Armageddon Expo Q&A with festival director Bill Geradts

Congrats on getting to 30. How does it feel?

It's a surreal feeling because like anybody who's been doing something for a long time, it doesn't feel like it's been that long. Every year is different and certainly going through the pandemic years feels like we hit warp speed every time we did a show. So yeah, I'm still enjoying it a lot. Every year the show feels like a Phoenix reborn. It's just something new, something different. We're always striving to be different. And for a 30th anniversary show, this one feels very different to anything we've done, certainly for the last half dozen years.

One of the first Armageddon events I ever went to was at the Aotea Center. Does that feel a lifetime away now?

So far away. Purely because, I mean, we were at the Aotea for 10 years and we changed and evolved from being on the ground floor to doing everywhere. By the time we moved from there, I know there's some people that still miss it because there's a feeling of warmth when you think back and nostalgia, feeling of nostalgia when you look back at those shows. And they were good shows. I miss the stage.

That's the main thing I miss from the Aotea is the stage. I loved the Aotea stage, it was a great stage and two things I remember most about it, the memories from that one is when we did a giant pillow fight on the stage, it was just perfect for it. And one year when we had Robert Picardo from Star Trek Voyager, and he went on stage singing opera at the Aotea Centre stage. That was a moment that I was just off stage and it was just magical. Yeah, it's the nostalgia I feel for it is great, but we couldn't be doing what we're doing now there, so I'm happy to be doing more for everybody.

What were your greatest hopes for the festival when you began? What was the one thing you really wanted to do and have you achieved it?

We had absolutely no hopes. I was a fanboy. I was a huge Doctor Who nerd, I was reading my comics. Nobody was really doing anything solid at that point. There was a small comic event that had sort of taken place, but nothing else. We just thought it'd be fun to do. I mean, I didn't have preconceptions and certainly if you wind back the clock and said 30 years from now you're still going to be doing this, I would've just thought you were drunk! It was never intended to be what it has become. That is very much the story of Armageddon is that we make plans when we're doing things, but very rarely do the scale or the size of what we're doing is something that we plan from day one. It just creates itself more than anything else. I never envisioned that it would be what it is. To a degree, it's an entity unto itself. And it does create itself. I mean, this celebrity lineup that we've got was never intended to be what we were doing. I mean, that was a year ago. We were sort of like, "Oh, well let's do this." It just, certain things happen, certain elements come together and create this new thing. And we've always been a Frankenstein monster of a show in terms of what elements to put into it. Then I just stand around at the beginning of it and just scream "It's alive" and away we go. That hasn't really changed much.

When you sit around each year, how do you decide who you want to get?

I think that this year we wanted to get Elijah Wood. We wanted to have somebody big for the guest and he was the core guest that we tried to get. It took a while to get him confirmed. And then while that was happening, just other things came in. I mean, I know most of the guests that we've got for next year already! A lot of the time It's just who's available, who's interested, agents that we talk to, deals that we make. Very rarely is it a fully constructed plan. This year is a great example of that. It is bigger than I could have dreamed it being, but it wasn't, I wouldn't say, planned out - hoped for maybe would be a better term but planned is far from that.

Who was the one guest you've loved having here most and why?

There are so many of the guests I've enjoyed. Bruce Boxleitner was a personal favorite because I love Babylon 5. Jenna Coleman (Dr Who) would be high on my list because I got to be with her when she saw the trailer for one of the last episodes that she was in. And that was just a nice little moment, but there's just moments that you remember. I'm looking forward to meeting Billie Piper again for the same Doctor Who sort of thing. We had Kate Mulgrew in 2023 and I got to spend quite a bit of time with her and that was truly magical. So I mean like a father who has to ask or gets asked"Who's your favourite child?" I don't really want to say anybody specifically, but there's a lot of highlights.

And who was the one you booked who was a real surprise? Somebody you booked not knowing how they'd take off.

Oh, funnily enough, it was just after the pandemic, Grace Van Dien, we hosted her in Tauranga and she had a crazy response. It was right in the middle or just after she'd been on Stranger Things and the timing worked out well, but going in, I just assumed she'd be a nice guest to have and that would be it. And then on the day it was fricking insane and she was delightful, but it was just one of those, I didn't see it coming kind of things.She played the cheerleader. She died pretty much in one episode, but for some reason she just hit and we had hundreds people queuing up for her. It was crazy.

