Paul Giamatti is absolutely obsessed with how Holly Hunter curls up in the captain’s chair on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, and he thinks that single physical choice tells you everything about who her captain is and what this new Trek world feels like. In a franchise where the captain’s chair is almost sacred, Hunter turning it into something she lounges in barefoot is exactly the kind of swing that gets another actor on the show calling it “genius.” Giamatti said in an interview via People:
“The first time I saw her curl up in her chair on the bridge, I just thought, ‘That's genius!' It says so much about the character and about the world and what it's going to be like. I just thought what a brilliant choice she was for the captain, and then everything she was doing was so great.”
Hunter’s captain isn’t just slouching for the sake of it; the interview makes clear that Nahla Ake was written as a barefoot, catlike presence who likes to kick off her shoes and literally curl up in the chair while running the USS Athena.
Hunter loved that it was “the antithesis of what you should do,” playing a Starfleet leader who strolls around “completely unprotected” while everyone else is in practical, protective footwear, because it visually rejects a rigid, militaristic posture and leans into curiosity, playfulness, and approachability instead.
Hunter added in the same interview:
“Those kids, they always are having fun. And that is a great reminder to stay loose. It's always been a bit of a mantra of mine to stay loose, and they remind me of that and I love that. And I love the casualness with which they approached the language, the words. It was just so current and off-the-cuff and fresh, new. They've got so much vitality. They're so vivacious as a group that I wanted to be swimming in that water too.”
Outside the show, that choice has become one of Starfleet Academy’s defining talking points. The Starfleet Academy team had “no idea” Hunter’s unconventional chair‑sitting would blow up online, but social media immediately flooded with edits and recreations of the so‑called “Ake maneuver,” from fans copying her poses to memes celebrating a captain who “cannot sit like a regular person.”