Actor Jason Isaacs discusses Star Trek: Discovery.
Taking on the mantle of Captain Gabriel Lorca in the new series Star Trek Discovery, Jason Isaacs recently spoke about his time so far on the bridge and his inspiration for the role. Getting the role in such a massive franchise is surely what many an actor dreams of but Isaacs’ reaction was slightly different, but he used this as his motivation as he explains here;
“Terror really. Just the idea of sitting in the captain’s chair having grown up watching this. Anything that scares me is something I run towards, so I tend to jump off buildings and out of planes and accept public speaking engagements, things that make the general public quake in their boots. It seemed like a ludicrous and terrifying notion.”
Isaacs admitted that his research for the role included going right back to the start of the original saga;
“For me it’s The Original Series, being crammed on the couch watching with my parents. I’ve seen every episode many times. There’s an episode that gave me nightmares and I recently showed it to my 11 and 15-year-old. They won’t listen to any music that isn’t in the Top 10 and won’t watch anything they don’t recognize as having come out recently in the cinema. It’s very tough for me to get them to watch all the great things in the past because they have such resistance to it. But I put on an episode — “Miri,” the one where there are only teenagers left on the planet — and my 11-year-old was absolutely gripped and couldn’t wait to watch more.”
With that as his inspiration Isaacs has some mighty shoes to fill in the form of the original Captain James T. Kirk and was quick to give praise to William Shatner and provide defence of his acting prowess;
“He’s a genius! He elevates his dialogue and makes it epic and truthful. It’s so tough. He sells everything. People who think he’s hammy are people responding to other people doing funny impressions of him. If you watch the original he’s utterly brilliant. He was one of Canada’s top Shakespearian actors. He brings that level of commitment and epic high stakes to what could have been ridiculous dialogue. He and [Leonard] Nimoy together were a genius double. Anyone who thinks they’re hammy should try to do it themselves. I’m trying to do it now and, I’m telling you, it’s not easy.”
He also spoke of his main concern after winning the part. Fitting into the new uniforms;
“I thought, “How am I going to get into this thing?” and that I’m going on starvation rations for a while and get to the gym. We all did. It fits a lot better now than in episode 3. I did send an email [to the producers] saying, “Please don’t make me wear that baby puke mustard” [yellow captain’s shirt from The Original Series] and they said, “Don’t worry, it’s blue.”
Taking on a major part in an iconic series like Star Trek can be a daunting task but it would appear that the actor is fully embracing the experience;
“The first day I said “energize.” You beam in and out of places the same way they [filmed] it in the 1960s. You say “energize,” you stand there for a minute, then you run off the set, and then they carry on filming. Literally all the iconic moments: Holding a phaser, beaming in and out of places, fighting a Klingon, holding a Tribble. The whole sentence, “I’m going to be a captain in Star Trek” was in all capital letters, like a Trump tweet. Then once you’re here, it’s like every other job as an actor. As ridiculous as sci-fi can be sometimes, it’s got to be completely real to you in that situation. You have to imagine you’ve trained in Starfleet, you’re in a battle, you’re a leader. The fun’s over now; the fun is for people watching. Luckily, it’s a really nice group of people and Sonequa is queen bee — she organizes games nights and BBQs. It makes a huge difference for the actors on set.”
The actor is tied to secrecy about the upcoming plot, but did let some behind the scenes secrets out of the bag;
“When you fight Klingons, they’re big tough nasty guys. But their faces break if you touch them. [The prosthetics are] actually very fragile. So you have to fight very tenderly with as much aggressive violence as you can.”
Like most long running Science-Fiction shows, the fans are sometimes the worst critics and even before the show had begun, certain Trekkies had already taken to the internet finding faults and Isaacs was keen to acknowledge this;
“There’s also been this bizarre backlash online about how ethnically diverse our cast is. I think they don’t quite understand what Star Trek is about in the first place. It’s always been about that.”
With such devoted fans Isaacs has quickly learnt to be careful after one minor social media mistake;
“The interest out there is insane. I Instagrammed a photo of my script with all the lines blurred out and all you could see is my name on it. It turns out there are some Trekkie Putin-hackers who managed to enhance left-right like in Blade Runner and make out two words from which they extrapolated a sentence and there was much debate about what it meant. What’s been amusing is how wrong fans are about what this show is about and who’s going to do what. There are some genuinely surprising plot twists. The scripts are about 60 pages and the nondisclosure agreement was about 300 pages.”
Star Trek: Discovery is available on Netflix UK and CBS All Access in the US.
Source: Entertainment Weekly.