Hello there.
I’m Paul Rea from the Official Teen Wolf Wiki and today I’m going to do some real
talk about my recent experiences on the Teen Wolf Movie set.
Of course, I’m doing real talk with the fake voice right now.
My jaw recovery is continuing well, but I’m still hard to understand when I speak.
Beyond that, I’m still so emotional about what went down in Atlanta on last Wednesday
that I don’t think I could make my points without getting upset.
This Robot Clone of my voice will say everything clearly and not suffer an emotional breakdown.
Usually my videos are fun.
You should subscribe to the channel if you like Teen Wolf Canon and Nostalgia because
I take a trip back to Beacon Hills every week.
This video is long on talking and short on flashy visual content.
But I’m going to tell the whole story because it’s helping me process how I feel beyond
the blinding rage and crushing heartbreak.
I’ve done the chapters thing so you can skip ahead to what happened when I got thrown
off set, and to where I explain why I think the network and some of my viewers are wrong
in their complaints that some of the content I posted from set was some how too much.
And, while you can skip around, I am telling the whole story here, even the bits that make
me look ridiculous.
If you’re interested, it’s all in here.
What led up to this?
A quick rundown of events leading up to my removal from the Teen Wolf movie set.
Jeff Davis is a friend of mine.
I got to know Jeff during the run of Teen Wolf, I was the pedantic and annoying Teen
Wolf Wiki Guy, and he was the patient and always accessible show runner who understood
the importance of what I was trying to accomplish
with the Wiki.
Once the show ended, Jeff and I kept up the correspondence and actually got to know each
other a bit better.
In 2021 we did a phone interview.
Jeff Davis: Hello?
Paul Rea: Hello Jeff Davis, it's Paul Rea.
How are you?
Jeff: Paul, I'm good.
How are you?
Paul: I'm doing very well, thank you very much.
Jeff: Excellent.
It's nice to talk to you after so long.
I know we email here and there but
nice to hear your voice.
In that interview, less than a year ago, we discussed how impossible it would be to make
more Teen Wolf with the IP divided between MGM and MTV.
The story of how that all changed and why we’re now getting a new Teen Wolf movie
is available in the video linked above.
My point in this section is just to get you to understand that I am known and supported
by the Teen Wolf production team.
I was invited – personally invited – to come to set this week.
I’m not some random off the street who stumbled in and started filming.
Why did you solicit money for this trip?
My trip was costly.
I do make a little income off this YouTube channel, but that revenue has been down quite
a bit this year due to algorithmic changes and maybe this fake voice.
Either way it didn’t look like I would make enough to travel and stay in Atlanta for the
four days I had planned.
I came up with the Ko-Fi page and the channel memberships specifically to try to break even
on this trip.
That’s it.
Ain’t nobody getting rich out here, especially not these days.
In the end I was able to pay for the hotel fully with your generous donations.
I’m still out money for gas ($50) and food ($65) but I’ll take from my savings to handle
that, I am not soliciting any more donations.
I’ve never made any profit reporting on Teen Wolf.
I am a fan and I am pedantic about canon.
The combination led me to make the wiki.
My background as a reporter led to the creation of Teen Wolf News.
None of my wiki-related activities ever paid me a penny.
In fact, covering Teen Wolf at Comic Con, visiting the set in Los Angeles, and traveling
to San Francisco to the Fandom Headquarters ended up costing me a small fortune between
2015 and 2017.
I did all these things because It was necessary to keep the wiki as accurate as possible and
provide my readers and viewers with as much information.
as I can about production without spoiling the plot details of episodes.
I’ve never asked for donations before this trip, but it was the difference between getting
to go and having to decline the invitation.
And I’m thankful for each and every person who helped me get there.
You claim you avoid spoilers?
Director Tim Andrew: Okay, so here we go.
Ready?
Action, grab guns!
I mentioned that, when I report on production, I want to provide a behind the scenes experience
without giving away anything that could spoil the story.
So, how do I do that?
I start by looking at what’s publicly known already either through cast social media or
production information released widely to the public.
I also consider common sense inferences that fans will make from all the publicly available information.
Inferences like, if these two characters are announced to be in the movie, they’re probably
going to talk to each other in the movie at some point.
Showing that these two, publicly known, characters do indeed talk to each other at some point,
without revealing what’s being said, is not a spoiler.
