- 7 weeks ago
'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy' cast members Holly Hunter, Sandro Rosta, Kerrice Brooks, Robert Picardo, George Hawkins, Bella Shepard and Karim Diane, along with Executive Producers Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau join the Comic-Con Variety Studio Presented by Google TV.
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PeopleTranscript
00:00We learn from you just by seeing you be such an amazing leader.
00:03You lead with your energy.
00:04You really lead with your energy and like...
00:06Your values and your morals.
00:08Yeah, truly.
00:09We like...
00:10Just being around you is like a master class.
00:12We love you.
00:13We've learned so much, truly.
00:25Hi.
00:26Hi, everybody.
00:27Welcome to the Friday Studio.
00:30Oh, oh, oh.
00:34So first I just want to talk about the experience you all just had in Hall H
00:38because I was moved sitting there watching you be there.
00:42Yeah.
00:43So, Carissa, you especially, I was just so touched by how emotional you got.
00:47What was that like for you?
00:48Can you just sort of describe how it was to watch that trailer play as you were standing there?
00:52Carissa almost made me cry.
00:53Start crying again.
00:54I was tearing up, yeah.
00:55It was crazy because we hadn't seen any of that before.
01:01And so to see it like that and see everyone's like hard work really...
01:05Like everyone ate down.
01:07Like everyone looks so good and I'm just so proud of everyone.
01:12It was just insane.
01:14And to experience that with other people too, it just felt like a very vulnerable moment.
01:17And so the tears were ripped from me, unfortunately.
01:21Also, we've been working so hard for so long and we haven't really seen anything.
01:27So for a minute, it just felt like we were doing it in a vacuum.
01:30So to finally see it like, oh my gosh, this is what all those long nights were for,
01:36it just hits in a very different way.
01:38And also to give respect to our crew and everyone behind the scenes,
01:42like seeing it all come together, knowing how many people put in work to make that happen.
01:47Hundreds of people.
01:47I think that's a big part of what was really emotional.
01:50The amount of talent on the show from behind the camera to in front of the camera.
01:54Yeah.
01:55It's just mind-blowing.
01:58Holly, was this your first Hall H experience?
02:00Was this my first Star Trek?
02:02Yeah, first Hall H experience.
02:05Like at Comic-Con.
02:06On the stage.
02:07On Comic-Con?
02:10Yeah.
02:11No, it's not my first.
02:12I was here also for The Incredibles.
02:16Yeah.
02:17That's right.
02:17Yeah.
02:17So, yeah.
02:18It's no big deal.
02:19No big deal.
02:19Whatever.
02:20Yeah.
02:20I think I've heard of it.
02:23I've heard of it.
02:24I think I've heard of it.
02:27So, I would love, I thought you did a really lovely description of your character being both
02:32a captain and a chancellor.
02:33Could you just expand a little bit on the sort of the two roles that your character is playing
02:38and why that was so attractive to you?
02:40Well, I think, you know, one character really predominantly should be an exceptional listener and the other one really should be an exceptionally decisive person.
03:01And so those two things operate, can operate very, very individually and separate.
03:08You know, it's like they can be segregated.
03:12And in this character, I think the integration of those two things is imperative for the character to live and for me to continue to have the really private relationships that I have with each of the cadets.
03:35So, yeah, but that was a fun ride for me to take.
03:42What was the captain's chair experience like for you to sit in it for the first time?
03:46Well, I got to, you know, by far and away, my favorite set is the bridge because it offers an endless, an endless potpourri of things to do.
03:59But when Alex and I looked at the set and he showed me the chair, of course, it's daunting, but it's also filled with possibility and it's beautiful.
04:12And the bridge, all the sets are incredible, but the bridge is particularly beautiful to me.
04:17I felt like it was my most favorite set that I've ever, I've ever been on.
04:23Wow.
04:24And the chair is, the chair has a sacredness to it and a playfulness to it and a daunting aspect, a command central.
04:37It's many things.
04:39And I felt I was aware of a number of them when I would sit.
04:44The, when I was, I visited the sort of Star Trek world last year and Alex very kindly gave me a sort of sense of what was to come on your show.
04:54So I have, I have an appreciation for how just impressive the, the campus set is.
05:00Yeah.
05:01Could you, but for people who don't know, could, could you sort of describe that and what it's been like to work on something that is so sort of 360 all encompassing?
05:10We literally have like the whole school on the stages.
05:14We've got a common area, cafeteria, bleachers.
05:18We've got a practical bi-level set.
05:21We've got dorm rooms, hallways, classrooms, labs.
