Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk explain the embarrassing true stories they re-created for 'Con Man'

Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk explain the embarrassing true stories they re-created for ‘Con Man’

Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk chat with Meredith Woerner, Hero Complex editor, about their upcoming release of “Con Man” (written by Tudyk), as well as the movie industry and their friendship.

By Meredith Woernerwriter

July 10, 2015 4:54 PM PT

According to convention all-star Alan Tudyk, his next project, “Con Man,” which he wrote, produced, directed and starred in, is like Comic-Con meets TV series “Extras.” But there’s a lot of reality in this series that mimics the real experiences he and actor Nathan Fillion have experienced in their many years as a Hall H-filling convention star. And both of them shared one of the real-life moments they re-created in the new series with “Hero Complex.”

“Con Man” is centered around an actor who met great success in a sci-fi series, but has now been relegated to the lesser convention circuit and the struggling job of trying to reboot his career. This is Tudyk’s character Wray Nerely. Meanwhile Fillion plays the actor who found continued success after the series, named Jack Moore. And yes, that very closely mimics the success and convention lifestyle both Fillion and Tudyk would experience after the conclusion of “Firefly.”

While Tudyk didn’t turn into a fame-chasing nightmare, the series is always more fun with an antihero you can really root for and laugh with/at. However, many of the scenes in “Con Man” were directly inspired by real-life experiences.

For example, what happens when two friends work on a video game and one gets all the heroic lines and the other is Alan Tudyk’s character? Turns out this directly mimics both actors experiences while voicing “Halo 3,” which they elaborated about in our exclusive Comic-Con interview.

“We weren’t together when we did our stuff,” says Fillion. “Mine was great. What was yours? I got to say all this great stuff like, ‘let’s keep fighting. Get me a sniper up here. And, move forward, everybody attack.’ What did you do Alan?”

“‘Ow! They’re using real bullets! Let’s hide! I want to go home.’” says Tudyk. “It was all of those things that you don’t really want to hear in battle, or say. ... Whoops dropped a grenade? What do you mean my nickname is friendly fire. That’s rude.”

“Con Man” will also have lots of other convention hall heroes such as Gina Torres (who plays that fake video game director who makes Tudyk switch roles from Razorburn to character Marion), Bruce Campbell and genre directors Joss Whedon and James Gunn. Clearly not playing himself, Whedon is playing a lower-level crew member, a role that Tudyk admitted was rather odd to direct as Whedon had been his director for many years on “Firefly.” And the “Guardians of the Galaxy” director actually plays the Dutch version of Fillion’s character from the sci-fi show. And that’s just perfect.

You can watch the trailer for “Con Man” here [warning: explicit language] and the big release is on Sept. 30.