I shouldn't have to say it but I will.
There are exceptions to everything and that's where my experience and foreknowledge of this particular production comes into play.
Not to be all, "I know what I'm doing so trust me." but I kind of do know what I'm doing when it comes to Teen Wolf.
There is a glaring recent exception to the "two publicly known characters" example that I'll show you in a few minutes.
Recognizing those exceptions is where my professional news judgement comes into play.
I'm not always right. But I haven't gotten it glaringly wrong in a very long time.
To be fair (repeated).
To be fair, I know so much about this movie right now I could set up a whole spoiler site
behind a paywall and cash in.
That’s not what I’m about.
I want people to be surprised and delighted when they see what happens.
At least as surprised and delighted as I was when I learned about the details of the story.
I also respect Jeff, Joe, Russell and the rest of the crew way too much to betray that trust.
What happened on the day?
This brings me to the events of Wednesday April 27, my third day on the Teen Wolf Movie set.
At this point I had publicly released exactly one, three-minute video showing mostly production
work and a few cast members in front of the cameras during rehearsals and between scenes.
In just a few minutes I’ll give you my explanation of how all these scenes – from the location
to the character costumes and interactions – are completely spoiler free.
Before everything came crashing down, I had two delightful days on set.
I met legendary director and personal idol Russell Mulcahy.
One of the industries most creative costume designers Barbara Vazquez.
Special effects master Erik Porn.
And Hair and make-up superstar Carleigh Herbert.
Please forgive the pronunciations I can’t get this fake voice to say things correctly.
Oh, and I met Joe Genier.
I know you’ve seen him or at least his name in the credits.
Joe is an Executive Producer but it’s hard to quantify just how important he is to Teen Wolf.
He’s a guiding hand on set working with every single department from the writing and
directing to the folks making sure herds of background players show up.
Joe's job is to turn a bunch of mental images into real world stuff.
And he may well be the nicest and most easy going, very- important-person, I ever met.
Anyway, all these folks and the others from the crew I interacted with, every single one
of them, were loving and very welcoming.
Every time I was introduced as being, “from the wiki."
the response was always a variation of, “Oh, you’re that guy”, followed by a big smile.
Many of them then shared some personal story of something I’d posted or reported on in
the past that they remembered.
There’s more on that, I may actually talk about it in a happier video at some point
in the future, but for now, I just want to paint a picture of how things were going before
Wednesday.
When I arrived on set for Day three, I could feel something was different.
People seemed quiet around me.
Someone I recognized as an employee of the network was actually talking to Barbara and
Carleigh about this picture that I’d posted of Ian Bohen.
I immediately felt like I was in the middle of a mean girls sketch on S-N-L.
Cady: Have you ever walked up to people and realized they were just talking about you?
Have you ever had it happen sixty times in a row?
That's how it felt to me, right down to the confused and hostile stares.
The good thing about doing such a long video is that I have time to think about things
during the hours it takes to edit it.
In this case, I rethought how I initially wrote this section.
Initially, it was full of what I consider biting humor.
but I realize now it could also be interpreted as venomous, and a personal attack, on a person
I don't actually know.
While I do feel that I was legitimately wronged by professionals who should have known better
and handled the situation better, name-calling, and photoshopping insulting joke imagery,
suggesting that I was wronged by ridiculous minions of some dark corporate entity, isn't
really necessary to tell this story.
But I'm not a saint, so here's a look at some of the original visuals.
But just a short look.
Now, I'm going to stick to the facts here and just do a dry recitation of what I know
to be true.
I was actually rolling video and have some, not-very-good, audio of all of this, but again,
that's not going to change what happened, and it involves people I don't know and people
I do know and really like, so that video is never going to see the light of day.
Here's how it went down.
I arrived on set and overheard the network employee complaining about me to two crew
members I had met during the previous days.
I believe, though I have no proof other than the hostile looks from cast members who had
been friendly to me on Tuesday, that this employee had been complaining about me to
a number of people before I arrived.
This employee apparently called in Jeff. because I had just left him, in his trailer, writing
Wolf Pack 10 minutes before he suddenly showed up on set.
After what appeared to be a brief but heated exchange, Jeff came over to me and we walked
away from the area where cast and crew were gathered.
