Star Trek: Picard sees Sir Patrick Stewart return to one of his most famous roles after Star Trek: Nemesis 18 years ago. He’s not the only Trek-veteran along for the ride, as Jeri Ryan also returns as fan favourite liberated Borg drone, Seven of Nine. We sat with the two stars ahead of the launch of the new show to discuss their returns and their memories of being a part of the storied franchise.
You always said no to a return to this character in the past, what was it about this series that made you agree to it?
Patrick Stewart: When I did finally agree to it there was no script. It was just from listening to Alex Kurztman, Akiva Goldsman, Kirsten Beyer, James Duff and everyone else talk about their ideas and thoughts, and where this series should progress. It didn’t even have a name yet. They just told me about the ways that they wanted it to be different, and in what ways they were hoping to make it different from The Next Generation. So, when I gave them my pitch, which was essentially ‘no, thank you very much’, I was passing, they then went into much more detail. They put in writing, a 35-page document of ideas, and it was so impressive. I asked for another meeting and we got into a lot more detail about the character of Picard and I became excited by the opportunity to work on a different kind of person who had been changed by his experiences in the 18-19 year gap between Star Trek: Nemesis and the present day.
You’ve played this character for so long, do you feel a sense of protectiveness towards him, particularly when you’ve got new producers and writers coming in and letting them into his head?
Stewart: I’ve never really thought of that before, but I think you’re right, yes, I think I do feel protective. There have been several things that I have been asked to do that I have declined because I felt that they were not authentic. Authenticity has always been vital in creation of a science fiction world.
You have said that this is one of the biggest decisions you’ve made in your career. Can you expand on that?
Stewart: For so many years I have been saying that’s over, I’m done, I’ve moved on. My life has changed and my work has other interests now. But then, these brilliant people came up with ideas that connected with my other interests anyway. I was nervous when I finally made the commitment to do it. I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing, but the longer I worked with the team I knew that they would not let me down.
Did anything surprise you about returning to not just the characters but to the world of producing a Star Trek show today?
Jeri Ryan: Just going to the set was an entirely different experience. This is not your typical television set. These are spectacularly cinematic, epic, big, huge impressive sets. It’s like walking on to a feature film set every week to do this show. The ship is built in the soundstage, the whole thing is there. You go to the Borg Cube, you’re in the Borg Cube. It’s astonishing, the scale and the scope of these sets, and the story and the characters, all of it. The world is really incredible.
If you can cast your minds back to your first auditions for the roles; what can you recall from that experience?
Ryan: I came in at the beginning of season four of Voyager. They kept coming to me with the audition and I’d always pass. I didn’t know Star Trek at the time, I just knew it had a reputation for actors getting pigeon-holed and not doing anything else. Then when it came through a third time, my casting agent was really like ‘you should take a look at this, it’s special.’ So I looked at the two scenes, and one of them was one of the most beautifully written scenes I have ever seen before or since for an audition, which of course we never ended up shooting! It was about Seven having her first memory of laughter, and it was beautiful. The other scene was the notorious ‘Harry can you take off your clothes’ scene which I always hated, but based on the beauty of that one scene I could see the potential of the character. I went in and the next day they wanted to a screentest, and Voyager was on that night. So, I thought, if I’m going to be potentially signing away several years of my life, I should watch the show. Which I did, through my fingers and in tears; it was the worst hour of television I’ve ever sat through! I can’t tell you what episode it was! (Laughs). So, I called my agent panicking. Rick Berman (Voyager producer), God bless him, to his credit called me in my little apartment the next day and said ‘I understand you have some reservations? Why don’t you come in and sit down with the executive producers and let us talk you through your questions and worries.’ So I walked in, I had nothing to lose at that point and was like ‘so, I watched the show last night’ and all three of them just went ‘oh God, no not that episode!’ (Laughs).So it wasn’t just me apparently! From there I laid out my fears, and they talked me through the potential for this character and she lived up to them, it all worked out great!