05:26I mean, we're literally at Starfleet Academy.
05:30And because of that, we didn't really have to act.
05:32The set does so much work for you.
05:34Yeah.
05:34And you just have to put yourself there and give an honest reaction to what you're seeing, what you're experiencing.
05:39Super immersive.
05:40It makes you excited to do the work too.
05:42Yeah.
05:43Because you have so much room to play.
05:45Right.
05:45So many things to utilize.
05:47It's like an all you can eat buffet.
05:51I mean, in a scene in the pilot that I won't spoil with one of these wonderful cadets.
05:57When I saw that set, all I wanted to do was to cover as much of it as I could in one shot.
06:03And so there was a lot of movement.
06:06And it was thrilling.
06:07It was thrilling to go in the ins and outs of that beautiful space and get as far as we could without forgetting a line.
06:15Yeah.
06:15Robert, how was this first approach, were you first approached with this in reprising your role from Star Trek Voyager?
06:24I had a wonderful Zoom talk with Alex and Noga.
06:28Noga opened the talk by saying thank you for helping to raise me, which was really sweet and touching.
06:34And then they told me the idea.
06:36My concern, like any other actor's concern, would be, you're going back to the well with this character.
06:44Is that a good idea?
06:46How do you intend to use him?
06:47But also, will I fit in tonally with whatever your vision for your new show is?
06:53That's what I was most concerned about.
06:56Back in Voyager, we never used a bad word.
06:58Yeah, we spoke this sort of weird kind of mid-Atlantic speech in space, which I call mid-galactic.
07:06And on this show, you know, the language is totally different because it's hipper and it's grown out of it.
07:12Come on, hipper.
07:14Is hip too stupid a word?
07:15No, no.
07:16I don't understand that.
07:17Okay.
07:17I don't understand that.
07:19You actually love that.
07:20Okay.
07:20So things come out of my mouth that I wouldn't have recognized.
07:23But I think it's the doctor just trying to be relevant and trying to join the cadets in their own world.
07:31Here, listen to me because I can speak your vernacular, too.
07:35So that part has been a total trip.
07:39One thing that really jumped out to me in sort of the, like, presentation of the characters on the show
07:45is that there's a lot of characters with mixed species backgrounds, which is something that was sort of introduced on Discovery,
07:51but you're really diving into it this.
07:54Noga, Alex, could you talk about why that was important for you to have on this show?
07:59Go for it, Noga.
07:59I think it reflects the world we live in now.
08:02I think it reflects this generation, which is diverse people from many different backgrounds,
08:08people who are carrying many different traditions on their shoulders.
08:12And I think it was also an opportunity to ask really interesting questions, like,
08:17what would a person be like if, I'm going to use Gina as an example,
08:22if you had a half Jem Hajar, half Klingon female, like, just beginning to build the energy
08:31and the way that person speaks and the way that they view the world and why did they join Starfleet
08:35and how did they even get to Starfleet?
08:37It opens up so many story possibilities.
08:39But at the same time, I'll also say, you know, there's really cool examples of species that
08:44we've known forever, like the Klingons, like the role that Kareem plays, where you think
08:51you know what a Klingon is, but when you meet his character, you realize, oh, he's different
08:56than a lot of Klingons that we've met before.
09:00So I think that it was really about just presenting a surprising array of new characters to the canon.
09:07That's a great segue into me asking for the cadets, since these are new characters we've
09:13ever met.
09:13Kareem, I'll start with you.
09:14Tell us a little about your character and why, perhaps, he's a different kind of Klingon
09:19than we've seen before.
09:21Yeah, for sure.
09:21So, Jaden is, yeah, very, he's not like the other girls at all.
09:32Klingons are very, you know, enthusiastic about battle and war and honor and picking up their
09:38sword and just diving in there.
09:40But Jaden doesn't want to do any of that.
09:42He's not interested in it.
09:43He wants to be a doctor.
09:46He wants to be a healer, which is like so different from like Klingons that we've seen.
09:52And yeah, that's why he's come to the school.
09:55He wants to learn how to do it best.
09:57And that results in, you know, people maybe pegging him and calling him weak or, you know,
10:04maybe not a real Klingon or whatever.
10:07But he's really at the school to like kind of shed all of that and find his real strength.
10:15Yeah.
10:15Wow.
10:16Well, that's lovely.
10:17Love me.
10:18Bella, you also are, you talked at the panel about you and Kareem were in the makeup trailer
10:24together getting prosthetics.
10:25Talk, tell us a little about, you're playing a brand new species.
