While the days tick down to the arrival of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, we’ve been sharing moments from our mid-April interviews with the series’ cast on our social media channels — where TrekCore, along with a group of other media outlets, had an opportunity to chat with the actors over video about the new series.

If you’ve not been following us on Twitter, on Facebook, or on YouTube, here’s a roundup of the best moments of discussion from the Strange New Worlds cast to catch you up!

(Start following us on socials if you aren’t yet, as new video content like this will often debut there first!)

*  *  *

Anson Mount describes how his character, Captain Christopher Pike, leads the USS Enterprise crew after learning of his own future:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMyfjeAJ9vE

“You know, we got to see him lead a crew that was not his own on ‘Star Trek: Discovery,’ and now we get to see him and lead his own crew — and I really wanted to flesh out that tremendous sense of empathy I think he has, which is it goes hand in hand with humility. I think that’s partly what makes him such a good leader and captain.

Every time a crew member walks through the doors of his office, the most important thing in the room is not Pike. It’s not even necessarily the question. It’s the crew member. He has to care about them above and beyond his own sense of self.

That’s why his existential crisis at the beginning of the series is not his own fear of death. It’s ‘Can I remain, can I continue to serve as a captain when I’m dealing with this? Am I going to be able to be responsible for hundreds of people who serve under me dealing with this crisis?’

And how do we, as people telling the story, find a way through that, not ignore that, but find a way through that that leads into further development of the character?”

Mount describes his excitement over recording the iconic “Space, the final frontier…” monologue for the series’ opening credits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GojKnB1uQwM

“I knew I wanted to do that speech! I knew it like I knew I wanted to eat — so I was very grateful when [showrunners Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman] told me I would be doing it.

We kind of did it on the fly, on set, as a temp track for the editing process, but I really wanted to make sure I got it right. So they sent a bunch of equipment to my place in Connecticut to set up basically a sound studio in my basement.

I was there recording while our tech guy was in New York and our post-production crew was in Los Angeles, all networked. We’re slogging this out, doing many, many takes: combining a sentence from this take, a sentence from that take, making sure everything is sounding the way we want, doing several versions.

This is back in October, and there was a moment when I said, ‘Guys, can we just take a moment here and acknowledge the fact that we are going to remember this moment for the rest of our lives?’

I mean, it is a very, very select group of people who have the privilege to work on this speech. Everyone was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s really cool!’ There was a pause, and I said, ‘Of course… you realize right now William Shatner is in orbit.’

It was also a good lesson for me: don’t ever try to out-do Shatner!”

Rebecca Romijn talks about her character Una Chin-Riley (“Number One”), her relationship with Starfleet colleague La’an Noonien-Singh… and a secret the Enterprise first officer is hiding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxKWyyA2ang

“La’an is like a protégé. Una saved her life early on. You’re going to see more about La’an’s backstory. And I think Una is very protective of La’an, and she knows that La’an had this really horrible childhood and wants to help her find levity, wants to help her find some light in the universe. She’s sort of taken her on as like a lifelong personal project. I think she adores her.

No one loves the stars more than Una. No one loves Starfleet more than Una. And she is extremely good at what she does. And in what we learn about her in episode three, we find that she’s hiding something, and she sort of hides behind meticulous work, and she is slightly intimidating to the rest of the crew to keep her distance so that nobody finds out the secret that she’s hiding.

The writers floated this idea to me pretty early on, and I just thought it was such an incredible layer to the character, and we’re going to keep exploring that in a pretty major way throughout the season. Una was kind of a real mystery — until now.”

Romijn shares why moms love introducing the Star Trek universe to their kids:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxSlbctJbkU

“‘Star Trek’ is such a great platform for storytelling, and because we’re standalone episodes each episode is a different opportunity to tell a new story with important messaging. And we’re now in the middle of our we’re past the middle of our second season. We’ve made 16 episodes, and we’re so excited to finally introduce the show. I mean, it’s like the longest pregnancy in history.

I was introduced to ‘Star Trek’ by my mom at the age of eight — the Original Series. Anson Mount was also introduced to ‘Star Trek’ at the age of eight by his mom. And I think that that’s not by accident. I think moms want to introduce their kids to ‘Star Trek’ because when you look into your child’s eyes — I can say this as the only mom in our cast — you see curiosity.