He explained that the network did not like my video and wanted it taken down.
They did not like that I took donations to pay for my trip and wanted the Ko-Fi site removed.
Finally he said the network wanted me to leave set.
And he felt that would be best.
He did not elaborate on this last at all.
And we haven't spoken of it since, but I have to think that he sensed that this employee
had poisoned the well for me with many in the cast and crew.
Because of this network employee, the very people I was there to cover and celebrate
their work were suspicious of me now.
Jeff was apologetic.
I was too.
I told him I could not remove the Ko-Fi stuff because I'd made a binding agreement with
my supporters.
Then I was gone.
Like the morning star, I was cast out and back to my hotel.
And I cried.
I'm not ashamed to admit it, but I was suprised to find my self sobbing because I haven't
cried since 2006, during a particularly bad breakup.
That, and the fact that I take a drug to regulate my serotonin levels.
Meaning it should be chemically impossible for me to feel that bad.
Many apologetic texts from Jeff followed.
This caused many more tears because I never wanted to place him in such a difficult situation.
He's got a movie in production, and two new TV series in various stages of pre-production.
He doesn't have time to deal with bullshit like this.
But Jeff took the time for me.
He's still my friend and this situation didn't change that.
I'll elaborate about the specific complaints I've heard fourth hand from the network in
a moment, but just to be clear, the highest levels of the Teen Wolf production knew exactly
what I was doing on set.
Some but not all of the footage I shot was seen prior to my posting.
I was always aware of the chance that the network wouldn't like something I posted.
But I wasn't sneaking around.
Everybody I interacted with knew my deal.
What Paramount claims I did.
So, what has the network exactly said I did wrong.
I came by this information fourth hand, so I cannot vouch for its 100% accuracy, but
the employee apparently reported back to the bosses at Mount Doom that I had revealed “full
scenes of footage” and “plot elements” from the movie itself.
They also claimed I was “leaking sensitive information”.
Frau Farbissina: Lies. All lies!
Why Paramount is wrong.
This part of my very long video may be fascinating or you may find it incredibly boring, either
way, if you watch through, you will have a great understanding of all the thought and
care I take in deciding if something is okay to show.
I agonized over every single frame of what I showed and every bit of information I reported
during my time on set to make sure I wasn’t ruining something.
To be accused of this is insulting and just plain wrong.
What "sensitive information" did I "leak"?
The only sensitive information I can think of would be the location.
This is usually quite sensitive because knowing the location of a movie shoot places everyone
in a little bit of danger from the one crazy fan who might want to try something.
Of course, I was already at the location so…
The call is coming from inside the house!
God, this robot voice cannot tell a joke worth shit.
Anyway, I was not the one who revealed where they were working.
Let me repeat so nobody misses it – I was not the person who told the world that they
were shooting lacrosse at Kennesaw State University.
In fact, my video came out more than ten days after it was first publicly announced that
Teen Wolf would be filming la-cross at Kennesaw State University.
That release of information also included all the dates and the fact that they would
be filming at the location all-day, every day.
This notice appeared on facebook and other social.
It had it’s own special webpage designed to recruit background actors and lacrosse players.
All these details were republished across multiple different media.
It was not a secret, none of this officially released location information was reported
vaguely to preserve the security of the set and there was no attempt to disguise what
was being shot.
Again, Paul Rea and Teen Wolf News did not reveal some secret that this location was
active during these dates.
That’s all I can imagine the network flacks are talking about with their "sensitive-information" complaint.
I can’t think of anything else in any of what you saw from me that could be considered
“sensitive information”.
As for their claim I used their footage – As I stated earlier, I filmed only during blocking
rehearsals and between takes.
None of the angles, or dialogue or anything else you’ll actually see in the movie is
included in my footage.
I’ve had a couple of viewers suggest that this bit with Scott and Eli was a bridge too far.
Here’s my thinking on including a badly flickering monitor showing the characters interacting.
First, all this visual information was already known publicly.
We know these people are in the movie.
As I showed earlier they announced Teen Wolf would be filming a lacrosse game at Kennesaw
State University.
Orny Adams showed his costume and Eli's uniform in a tiktok on Monday, two days before my
video came out on Wednesday.
Scott’s bloodied shirt was part of what little social Paramount did during the
first week of filming.