10:28What can you say about your character and the species she's coming from?
10:33Well, I play Genesis and she's a new species called Darsha and she's the daughter of a Starfleet
10:39Admiral.
10:40So she's got a lot of pressure from her relationship with her dad and a lot of goals that she feels
10:45like she needs to meet to either please her father or just fulfill something within herself.
10:51And she like, she just fits so naturally into a leadership role because that's all she knows.
10:58That's all she's been raised with.
11:00And she she'll always just like fight for what's right and stand up for the little guy
11:08in the room.
11:09And she cares so deeply about everyone around her and kind of all of these pressures that
11:15she puts on herself end up being her downfall.
11:19Like she tries to see how much she can carry until she breaks.
11:23And we kind of see that there's humanity in the fact that not everyone can be perfect because
11:28there's no such thing as perfect.
11:29And what can you say about being Darsha?
11:32What does that mean?
11:34Honestly, we don't really know everything yet.
11:36But that's more of an Alex and Noga question because we don't have any super confirmed details.
11:43Right?
11:44Well, we so the Darsha like, OK, what I can tell you about the Darsha is when we designed
11:51the the alien look for Genesis.
11:54Genesis, the instruction we gave to our brilliant people was we wanted an alien who looked like
12:02she just woke up at Burning Man.
12:06Accomplished.
12:06And yeah, but she's like she's just like sleek and fabulous.
12:10And they came back with one of my favorite character designs I've ever seen on Star Trek.
12:14I love my look.
12:15I love your look.
12:17Yeah.
12:17So she's just what we know about the Darsha is that at the very least, we know that they
12:22look fantastic.
12:25I mean, look at the material.
12:30Look at the material.
12:32They're fabulous.
12:33Fabulous.
12:34She had no choice.
12:36The instruction had no choice.
12:39George, your character also comes from, I understand, from some sort of privilege.
12:43What can you tell us about your character?
12:45So Darren Ramey, he's a Kionian.
12:48So he's the first of his species in the Star Trek universe, not just at the Academy, but
12:54in the whole canon, which is such a blessing to be able to do that.
13:01He comes from privilege.
13:02You can't really talk about the Kionians in general, but you can talk about like his family
13:05and his upbringing.
13:07And there's a there's an expectation on his shoulders to perform and to be the best.
13:15In everything that he does.
13:16And that's a pressure that he feels so heavily on his shoulders.
13:20And because it's a pressure that's been put onto him, he's not necessarily driven by success,
13:24but he's actually in fear of failure because that's his whole identity.
13:29And that's a really incredible thing to play with in an Academy, in a place where everything
13:34around you is tested.
13:36Like your weaknesses are put to the test.
13:38Carice, there's a lot of firsts in this show.
13:41You're the first hologram to be.
13:44But can you talk a little bit more about this?
13:46Because you threw like three different like descriptors of your, you was a hologram and
13:51then there was the, what was the name of this?
13:54Oh, Kaskian.
13:55Kaskian.
13:55A planet called Kask.
13:57Kask.
13:58Okay.
13:58So what can you tell us about your character?
14:00Hmm.
14:01Sam doesn't come from a people.
14:05She's just an individual.
14:05And so without having that connection, although that is kind of what she is supposed to be
14:14doing as a, as an individual and you're becoming a part of a group, that's also just something
14:19that she really craves.
14:20Like that's her purpose, but it's also her craving.
14:23And I think that Sam is, with that being said, such an individual, she is just striving
14:30to want to be as real as possible, whatever real means to whoever's watching it and whatever
14:38real means to Sam.
14:39She just wants to be real.
14:41And so Sam is just a, a beating heart.
14:47No cholesterol healthy, you know what I'm saying?
14:50But like, she is just an alive, she's alive.
14:54And that's what she wants to be so bad.
14:56So she's striving towards the light, which is life, connection, love, positivity.
15:04Like she just wants to feel.
15:07And it's really fun to get to play someone like that with no inhibitions, with no like
15:13baggage.
15:14Like she just wants, she just wants, she wants X, she wants Y, she wants Z, she wants like
15:19different language.
15:20You know what I'm saying?
15:21Like she just wants.
15:21So it's really fun to play someone so...
15:26She's like a sponge.
15:27Literally.
15:28And there's nothing to describe her besides she is.
15:32She is.
15:32Watching Sam experience things for the first time is one of those beautiful things.
15:38And then Sandro, the panel today, you said that you, your character is really our conduit
15:43into Starfleet Academy and has, is bringing some, is bringing some baggage with him.
15:50How would you sort of elaborate on that?
