AMERICAN actor Sean Maher was devastated when the space-Western drama show Firefly was prematurely cancelled.

But that early setback hasn’t halted his career.

Maher, who played Simon Tam in Firefly and has also featured in the follow-up film Serenity and voiced Nightwing in Batman vs Robin, will be at the Supanova Pop Culture Expo on the Gold Coast this weekend. Maher will conduct a general Q&A today and tomorrow.

“I’ve never been to the Gold Coast and I’m very excited,” he said.

“I’m over the moon.

“I’m looking forward to seeing lots of fans.”

While he’s most well known for his Firefly and Serenity roles, Maher said he usually met fans of a range of his work at such expos.

Among the more recent works is the 2013/14 television series Arrow, in which he played Shrapnel.

He also loved discussing his role as Nightwing in Batman vs Robin.

“It was so fun and different and I’d never done voice over before,” Maher said. “Initially I was terrified and thought I was going to be fired.”

By the third film, he felt comfortable and connected with the Nightwing role.

“With the script I was given for the third one I had a lot more freedom to play with the character and have more fun,” he said.

He looked forward to connecting with fans at the expo. “I’ve done a lot of things that I’m proud of in my professional career,” he said. “I love talking about my work especially on the panels.”

Maher felt Firefly, written and directed by Joss Whedon and set in the year 2517, was cut too short when screening was cancelled after 11 of the 14 episodes aired.

“I remember there was no script when I auditioned for Firefly... I just had these few pages to look at and I was sort of blown away and wanted to know more,” he said. “(The cast) instantly connected with each other and I felt that we had something very special.”

That made the show’s short life much harder to handle, despite being involved with other shows which were canned.

“This one hurt a lot more,” he said.

He said the odd sci-fi Western genre, which depicted nine survivors of a civil war, was an effective way to show that chaos would haunt humanity well into the future.

“To mix those two worlds, I thought it was genius,” Maher said.

Supanova

• What: Supanova Pop Culture Expo
• Where: Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre
• When: Today and tomorrow
• Tickets: supanova.com.au