Felicia Day will be in the Boston area Wednesday for a book signing at the Coolidge Corner Theater. With her memoir, “You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost),” the quirky actress-comedian and avid gamer has added yet another platform to her impressive curriculum vitae. A champion of technology and the power of online communities, Day told us she’s excited to meet her fans in person.
“After learning so much about me, I’ll be interested to see how they react,” she said, laughing.
In her book, Day delves into her hippie home-schooled upbringing in the South, the pressures that come with high academic and musical achievement — the University of Texas offered her a full scholarship for violin at 15 — and her life since.
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Day starred in the Syfy series
“Eureka” and CW’s “Supernatural,” but her big break came after appearing in the Internet musical “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” with Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion in 2008. That’s when she enlisted musician Jed Whedon — brother of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” creator Joss Whedon — to produce a music video, “(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar?” The song, with lyrics written by Day and music by Whedon, became the No. 1 music video on iTunes soon after its release, and garnered more than 1 million views in the first week.
“We recorded it in a [literal] closet,” she says. “I think it’s pretty great that the democracy of the audience can transcend all the gatekeepers of the media, and show that diversity is wanted and needed.”
In 2012, she created Geek & Sundry, a
YouTube channel and company that was later bought by Legendary Entertainment, with Day becoming the creative officer of all of the new company’s media platforms. She says her unconventional material, including the book, is an attempt to celebrate geeks and underdogs — what she calls “out-of-the-box subcultures.”
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“I’m one of those people that I just exist, whether people want me to exist or not,” Day says. “It does require some perseverance and energy, but I’m not going to let my world be curtailed by other people’s cliches of who I should be.”