1 of 6 | Paul Giamatti and Holly Hunter face off in “Starfleet Academy,” on Paramount+ Thursday. Photo courtesy of Paramount+
Roles on the new Star Trek series Starfleet Academy, premiering Thursday on Paramount+, brought physical demands to stars Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti. Hunter plays Nahla Ake, a starship captain instructing a new class of cadets at the Federation academy.
In a recent Zoom press conference with the Television Critics Association, Hunter discussed her conversations with producer Alex Kurtzman, mastermind of the Paramount+ Star Trek series. Hunter, 67, said she adopted physical mannerisms to make her character flow.
“Her name means water in the desert,” Hunter said. “I thought, ‘Oh, that would be really cool if I could bring kind of a fluidity to the character.'”
That fluidity manifests when Nahla sits barefoot in her office chair and swivels around while lecturing cadets.
“Alex had written that my character was barefoot and I loved that,” Hunter said. “Alex and I rehearsed a lot together on the bridge. We went over scenes on the set, just him and me, just talking about ideas and talking about blocking ideas.”
Joining the world of Star Trek fulfills a lifelong dream of Giamatti’s. He plays the Klingon Bus Braka, captured on a mission Nahla captained in the premiere episode of Starfleet Academy, donning full forehead makeup.
“People would say, ‘Well, who would you like to play someday?’ and I’d say a Klingon, never thinking it would actually happen,” Giamatti, 58, said. “So dream come true. You can manifest your dreams, kids.”
Starfleet Academy also allowed Trek veteran Robert Picardo to reprise his role. Picardo, 72, played the holographic Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager, a role he reprised in the film Star Trek: First Contact.
Set some 1000 years after Voyager, the hologram has adopted Picardo’s 2025 look, as well as linguistic developments.
“The new Star Treks are in contemporary language,” Picardo said. “He now is teaching cadets, so he has to speak in their language. The adjustment came easily because there’s a reason for it.”
That also includes using profanity to get the attention of distracted cadets.
“It shocked me when the doctor had his first four-letter word, but I thought, well, he needs to shock the students that are not paying attention,” Picardo said. “He is using every tool in his toolbox to teach these kids.”
Language also challenged Hunter. Captaining a starship and managing a class at Starfleet includes some characteristic sci-fi lingo.
“I had to ask, ‘What does that mean? How do I pronounce that?'” Hunter said. “Sometimes, even, I would write them on the ceiling. I might write them on the ceiling of my bedroom so that I would see the writing on the wall when it’s time to have breakfast.”
The sci-fi words reminded Gina Yashere of her job prior to acting. Yashere, 51, plays cadet master Lura Thok, who is a mixed Klingon and Jem’Hadar species.
“I used to build elevators for a living,” Yashere said. “I worked for Otis and so I’m used to electrical, electronic speech but Star Trek is another level. I had to learn some of this stuff phonetically and just memorize it that way.”
The cadets in training hope to crew up a starship one day after graduating. At the center of this class is Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta).
Caleb is using Federation resources to complete the mission of his mother, from whom he was separated when she was imprisoned. It is Rosta’s first series and the sort of role for which he said he prayed.
Rosta said he feels “extremely blessed to be able to play in a sandbox as beautiful and as sacred and as important as this one.”
Very quickly, a rivalry forms between Caleb and Genesis Lythe (Bella Shepard). Shepard wears facial prosthetics to portray a Dar-Sha, but is determined not to rely on her family legacy to get ahead.
“Genesis gets a lot of her confidence, obviously, from growing up with a father as an accomplished Starfleet admiral,” Shepard said. “She uses her confidence to put herself in a leadership position so she can kind of keep together this group of cadets.”
The class also includes Karim Diané as the Klingon Jay-Den Kraag. Like Giamatti dreaming of playing a Klingon, Diané studied his legacy, particularly Michael Dorn as Worf across The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.
Still, Klingons have evolved in the Star Trek universe. Diané wanted to honor Trek lore while representing a new Klingon.
“He’s very much a Klingon but he’s a medical student and he wants to be a doctor.” Diané said. “He is not a traditional warrior. He doesn’t want to go into battle.”
The Next Generation introduced Data (Brent Spiner) as an artificially intelligent crew member, followed by Picardo’s Doctor. Starfleet Academy has an AI cadet, SAM, played by Kerrice Brooks.
SAM’s training adds a component that she is not beginning with a basic human or alien lived experience. Brooks said she enjoys building the framework for SAM.
“I think that you only react to things because of what you’ve been through,” Brooks said. “How is she going to react if she hasn’t been through this? So, I really draw upon the background of her or the background that she’s made for herself.”
