. And it was drizzling. The guy working security was kind and conversational. When the play finally did end, the entire cast came out and signed my soundtrack. The actor who played Sammy, Matthew Saldivar, really touched our hearts at one point. There was a young girl waiting to get her playbill signed, and it ended up pretty wet in the rain. Saldivar went backstage and came back with a giant poster for her, signed by the cast, wrapped in garbage bags. Humbling.
But guess what? No Stephen. ARGH! How was that even possible? We waited an hour in the rain for nothing? Once the place cleared out, the security guard encouraged us to go ahead in and use the bathrooms that were backstage. Tracie and I thought this was some kind of secret code, that Stevie was hanging back there and was told of our plight and wanted to meet us. We poked through some of the dressing rooms and used the very small, incredibly unglamorous bathroom, but no Stevie.
Maybe a year later, the show was closed, and Stephen was on tour. Tracie and I decided to go on a road trip to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire to see him. Not sure why, seeing as it was one of those summers where the price of gas had crossed the $4 mark. Stephen was still performing songs from his album, The Craig Machine, which is probably my favorite of his, so there were tons of laughs. After the show, we were finally successful in meeting him! Yay! My Broadway Cast Recording had a complete original cast set of signatures.
Also, Tracie and I loved Stephen’s shirt so much that she hunted it down and we both bought it. It’s made of a really soft material, too!
My other college bestie, Casey, and I bonded over our love of American Idol Season 2 runner up Clay Aiken. I ended up with some extra tickets to Clay’s holiday concert in 2004, and it was the first time Casey and I socialized outside of class. It was the beginning of a beautiful Clay friendship, including a road trip to North Carolina to hear him debut his album Tried and True.
But for awhile, Clay had a starring role in Spamalot, the Broadway musical based on arguably the funniest movie ever made, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A combination we obviously had to see. It was an honor to meet Clay at the stage door after the show, though he wasn’t really doing pictures. Hence the weird him-in-the-background shot.
Casey and I went to see Spamalot a few times. They had $25 standing room only seats at the back of the theater. On one of our ventures, it happened to be Broadway Fights Aids week. They were selling various memorabilia for charity. And for $250, you could climb up on stage after the show and take a Polaroid with Clay. Upon this announcement, I turned to Casey and said, “Do you think he’ll come to the stage door?”
She didn’t hesitate to respond with, “Do you think they take credit cards?”
So she treated me to that donation. I have the picture…somewhere.
19 Year Later - a Harry Potter Event
Everyone who knows me knows I’m a massive Harry Potter fan. For a while, I was really into Mugglenet’s podcasts. I even worked for the fansite for a few months. On September 1, 2019, they hosted an event titled “19 Years Later,” named after the final book’s epilogue. This was the date Harry and his friends convened on Platform 9 ¾ as adults with their own children. The event took place at Universal Studio’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter after hours. Some of the actors from the films were there. The night started with actor panels and podcasts. Once the theme park closed, we paraded through the fake streets of London and into Diagon Alley. There was tons of free food and unlimited Butterbeer and ice cream. My friend Michael Harle did a reading of the epilogue outside of the rebuilt platform before a small group of us rode the Hogwarts Express together.
The actors themselves were wandering freely. I managed to find Ellie Darcy-Alden, who played Lily Evans, and score a picture with her. After I walked away from her, I checked the picture, and it was all whited out! Luckily, I met her again later in the Quidditch supply shop, and no one was anywhere near her. She graciously retook our photo.
On the street, I ran into Luke Youngblood, who played Lee Jordan and who I adored in ABC’s way too short lived Galavant. Managed to get in a selfie while in motion somehow.
But my favorite meeting that night was the adorable Christian Coulson, who played Tom Riddle in Chamber of Secrets. After this mishap with Ellie, when we took our picture, I asked him to wait while I checked to see if our picture had come out well. Suddenly, he gasped and looked up at the dragon perched on top of Gringotts. “Is it gonna do the thing?” he marveled. And then, like the massive HP fans everyone else present was, he poised to snap a picture of the dragon breathing fire. Seeing one of the actors behave as such a fanboy himself was refreshing and humanizing, and it goes down in my memory as my moment with him.
Boyz II Men
Before there was the Backstreet Boys (though it feels like there never was a before time), there was Boyz II Men. In the summer of 1994, I surfed air waves trying to find “On Bended Knee” or “Water Runs Dry.” The success of their album II (like the Roman numeral) was massive, and I was sucked into the orbit of their sweet harmonies. I read books about them and crushed on Wanya Morris. Like all of my fandom love, my caring for them stretched beyond their popularity, into the release of their albums Evolution and Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya. But I didn’t get to see them in concert - at the height of their popularity, I was too young, and later I was too busy attending Backstreet Boys concerts.
