An Enemy of Fate: Meeting John Noble

By Andrew Moore (@ashok0)

As a huge TV enthusiast, I've always hated that I've never been to a single Comic Con nor ever met anyone from the Ten Thirteen or Bad Robot family. Between school, work, daily life, etc. it just never really seemed that practical.  When I heard John Noble was going to be at Second Stage Theatre in NYC, traveling to "Substance of Fire" didn't even cross my mind.

But after reading other Twitter stories from other Fringies who had life-changing experiences because of our show, I started thinking... is it really an impossibility? In late April, I was talking to a Fringie in real life who worked for an airline. I rather non-seriously said, "We should just get on a plane and go see John Noble." I'm not even sure if I expected the conversation to go anywhere, but he said that he'd love to do it and could probably get excellent travel rates from his job.

Within a week, we organized our flight plans to see John and pre-ordered theater tickets for May 21st, but I still has this sinking feeling that the trip was a dream too good to be true. And on May 14th, I came home from work to read that John Noble was dropping out of the play between May 20-23 due to Sleepy Hollow conflicts. And flash floods had grounded all flights from Ohio to NYC during Noble's final performance dates. My friend and I were both contemplating on just cancelling the trip and rather discouraged, I tweeted that things in life were falling apart.  

Later that day, I got a tweet from Danna Aissa with the classic Fringe 'Dream Logic' puzzle: "Y̶o̶u̶’̶r̶e̶ ̶b̶n̶e̶n̶ ̶g̶e̶f̶i̶a̶n̶e̶o̶. Y̶o̶u̶’̶r̶e̶ ̶g̶o̶n̶n̶a̶ ̶b̶n̶e̶e̶f̶i̶.  You’re gonna be fine."  Wow, she couldn't have spoken truer words. That week, my friend and I readjusted our work schedules, snagged tickets to John's performance a week early, and we drove to NYC. We figured if POlivia could create a gateway to 2167, kill the Observers, reset time, and get Etta back... we could surely find a way to see John Noble.

The first day of the trip I was just awestruck by seeing John on stage at "Substance of Fire". There wasn't a bad seat in the house. It was an enjoyable play and his Walteresque lines related to food were an absolute killer. After the play ended, we waited for a few minutes outside the theater. We almost left for our hotel when JOHN NOBLE walked out onto the street from the lobby and was standing literally a foot in front of me. A few other fans came up to him holding White Tulips. :'-) John stopped and chatted with everyone that waited for him. He took photos with us and gave us all autographs. Just a really nice guy, and he seemed just as lovable in real life as he is on screen.  <3 At this stage, I don't even know how I was still breathing and I don't honestly know if I said anything remotely coherent. I just remember vomiting vocabulary about thanking him for making Fringe, and telling him how much the Bishop family and the symbol of the White Tulip meant to me. 

The next day we went to see "American Hero" with Ari Graynor. It was a funny play and Ari had great presence on stage. After the play ended, Ari stopped and chatted with us briefly on the street. It's really strange talking to Olivia Dunham's sister in real life, and if I hadn't conditioned my nerves from talking to John Noble the day prior, I probably would have blacked out.

On the third day of our trip, we concluded our Fringe adventure by taking a ferry past Liberty Island. We also went to Grand Central Terminal and visited the location where 'Bad Dreams' was filmed for Fringe.  This was very cool for me because 'Bad Dreams' is one of my favorite episodes and I particularly loved the cold opening. Just seeing the architecture of the building in real life is quite breathtaking. After leaving the subway station, I couldn't get 'Nellie the Elephant' out of my head all afternoon.

After returning back to Ohio, I couldn't help but think how many times our trip almost never even happened. Just like September almost never distracted Walternate, I almost never signed up on Twitter to tweet #ChangeYourWorld. In which I never would have connected with the fandom and never would have mentioned "Substance of Fire" in a passing conversation. And this blog post never would have happened. But it did, because Fringe was a rare show that was more than a TV show. For me it was a show that added up to something far greater than the sum of its individual pieces, and just being part of the fandom --- many of whom are Philes that started this same journey as far back as the 1990s --- has been a life changing experience. Or as my friend Jeremy who went to NYC with me so succinctly summed up Fringe, "It uses all these sci-fi themes and creates all this in this world, it's like a dream. It's a fancy platform to explain and convey all these awesome things about life. It's like, okay lets make a story about family and love and friendship but instead of something boring we can make it awesome!"