You see a need for exploration. You want your kids to think universally and think totally outside the box. And that’s what the Original Series did. It sparked a lot of conversation between my mom and me about whether or not we’re the only ones in this universe, about acceptance, about people from all different
backgrounds coming together and working in harmony, about exploration and curiosity. And these are all things that mothers foster and their children.

So I think when I said that at the convention in Chicago, all day long, everybody I passed said, ”My mom introduced me to ‘Star Trek!” I just kept hearing that over and over and over again. And I just love that, and hope we do that for a new generation of ‘Star Trek” fans.

Ethan Peck shares how he’s had to grow into feeling “worthy” to take on the role of Spock in Strange New Worlds, using the early-pandemic downtime to grow as an actor – but also as a person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj9TnJCiH54

“When I was cast in this role, once I learned what it was, which was towards the end of the [‘Star Trek: Discovery’] casting process, I was faced with this challenge and opportunity to grow. Not just as an actor, but as a person.

I believed I was barely worthy of it at that time, and that’s my own personal thing and my own journey that I’ve been on since. It’s not every day or even every life that you must become more than you are. And the needs of this role, I think, require that of me.

For me to grow as a person as well as an actor and the pandemic [delays], I guess we’ll call that time, really gave me a lot of time to flush out of my self things that were not working for me as a person, as a human being on this planet. I hope that I have been able to rid myself of that. I think, in turn, really informed my work.”

Peck describes the challenges of playing Spock in the new series — and finding a balance between tackling new character moments while still honoring Leonard Nimoy’s classic performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cul7UeOF4I

“Constantly, I’m revisiting Leonard Nimoy’s voice in my head when I’m doing a lot of these scenes, you know, ‘Does this sound right? Does it feel right?’ I constantly am checking in with, I hope, the spirit of his Spock and am channeling it as well. And then there are things that are written for my iteration of Spock that have not been written before, and that is my privilege as an actor and as this Spock.

I’ve done a lot of research, and I’ve now had a lot of experience as the character on set, on camera, and then I’ve got to allow a lot of space for the unknown, which is really uncomfortable, right? I think as creatures on this Earth, we want to be in control of things. In order to feel safe emotionally, I’ve had to do a lot of sort of undoing of that impulse and to welcome chaos and sort of live in a place of the unknown that’s really important to my work.

Also, there’s a lot of opportunity in ‘Strange New Worlds’ to explore and see parts of Spock’s inner world that we’ve not seen before, and there’s really no roadmap for that that’s already been laid out. There is license in our exploration of the character in that regard. There are certain touchstones, qualitatively, about the character that I probably couldn’t articulate to you very well that just feel right and I hope appear in a way that looks accurate in our final product.

I think I’m more comfortable at this point in time with being the custodian of this character, but I still read things in scripts that I get, and I’m like, ‘I have no idea how I’m going to do this or how it will be true to Spock’ — because what’s fun about him is that he does sort of live within these boundaries and then to place him in a scenario that he shouldn’t be in or is really uncomfortable in that’s when I think really cool things start to happen with the character, and I hope in my performance of the character.”

Celia Rose Gooding shares how their take on Cadet Nyota Uhura is informed and influenced by predecessors Nichelle Nichols and Zoe Saldana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZMd6EZiqcU

“My first introduction to Uhura as a character — my mom is a huge Trekkie, and so she used to take my sister and I to watch the movies at movie theaters (when they were still a thing). I remember running to the front row and watching it by myself and craning my neck up to look at Zoe Saldana.

I just remember being so captivated by… She knew how brilliant she was. It wasn’t something that she had to make a spectacle of. It was just something that when she needed to be that capable, brilliant person, there she was to be just that.

And then with Nichelle Nichols, she had this grace and this glamor, and of course, she had that intelligence and her brilliance. And I think that that’s the thing that I’m trying to carry in this very young version of her. This understanding that she knows even more than she probably thinks she knows, and she’s much smarter than I think she assumes of herself.

But the newness and the unsurety is something that I am weaving through this character as we get to know her season to season. We know where she ends up and we know who she’s she ends up being, but we don’t really know how she got there.

That is something that I’m excited for the audience to sort of mark through the first season. And of course, in the seasons to come.”

