Happy Cosplay Friday!
We are back this week talking with the Cosplay Parents, Steven and Millie! Steven and Millie are a retired and wonderfully charming couple who spend their free time cosplaying and Disney bounding. Their wonderful cosplay photos have gone viral several times and they are very much the darlings of the Southern California cosplay community. Always cheery, happy and willing to stop for photos, they are some of the nicest cosplayers I’ve had the pleasure to know. It’s been a lot of fun getting to know them on a personal level and to be able to catch up with them and find out what’s been going on since they became internet stars.
You are very well known from all the viral photos of the two of you at conventions, what has all this attention been like for you guys?
I can save the day but you can save the world. The lovely @CosplayParents as Diana Prince and Steve Trevor. pic.twitter.com/dXbSFrYZKa
— 𝚔𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚎 𝚋𝚎 ✨📸✨ (@KatieBePhoto) September 3, 2017
We take it in stride and it really doesn’t affect our day-to-day lives. We don’t cosplay for the “likes” or “fame” or selling calendars or prints; we just cosplay for fun. When Katie’s WW photo went viral we got so many requests for interviews that it did get overwhelming, but we just had to pick and choose who we wanted to feature us. Then we granted an interview with NBC Asian America and that started up more requests for interviews that we mostly turned down. We hate to disappoint people, but we were getting requests from foreign countries, video bloggers, etc. We found a lot of news/fandom sites that just reblogged or stole interviews that we had granted approval to. But the attention we receive at the conventions or at Disneyland is the BEST part. Meeting our fans/followers is always fun! We never imagined that people would actually fangirl/fanboy us! Some are so shy to ask us for a photo/selfie, that it’s endearing and a compliment! We love that very much!
You did a really unique take on a cosplay recently. You took inspiration from the movie “Up” and the movie “La La Land” and created cosplays around it. How did you come up with that mash up and that photo shoot inspiration?
We had already planned to do Carl & Ellie for Dapper Day’s Fall Outing. We saw the movie poster for La La Land with Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) in their famous dance pose. Since Mia & Ellie wore a yellow dress, we thought we could do a UP/La La Land mashup during Dapper Day on Saturday. Of course Katie York (@KatieBePhoto), was the perfect choice for the photographer, and even though we couldn’t recreate the exact pose, Katie came up with her take and our dance pose at the nearly empty walkway by Ghirardelli in DCA. That photo became one of our favorites. At that time this photo also had the most likes and comments on our Instagram page too!
We recently got to spend time together at Gallifrey One. It was your first time attending, what did you think of this convention? Was there anything or any one in particular that you wanted to see at Gallifrey One? Any favorite moments from the weekend?
We would have liked to see more of the big name Doctors (Tennant, Smith and Capaldi) but realize they’re either too busy or too expensive to book. Wouldn’t mind also seeing some of our favorite companions such as Karen Gillan, Jenna Coleman, Catherine Tate and Alex Kingston as well. Too bad Pearl Mackie couldn’t make it this year. Favorite moments were seeing you (Monica), Katie and all the cosplayers.
Although not ‘Doctor Who’ related, it was especially nice when Millie presented Katie with her father’s vintage cameras. Millie’s father had once used the cameras, but Millie didn’t want to just donate it to a stranger, so Katie was the perfect recipient! We were all touched by that moment and we could tell that Katie appreciated the gift too.
Did you cosplay as your favorite Doctors?
Yes, when we started to binge watch the show in 2017, Millie liked David Tennant. Luckily we found a brown pinstripe blazer at a thrift store so it was perfect for her to gender-bend the 10th Doctor. Steven cosplayed Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor because while dressed as Carl Fredricksen from “Up” at a Lego Land Halloween Party a kid came running up to me and said “I love Doctor Who!” Steven said to himself “Who the heck is Doctor Who?! I’m Carl from UP!” It wasn’t until we got home and goggled “Doctor Who” and we saw a picture of Matt Smith that we realize the kid saw a brown tweed jacket and bow tie and got confused! LOL! So since Steven already had the tweed jacket it played perfectly for his cosplay as the 11th Doctor.
How do you decide which cosplays to bring out for a particular convention?
We only have 8 cosplay outfits and 6 Disney bounding outfits so we try to rotate our costumes so the fans don’t see the same thing 2/3 conventions in a row We need to start making new cosplay outfits but we’re running out of characters that we really like to portray, so we might start doing mashups or alternate versions of the same cosplays.
Do you have any favorite stories from your different cosplay adventures?
Other than the UP/Doctor Who story I previously mentioned above, we guess it would be how we became known from a tweet from a fan at Wonder Con in 2016. We were dressed as Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter waiting for the Agents of Shield panel to start. But we had to sit through 4 other panels, and our knees and back were hurting, so we stood up to stretch and turned around to face the crowd. We were sitting near the front, not to show off, but we were looking for a friend who was trying to get into the Shield panel. A few rows behind us, this fan took a photo of us and tweeted it and it went viral on his phone! That one tweet started this whole “fame” part of our cosplays. As it turned out, Ron Aspiras, became our first fan, follower, and friend. Through Ron’s discovery of us, subsequent interviews with justJenn at Nerdist and Jon Hernandez at the Marvel Report followed, which started the ball rolling. We later met you at Wonder Con in 2017, and then you introduced us to Katie at Long Beach Comic Con in 2017. That’s when Katie’s Wonder Woman photo of us went viral. Months later we did the UP-LaLaLand photo shoot, and our interview with NBC Asian America, sent things through the roof!
Do you have a cosplay bucket list of cosplay you want to eventually do?
We would like to do the Kingsman, an armor build around Thor’s characters, and Steven’s dream is to do Chirrut Imwe. We would also like to do more Han & Leia versions.
What kind of stuff are you interested in outside of cosplay?
Steven likes auto racing, car shows, building and collecting model kits. Millie likes to do arts and crafts, sew, and create things with whatever we have in the house. Together we like to go to Disneyland/Disney California Adventure, Broadway musicals, movies, dining out, and discovering new places and meeting new people.
What is your favorite thing about cosplaying?
At first, it was having people taking photos of us; now it’s mostly just meeting our fans and followers, and our fellow cosplayers and photographers. When we know our friends and fans are attending a Con, we try to meet everyone, it’s like a treasure hunt. We’re both socially shy but because of our internet popularity it’s given us more confidence to meet other famous cosplayers because now they seem to know who we are.
Here at Temple Of Geek, we really want to thank Steven and Millie for taking the time to answer some of our questions and pose for photos with us. It has been really fun working with them.
If you guys want to find out more about Millie and Steven you can follow along with them on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/cosplayparents/
https://www.facebook.com/CosplayParents/
