Jeri Ryan was approached to play Seven of Nine in Nemesis
Star Trek: Voyager’s Seven of Nine, played by Jeri Ryan, had never been in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She’d never interacted with any members of the main cast, and yet, she was approached to play the former Borg drone in Star Trek: Nemesis. Not only did Paramount want Seven of Nine to be included, they wanted to replace one of the main characters with Seven of Nine, an idea that didn’t make sense to Ryan. She didn’t think it was logical to include a totally unrelated character in the film, which, of course, it didn’t.
What the studio had in mind for Seven of Nine we’ll never know, but we do know that Ryan had the common sense to say no. She knew they would be inserting her character for no other reason than to insert her character. She found that quite odd. Even after she said no to the offer, Rick Berman wasn’t quite ready to let her go. He asked her if she wanted to do a cameo at the wedding. Ryan’s response was the same.
"“And I was like “no, if I don’t want to be in the movie, why would I want to do a cameo?”"
The studio may have wanted Seven of Nine for eye candy
Jeri Ryan joined Voyager at the beginning of the fourth season of the series, and she, in her skintight catsuit, was used in promos prior to the beginning of the season. Ratings for the series skyrocketed so it wouldn’t have been implausible for the studio to have considered that when asking her to join the movie.
Ryan did tell the producers that if there was a plausible reason to involve her character in the movie, she would absolutely return to the character she’d just wrapped the previous year. But no such reason was given so she stuck to her no. It does make one wonder just what the producers had planned for Ryan if she’d said yes.