15:56How much can I elaborate on the baggage?
16:00You're an orphan?
16:01Yeah, I am an orphan.
16:02Okay, so I'm an orphan and I'm looking for the one person in my life who matters to me
16:09and has always mattered to me, that I've been separated from.
16:13You can say who that is.
16:15Okay, my mother.
16:17Can I say who it's played by?
16:18Yeah.
16:18Yeah.
16:19Okay, okay.
16:20It's played by...
16:23Tatiana.
16:25Sorry, sorry.
16:26Tatiana.
16:26Anisha, I'm confusing the two names.
16:28Tatiana.
16:30Tatiana Maslany.
16:30The one and only.
16:32The one and only.
16:34Yes.
16:34So that relationship, I think, is the core to Caleb, wanting to basically recover something
16:44that was stolen from him.
16:45And so he has this anger, this baggage, as you said, against Starfleet for various reasons.
16:57I'm so scared.
16:58You can stop there.
16:59That was great.
17:00That was great.
17:01That was great.
17:01It was like a red flag on his board.
17:04I want to go back to Holly.
17:06You are obviously surrounded by a lot of people for whom this is one of, if not their very
17:10first acting job.
17:12And you, I'm talking to an Oscar winner now.
17:15The series.
17:16Oh, that was great.
17:17And so how, you know, you're obviously playing, you know, a person of authority and of leadership
17:25on the, in this show.
17:28I'm imagining that that might have translated off the set, too.
17:31What is that part of that been like for you?
17:33I, um, I just, uh, I've been around long enough to understand that people work a billion different
17:48ways and there's, and, and any ways that I can think of or that I've seen, that I've witnessed
17:56how people work and how they are successful or how they do a scene that shocks me or that
18:03is so alive.
18:04I, it's different from what I've ever seen or what I've ever known or what I've ever done.
18:10And so I, that's a humbling thing to, in a way, my, my career has humbled me in, in that
18:19regard.
18:20So in no way, I just don't come with advice.
18:24I, I, I watch, I see how people do stuff and I, I have, you know, um, uh, uh, uh,
18:35things that are sacred to me and, and these guys know what they are because if, if there's
18:40a trespass, I say it, but not, but not to them.
18:44I, generally there's trespasses in other ways.
18:48Um, but I, so I, I say, ah, no, that's not right.
18:52But I don't say that to other actors.
18:55I, I just don't because actors need their, they need their head.
19:01They need their room.
19:02Um, and they need their eccentricities.
19:06They need their, their inner, they, they need their fuel and how you get fuel is like
19:11mysterious.
19:12I don't want to, I don't want to intrude.
19:15I don't want to trespass on that.
19:18So, and they know, I, I think every, all these guys know that, that I, I respect what they
19:25do and who they are.
19:27Um, and then I also respect what I do and who I am.
19:30And, and, and it's, that's, it's kind of as simple and as complex as, as that.
19:36Wait, but can I, can I add?
19:38So like, I, okay.
19:41I've never told you this.
19:43So I'm kind of embarrassed to say this, but Holly, I was so nervous to meet you at first.
19:48I was like, Oh my God, this woman has a golden statue at home.
19:52Like, I hope she likes me.
19:54I hope I don't do anything weird or like follow my face.
19:58She immediately within the first two weeks, like invited us all over her house, took us
20:03out to dinner, took us out to dinner again the next week.
20:06And then offset throughout the whole season, she would text us on the weekends, like, Hey
20:10guys, like, let's do dinner.
20:12And she would always facilitate us being together on like offset so that like it translated on
20:18camera.
20:19And so even though you might not be the one to be like, do this and do that, we learn
20:24from you just by seeing you be such an amazing leader.
20:27You lead with your energy.
20:28You really lead with your energy and like.
20:31Your values and your morals.
20:33Yeah, truly.
20:33We like, just being around you is like a master class.
20:37We love you.
20:37We've learned so much, truly, truly.
20:40Literally, literally.
20:40Yeah.
20:41No, the cool thing about, about any act is you learn so much from, from casts, but particularly
20:49casts that you feel close to.
20:51And I think we all really do feel tight and intimate with each other.
20:56And that's when you really learn stuff, you know, because you're open, you want to learn.
21:00You're, you're leaning into another person or an entire group of people.
21:06Mm-hmm.
21:06And that, that's, of course, that's a privilege.
21:10Yeah.
21:10All right.
21:10That's a really lovely note to end on.
21:12Thank you guys all for coming in.
21:13Thank you so much.
21:14Appreciate it.
21:15Thanks so much.
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