Stewart: If you’ll agree, I’ll start campaigning for that beautiful scene that you never shot and we’ll put it in season two! You do know we have a second season, right!? (Laughs) [CBS has already renewed the show for a second season ahead of the season premiere]. My first audition was bizarre. I was in California, I didn’t there then I just came to visit occasionally as I was doing quite a lot of teaching. I was going around colleges, theatre departments, universities, particularly I had a connection at UCLA, they had masterclasses and workshops and so forth, usually on Shakespeare, which had been my history until Star Trek came around. I was staying with a good friend of mine, an English Professor at UCLA and he asked me if I would illustrate a public lecture he was giving by performing certain lines of dialogue that he wanted to include in his lecture. He invited an actress friend to come along too so we could do dual logs and we did that. I got a call the next morning from my agent, whom I had never met, and he said ‘I’ve got two questions for you; why does Gene Roddenberry want to see you this morning? And what the hell were you doing at UCLA last night?’ (Laughs) It turned out that one of the executive producers of the first season, he and his wife had signed up to go to this series of public lectures, and that he at one point had turned to his wife during the lecture and said ‘we have found the Captain.’ However, when Gene Roddenberry met me the next morning, he was singular unimpressed. All I really remember about that meeting is that he lived in a rather drab cottage home up in the hills. There was orange shag pile carpets all over the floor, nothing but this orange carpet in the whole house. I was out of that house in about seven minutes. Later on when that same producer and others began campaigning on my behalf, I am told a memo was circulated around the offices from Gene saying ‘I do not want to hear Patrick Stewart’s name again!’ (Laughs). It turned out ok.
How does it feel to be the first 92-year-old hero of the series?
Ryan: You look good for 92 (laughs).
Stewart: I didn’t know I was so old! I only learned that a couple of weeks ago. I always thought that Picard was my age, as it turns out he’s about 12 years older. If we run for three seasons I’ll be 82 by then. It feels good! It’s exciting. I can’t wait to get stuck into season two. We saw three episodes in LA, and I am so excited by what they have done and what they’ve achieved by this, in every sense, not just in the writing but what the art department has produced, it’s extraordinary, and this is in a television show. It looks in every way like a feature film.
Did you inject some of your real age feeling into the character?
Stewart: Absolutely. I lectured them all just before we started, if I was going to do this, this is what I want to do. I had made notes on it in fact. I had two very long meetings with the producers. After the first one, I sat down and put my thoughts on paper, saying this is where I want it to go. Logan had just come out, and I said I want it to be, without directly referencing Logan at all, I want it to be a Logan-like situation. In Logan, Charles Xavier and Logan were no longer living the lives that we had seen them living. Instead, Charles is living in an upside-down gas tank in a crappy old wheelchair, and ranting, and reciting nursery rhymes, and being scarily threatening at times. Logan was driving around in an old limo in order to earn money to keep Charles on his medication. It couldn’t be more different than X-Men, and I said that’s the approach that I want to have for this. And they came out trumps.
Seven of Nine, over the course of Voyager you see some of the Borg edges being rounded off and she becomes more human. This is now many years later, did you have to completely change your body language and find a new take on the character?
Ryan: Completely. She’s very different, as she should be 20 years on, she’s 20 years older, she’s more mature, she’s had 20 years life experience form both the Borg and the Voyager. I knew all of that, but when the first script did come out, I panicked. Abject terror. I couldn’t hear her voice. It was so different, it was so much more casual. She was so specific for those four years on Voyager. She had changed, and she had grown of course, but she was always very stylised with her speech patterns, physicality and all of that. And this was so entirely different. I absolutely panicked. Actually, Johnathan Del Arco, who plays Hugh and who is a dear friend in this outside world, had gone through a similar thing with his character Hugh because he had just started the week before I did. I called him, I made lunch and he sat down with me and we went through the scenes. I was freaking out, I had never got worked up over a role like this before. She was a cool character still, but I didn’t just want it to be a different character with the same prosthetics, I wanted it to be true to Seven. I just couldn’t hear her. And Johnny, through this one simple thing, that I can’t say too much about as it kinda gives away a story point, he just said ‘ok, what if it’s a conscious choice to be as human as possible’ because of xyz and plot points that I can’t divulge. And that was it, it was like a lightbulb went offer. It was such a simple thing that I should have seen but I think it was just because I was so panicked. But that’s all I needed, and that made sense and then I could find her. Physically she’s very different but I found a couple of very specific mannerisms that Seven did that I could carry through to make it still her. It has been so much fun just as an actor to use it as an acting experience if nothing else to find this very changed character.
One last question, why is Jean-Luc Picard French?
Stewart: Why is Picard French? I think there was a Picard who was an undersea explorer, in fact I think this Monsieur Picard built the first bathyscaphe thing that could go way down into the ocean. I think Gene or someone in the early production team knew of him and said let’s name him after this explorer. People id say ‘why should this Englishman be playing the role of a French explorer, why isn’t it a French actor?’ I did actually do some taping with a French accent, it was ghastly (laughs). I tell you what I recorded, I did (puts on a French accent) ‘Space. The final frontier.’ It’s a very good thing that we didn’t do it.
Star Trek: Picard launches on Amazon Prime from January 24th, with each new episode dropping every Friday.