Years later, my mom caught wind that Boyz II Men was performing locally at the State Theater in New Brunswick, and she surprised me with tickets for my birthday. The show was excellent; they’re down one member, but they still perform their classic hits like “Motownphilly,” “End of the Road,” and “Four Seasons of Loneliness.” Their harmonies are still excellent, though Wanya’s voice is the true stand out. He has one of those talents that’s just ridiculous, belting with and eliciting all levels of emotion.
Even better? As we milled around the lobby before the show started, a booth was selling VIP passes to meet them after the show for just $15! Compared to the hundreds my other Boys charge, I was blown away. Of course we paid and got to meet them. Snapped a quick picture and told Wanya he was my first crush when I was eight.
And then, a year or two later, we saw them at the State again, this time joined by my aunt. They were still offering the cheap VIP meet-and-greet. It was an essential add on. I mentioned my crush to Wanya again, and he agreed to a solo picture. Aww.
On February 13, 2020, one month to the day before the state shut down due to COVID-19, my mom and I saw them for a third time. I picked out a cute outfit anticipating another meeting. This time, however, we had missed it. They had announced it on social media and held it before the concert. Darn, kids - I’m just not active enough on the ‘Gram to have seen it! Boo!
Aaron Carter
My cruise roommate for the second Backstreet Boys cruise I attended was a woman named Brittany. I think we found each other through some mutual friends or the roommate finder or something like that. Anyway, Brittany and her friends were huge Aaron Carter fans. They saw him whenever he came around. When he starred in The Fantastics on Broadway, they went frequently. They called themselves Aaron’s Girls, and he knew them all by special nicknames he had for them.
So of course I wanted this experience.
A few years after the cruise, Aaron came to the legendary Stone Pony in Asbury Park, the dive bar concert venue made famous by early Bruce Springsteen appearances. I loved that it’s well known for its rock legend status and I was seeing a Prince of Pop there. Brittany treated me to a VIP meet-and-greet after the show.
I had some trepidation about what meeting Aaron would be like. I’d seen him live when he was 8 years old; he had been amazing, full of energy and stage presence well beyond his years. But early fame had taken its toll on Aaron, and he had well documented struggles with drugs and mental health issues. His family relationships were strained, particularly the one with his older brother, Nick, my favorite Backstreet Boy. Brit warned that even though he was usually very nice, he had at times been odd and stand offish.
But that night, thankfully, was one of the nicer times. He recognized Britt and her friends, and gave us some extra chat time. One of his people was taking pictures, but between the distance they stood at and the poor lighting in the venue, the pictures we took together did not come out well. Before we left, he grabbed my phone and took a selfie with me to ensure I got my VIP money’s worth.
Despite all the negativity surrounding Aaron, this is how I’ll always remember him.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hillary Burton
One night in April, my friend Tonya texted to ask if I wanted to meet Jeffrey Dean Morgan with her the next day. He and his wife had their own whiskey company and were going to be signing bottles at a liquor store in Millburn. I’d seen Morgan in Supernatural, The Walking Dead, and Watchmen; he is a great actor. I normally wouldn’t go out of my way to meet him, but why not? It had been awhile since I went on a crazy adventure. I invited my mom, who is a big fan of Morgan’s work and is always up for this sort of thing.
We got to Millburn two hours before the event and found a line that already snaked into a dumpster lined alley. We stood among the garbage for a while, withstanding sporadic showers and the fact that the store was already sold out of the whiskey! Once the signing started, it was slow going, and there were threats that we wouldn’t make it in. The couple stayed well past their allotted time, though, and were just fine with taking pictures even without signing.
I usually plan what I’m going to say to celebrities at meetings so that I’m not caught off guard, like I was with Brian Littrell (you know, when I blurted out “I love you!” like an idiot). But as we walked into the store and towards the Morgans, I had nothing.
My mom was the hero of the day, though. She walked up to Jeffrey wagging her finger at him. “I waited in line for four hours to tell you one thing,” she growled.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Referring to a character he played opposite on The Walking Dead, she commanded, “Don’t. Fuck. Maggie.”
Hillary immediately gasped in humored disgust and proclaimed, “Ew! Oh my god! She’s like his sister!”
But Jeffrey’s reaction was unforgettable. He laughed so hard he fell onto his knees and had to grab a desk to help himself stand back up. We were all laughing hysterically by then. When we got together to take our picture, he leaned into my mom and whispered in her ear, “I won’t.” Luckily, someone caught the entire exchange on video. You can see Jeffrey's whisper to my mom in this picture.
I’m 100% sure he told Lauren Cohen, the actress who played Maggie, about it later that weekend. Wish we could have been there!
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