The fact that he gets injured and bleeds has been known since March 23rd.
All of these things were already publicly known.
It was publicly known that there would be a lacrosse game.
It was already publicly known that these characters are all in the movie.
And it was already publicly known what costumes each character would be wearing at some point
in the movie.
The only new information here is that you now know that they interact with each other
and that this scene is their first interaction with coach in the film.
That last bit might be considered a spoiler, but I contend you don’t know what you don’t know.
You don’t know when this scene happens in the film.
You don’t know if it’s a flashback or flash forward or some bizarre terminator-like
time-travel plot.
There’s no dialogue on my video of this scene.
If you read lips you can see that Eli says something about the score.
So, the sum total of my bad behavior in this shot is that you now know that three characters
you already knew about, will appear together in at least one scene, during a lacrosse
game you already knew about.
If that’s enough to ruin the movie viewing experience, you definitely should not follow
the cast on social.
The only other thing in my very short video that wasn’t known publicly prior to my video
is that the movie is set in the future.
The year in which this la-crosse game is taking place is 2026.
Here’s the thing, knowing the year doesn’t spoil the plot of the movie at all.
It’s a passing mention at best.
In fact, it probably confuses the hell out of most fans.
Besides all that, I asked the people in charge of the production before I released that information.
They did not have a problem with it.
I did not post spoilers this week, but the cast did.
I firmly believe that I did not release anything to spoil the story or any important plot-related
details, but let’s talk about spoilers that were released this week by others.
Specifically, I was told that I could show Crystal, but that I was not to linger or focus
on Crystal.
I totally get this because nobody knows how exactly she’s returning.
It is one of the key mysteries going in to the movie.
The fact that she’s here and what she’s wearing is already public information since
these posts came out during week three of production, but I totally understand that
less information is better when it comes to the character and her interactions with the
rest of the cast.
That’s why, in the one thing I did use from the tons of footage I have with her – is
this one little, Where’s Waldo, shot.
And, I only used this to make a lame coach joke to end the segment.
Her body double does show up in this blurry shot of Peter’s immaculate mustard coat
Oh, and by the way, this costume was also publicly released long before I arrived on set.
Ian is wearing the coat in this video where he and JR and Melissa discuss Peter’s wardrobe.
This video came out during week three of production and remained up for a while.
I'll use this to further explain my overall process.
Looking at this shot, my first instinct was not to use it.
This is a beautiful piece of kit.
Stunning in design and color.
It is a true signature piece.
Had no one seen this coat yet, I would want this to be held as a surprise, to be revealed
for the first time, in the film.
But Ian and JR already did the reveal and talked about how cool this coat was.
So, the obviously striking nature of this wardrobe would make it a "no".
But the fact that everyone had already seen it tipped in favor of using it.
But again, I was talking about how I was specifically told not to linger on Crystal or the Allison
character and how I stuck closely to that rule.
Despite my efforts to follow the guidelines provided to me and my own journalistic understanding
of what I can and cannot do on other people’s patch, I was accused by the network minion of “leaking” “story details”.
So you can imagine how gooped and gobsmacked I was when this video hit social on Thursday.
This is a total W-T-F moment for me.
The fact that these characters are face to face is a huge spoiler.
The fact that they’re on the Beacon Hills Lookout is a huge spoiler.
The fact that they’re attached to cables is a huge spoiler.
At the point I’m writing this, this incredibly spoilery video has been seen by at least half
a million people with no indication that the network is guarding the gate to
make sure important plot and story details aren’t “leaked”.
To put that into perspective, 100 times the number of people that will ever see one of
my videos or social posts, now know facts about the Teen Wolf Movie that I would never,
in one million years release.
This is just one example.
There are more, including the major spoiler that was filmed by Orny Adams for a TikTok.
That one was only saved because someone noticed before it was posted and blurred it out.
Again, I put a lot of thought into what I do.
I’ve been doing it for this show for 11 years and in my former life I was a working
journalist on radio and television covering everything from crime to politics.
In a very personal way, I am invested in the success of Teen Wolf, its creator, and the
hundreds of hard working crew members who all bleed and sweat on the daily to make this
movie happen.
I would never do anything to harm anyone working on this project or the fan’s enjoyment of
this project or the ultimate success of Teen Wolf: The Movie.