Grace Lee Whitney knew she was fired before she was told

Grace Lee Whitney played Yeoman Janice Rand on Star Trek: The Original Series for eight episodes. 

Originally contracted for thirteen episodes, Grace Lee Whitney played Yeoman Janice Rand, Captain James T. Kirk’s right hand. Though their scenes together were brief, a chemistry did exist between the pair. Unfortunately, that wasn’t something that was allowed to be explored as studio executives thought it would be more exciting for there to be new women on the show each week…at least that’s what they told series creator Gene Roddenberry.

Whitney revealed in her memoir, The Longest Trek—My Tour of the Galaxy, that she’d been sexually assaulted by one of the producers. Not long after that, she was written out of the series. But even before she was told she wouldn’t be returning to the series, the actress knew she’d been let go as she recalled in The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years.

Grace Lee Whitney didn’t have a lot of lines in the series to begin with so one scene told her she’d been fired.

Background characters rarely had lines in the series. They were just there to perform a function and move on. That was rarely the case with Whitney’s character. She usually had at least one line when she was on the bridge or interacting with Captain Kirk which is why the episode “Conscience of the King” told the story.

"“I remember one time in the episode ‘Conscience of the King,’ I just walked across and handed Shatner a clipboard and winked and walked away. But there was no dialogue. I knew at that time that I had been let go.”"

The actress admitted she felt cheated, but by firing her, the executives made Rand “somewhat of an underdog.” That had fans rallying around her and made her character even more popular. And though her time on the show was limited, she has never been forgotten. Even today, fans have asked if we’ll ever see the character again.