00:00I read in an interview earlier that you were opposed to the idea of joining Star Trek Discovery
00:07as a captain. Why was that and what changed your mind?
00:10I just didn't want to be a pale shadow of the brilliance that's gone before me. I grew
00:13up watching and worshipping Captain Kirk and I'm not big on reboots or remakes of things.
00:21But then when they told me the story and I saw the scripts, I realised it's a completely
00:24new show born of our troubled and difficult, divisive times and with something to say about
00:30the world we live in.
00:31You did grow up as a fan of the series. What were the specific elements that drew you to
00:36the show then?
00:37Well, when I was a kid I just loved the stories, they were fantastic. I guess looking back
00:40I probably was learning how to be a man from the essential dichotomy of Kirk and Spock,
00:46the rational and the animalistic. But I just loved the stories. Now, I'm an adult, when
00:51I see those original episodes, I realise how powerful they were. Political allegories
00:56and they were kind of moral conundrums and they had a lot for adults to engage with.
01:00But none of that, you know, I just thought they were fabulously entertaining.
01:03What can you tell us about your character on Star Trek Discovery?
01:06Well, the great joy of our show is it's serialised, meaning it's one 15 hour story, like a novel.
01:12And so the characters can't be summed up because they're rich and the behaviour and incidents
01:17have consequences. If somebody dies and you're upset, you're still upset the week after.
01:20The original series, everything reboots to zero. So I can tell you he's a guy who is
01:25trying to win the war. He's not looking to make any friends. He's surrounded by hippies
01:29and idiots. He thinks the people in charge of the Federation have no idea what they're
01:33doing and only he sees the scale of the threat. Other people might find him to be tough and
01:37amoral and doing whatever is necessary, by any means necessary. But as far as he's concerned,
01:45he's doing what needs to be done.
01:46Yeah, because by probably the end of episode six, we kind of really see how troubled he
01:51is as a person. Do you enjoy playing that moral ambiguity of that character?
01:56The only thing that's interesting to play as an actor is complication. You know, if
02:00you're saying what you mean and you're just saying, serving the plot, there's nothing
02:06to do as an actor. So the camera loves secrets. The camera loves when a character is saying
02:10one thing and means another. And the ideal situation is when there's a third thing going
02:14on that the character doesn't understand about himself and we get as an audience. And
02:18I think you have all that with Lorca. You have it with many of the characters in this.
02:21And that's when we're really engaged in a human story.
02:23What can audiences expect going forward from this season?
02:26We've been laying a lot of seeds and everything bears fruit and everything comes to a very
02:33dramatic head. You can build bigger drama if you tell a 15-hour story. There's a lot
02:39of crazy fan theories about there. Some of them are right, most of them are wrong. But
02:44the stakes get higher and I think the surprises get bigger.
02:48Do you have a message for your Star Trek fans?
02:50I get so intimidated by the fact that people, this is their legacy, they've protected
02:54for 50 years. What I really hope is there's a whole new generation of people who have
02:57never heard of Star Trek, never seen it before, maybe even weren't born when the last one
03:01was on. I just want people to have a good time watching it and it's a subliminal message
03:07of hope and not to judge people by the colour of their skin or their sexuality or their
03:12gender. We'll sink in and they'll change the world because it's a pretty bad place at the moment.
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