Star Trek: Discovery‘s L’Rell, the newly-minted Chancellor of the Klingon Empire, became one of the most powerful members of the warrior race after the events of last season — and we caught up with the actor behind the alien prosthetics, Mary Chieffo, this past weekend at San Diego Comic Con.
Storytelling about the struggles of royalty might be right out of Shakespeare, and Chieffo told us last Friday how she leans on her theatrical training to master her Klingon character.
“Well, on a very technical level, I have always said that breaking down [the Klingon language], I have leaned on my skills on breaking down Shakespeare. Obviously, those who are familiar with Shakespeare know that it’s the amount of time it takes to break down the sentence – where you put the inflection to portray the meaning. It’s the repetition.
What I love about working on Shakespeare, and with Klingon, is that while you are truly figuring out how to portray the meaning, it gets memorized faster — as opposed to how we kinda take English for granted. Like, yeah, yeah, I have it all inside my head, and then it gets all jumbled up inside my head. It’s so precise, and you can’t say it any other way.
Beyond that, it comes down to speech, and voice training, and how to create a dialect for L’Rell when she speaks English.”
I brought up the fact that L’Rell is a female of power, and she shared some of the classic characters on which she modeled her performance this past season.
“I was lucky to play characters in school like Queen Elizabeth, to characters in Richard the III, Macbeth… there’s something about these archetypes that fuels so much [of it.]”
In this upcoming season, Discovery comes even closer to the era of the classic Star Trek series, and since she’s back on Qo’noS leading the Empire, I wondered what role the ‘mother of all Klingons’ will play in the new storyline.
“I’m very excited to discover that myself,” said Chieffo. “We are in such good hands in that regard. I know that the writers have had so many brilliant ideas on portraying that — you will all be surprised! [L’Rell] will be part of moments that will make you go ‘Ohhh!’ I mean, we don’t hear about L’Rell [in the future Trek shows]… Why is that?”
I brought up how a lot of the character’s personality has been explored through L’Rell’s Mirror Universe counterpart, in the ongoing Star Trek: Discovery — Succession comic tale from IDW Publishing.
“I love the mirror L’Rell,” Chieffo laughed. “I mean, didn’t just want to be hear, I wanted the outfits! I geek out about all of that stuff.”
Part of the joy of classical theatre training is in the keeping of secrets from the audience, until they can be revealed at just the right moment, so I took a chance and asked the actor what new Discovery secrets we might be able to look forward to in Season 2.
“It’s been a real pleasure to meet you,” she said, with a coy smile — keeping all those secrets to herself.
Mary Chieffo will be returning to her second Star Trek Las Vegas convention next week — so keep an eye on TrekCore as we continue our coverage Star Trek: Discovery throughout the summer!