If I look towards the guests that are coming to this October show, Damien Haas one of the animation guests, I don't know Smosh. I don't follow a lot of the stuff he does, but a lot of people do. And he's proven to be so far to be very popular. So that's just one of those things where I personally am invested a lot in fandom, but I'm also in my fifties now, so there's a lot of fandom that I'm not necessarily getting.

So who would you still love to get here and why?

David Tennant is my Do or Die. Yeah. David Tennant, I would die a happy man afterwards. I'd retire. But he's my Mount Everest yes. But he works a lot. He's based in England. The only way I'm getting tenant is if he's filming in New Zealand and we can make it work. But he's my make or break. So having Billie Piper here is pretty high up as well.

What's been your favorite moment in the show, the one that kept you going when things were tough?

A lot of it isn't so much the guest stuff is the thing people focus on and what not. But honestly, for me, a lot of it has just been some of the interactions with attendees, watching families laughing and having fun and the level of enjoyment people get from the show is surprisingly soothing to the soul. Just to see something that you've had a hand in creating. I mean, I definitely am the ringmaster of this event, but there's a lot of people making it happen. But to see that and then to see people just laughing and crying and celebrating and enjoying themselves in a way that you don't see at pretty much any other event really, is really enjoyable. It really is. That's the thing. I have moments from certain shows that I've remembered, and most of the time it's just somebody doing exactly that.

Will you be asking Billie Piper if she's the new Doctor Who?

No, I won't because I don't think she knows. And also I don't think she is, but Billie Piper - she's Rose, she's the Moment, she's Wednesday, she's Billie Piper. I mean, geez, I don't need her to be more than that. And when the show eventually returns and they do something there, I'm sure it'll be fun. I'm sure it'll be enjoyable and I'm glad she's the one doing it, but I don't think even she knows what that end scene really is.

Will you expect Billie to be the most popular at the show?

No. Again, the most popular is such a hard thing because every guest is popular for certain reasons. I think that Billie will be very popular, but I would say Alan Tudyk is going to hit a lot of people's joy buttons. Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis, Nolan North, Damian Haas, and John Boyega. I think our aim is always to have a diversity in terms of the guests because one person's, "oh my God, I can't believe that," is another person's, "I don't know who that is." And so with this lineup, we've got a lot of guests that definitely are, "holy crap, I don't believe that person's here," kind of guest, which is great. Very rarely do we have one or two of those and never do we have as many as we have this time round. Honestly, I don't think we will again or who knows, I wasn't planning it this year.

Well, you sort of started off with a lineup that was pretty much from the Shire at the time and it ended up being back in space again, didn't it?

Well, again, I like to have that mix. A Doctor Who, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, there's the three biggest sci-fi stuff. If we had a Harry Potter person, we would've rounded it off and we've got somebody from Harry Potter coming next year. 

How do you see the Expo evolving over coming years and which festivals do you draw inspiration from?

We're always trying to do a bit more and different, the gaming aspect, and we've certainly got a lot of new things this year that we're doing. We're looking to add more there. We always look at other shows, but quite honestly, we do pretty well for what we do. I mean, one of the benefits of seeing other events is it just validates how well we do it here.

People assume because we're New Zealand that it's got to be that the show's inferior in some way or we don't get quite what other people get. And there's an element of that because show if you're doing New York ComicCon, you can get a lot of people who can just drive to the show or is in the country. But in terms of the actual aspect of the show, I would put what we do up against any other show at the very least as comparable.

Any abandoned ideas, things from the past that you kind of wish you could have done or achieved that during it, things that failed to happen, could have happened or didn't happen?

Oh God. We always move from one thing that we do to the other. I mean, we're working on something next year that we were talking about doing five years ago. There's never an idea that's really put to the side. It's just either it just doesn't happen or it's not feasible or the numbers don't line up, but we park it and we move on and then maybe we'll pull it out of mothballs and brush it off. Or maybe it's doable. I mean, there's always stuff that we are doing now that we've changed or we've added to. There's nothing specific though.

Armageddon Expo runs in Auckland from Friday October 24 to Monday October 27. For more visit armageddonexpo.com