Relieve Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Armin Shimerman appearance as Quark.
Long before Kelly Ripa and Ryan Secrest took over, the morning talk show “Live” was once hosted by Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford. They were a staple of American mornings for many years and were among one of the most-watched shows during their heyday. The variety show was probably most known for its fun interview segments and they interviewed everyone and anything. Even greedy, little, Ferengi from the Alpha Quadrant. That’s right, your favorite con-man and business owner from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Quark, once appeared on Regis and Kath Lee. Quark, played by Armin Shimerman, showed up in his full garb.
We’re talking about the outfit, the makeup, and yes, the lobes.
Shimerman appeared in both the Quark outfit and later on the show as himself, and he detailed the time it took to get into the character. Usually, it was a several-hour process to look like Quark, and about a 45-minute process to get cleaned up.
While it still took a long time to get into the costume, he reveals that it only took about 20 minutes this time to get out of it.
Quark wasn’t the only Deep Space Nine crew member there that day
One of the best parts of the interview was watching Shimerman speak so glowingly about the makeup artist responsible for his look, Karen Westerfield. He credits her skills the entire interview and makes a point to mention she’s an Emmy winner while she’s being discussed.
Considering how often and regularly makeup artists are used to helping bring Star Trek aliens to life, the fact so few of them get mentioned on a regular basis is a bit sad. So it was great to hear Shimerman speak so glowingly about Westfield and the rest of the makeup crew.
An interesting nugget that came out of the interview was hearing how that Star Trek sometimes employed up to 17 extra makeup people to help do all of the work for the series. Trek is as much about the makeup as it is about the acting and it’s great to see them get spotlighted like this.