Jess Bush inherits the role of Nurse Christine Chapel in Strange New Worlds, paying homage to Majel Barrett while making the character her own in the new series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB6URzlLiaQ

“I watched Majel Barrett’s performance. What I distilled most from that and what I took from that was her candor, and her humor, and her wit, but those things were just little seedlings. And I think that Chapel in [the original ‘Star Trek’ series], her whole plot line was quite connected to who she was pining after.

You know, like, that was a big feature of who she was, and I think that’s different this time. She got this lust for life and this mischievous nature that I love to embody. And I don’t know, she’s like fallible and she’s rough and tumble and she’s been through some stuff, actually.

I think that [showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers] were great. Before the start of season one, we sat down and we chatted about who is she going to be. And they had some points, and they also gave me license to kind of really explore. And we talked about what her backstory might be because I think that wasn’t really explored either.

Her life outside of Starfleet wasn’t really explored. And so she is really curious about other people and what their honest expression is and bringing that out, which I think is a really cool, thoughtful, and kind aspect to her that I think is new.”

Melissa Navia takes the job of Enterprise pilot very seriously in her role as Erica Ortegas — though perhaps a bit too seriously, sometimes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a94MBgRX48A

“For me, the helm console… I was doing, like, these Zoom sessions with the graphics department, with people who have been with ‘Star Trek’ for the last 30, 40 years and asking about the engines, the way everything works. And everybody was just, like, apparently word got out that Melissa is a little loony. Like, she’s like, really think she’s flying a starship.

But for me, it was important to know, like, how am I going to impulse? How am I going to warp? There are times when I’m doing, like, evasive maneuvers where Captain Pike will give me an order and I’ll be like, ‘On it!,’ but it won’t come up on my screen. So I’d be straight up texting graphics, and I’d be like, ‘Can you guys give me something?’ And they’ll be like, ‘Well, it probably won’t play in the episode.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, but it’s playing in my face!’

So they would create all these things for me. And I’d be like, ‘Can we change this screen?’ ‘Can we change that screen?’ Because I also think it’s important for the fans, and I know that they’re going to be fans who know more about the Enterprise than even I do, even though I’ve been doing my research. So for me, it was just kind of like when I’m there, I’m flying.

There’d be times where Anson Mount would be like speaking to somebody on the viewscreen. And I’d have, like, a little quip and I’d miss it and Anson would be like, ‘Melissa!’ And I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m flying!’ I’m so focused. So I’m the dorky one on the bridge for sure.”

Navia shares how her character is a “cooler version” of herself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY-r1c9U2Tc

“So when I first got the role, the audition for the role, the writing was so wonderful and I felt this connection to Ortegas. I had the breakdown, I knew it was ‘Star Trek.’ The breakdown was that she was a combat veteran, skilled pilot, can handle a phaser, and can also crack a joke when a joke needs to be cracked. And I felt just that the audition sides I got were so much me. And also in the future — I like to say Ortegas is like a cooler version of me in the future. In the future, I’d love to fly a starship.

So when I booked the role, I also got the added element of, this is a brand new character that gets to interact with all these legacy characters, which is going to be a lot of fun for fans. But this idea that she’s so confident but not… She’s cocky, but in a lovable way, right? Not in an obnoxious way, because she is really skilled. Pike trusts her intrinsically and she has such great trust in the rest of her crew, and that comes off. And so when somebody is so good at their job and trusts everybody equally in their workspace, then you’re allowed to kind of joke and play and that really comes off.

Like she loves the adventure of what she does and she also takes it really seriously. We get these episodic adventures where you get to see the toll that it takes when lives are on the line. And so I’ve just been having a blast creating this character and also looking back to all the pilots that have come before that fans are already comparing her to, even though they haven’t seen anything, so I’m trying to make my own mark on it by just bringing myself to it and then also just letting what the writers have created just come to the screen.

I’m also taking a lot of what the fans love about ‘Star Trek’ and putting that into Ortegas. Like she loves Starfleet in the way that fans love ‘Star Trek.'”

We’ve got a lot more interview content coming, as we spoke to the Strange New Worlds creative team — franchise boss Alex Kurtzman and co-showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers — at the show’s New York City premiere this past Saturday, along with some more of the cast, so watch for that content very soon!

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds debuts with its premiere episode — aptly titled “Strange New Worlds” — on Thursday, May 5 on Paramount+ in the United States, Australia, Latin America, and the Nordics, as well as on CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada; additional international distribution has not yet been announced.