Imagine being a young actor with limited experience, then landing a part on a Star Trek series and having a franchise icon show up to direct an episode. That's what happened to George Hawkins, who plays Khionian cadet Darem Reymi on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
Jonathan Frakes, who played the legendary William Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as several series movies and Picard, turned his director's eye to Starfleet Academy recently and told ScreenRant about his experience working with the young actors as he directed episode 9, "300th Night," saying:
"Well, I tried to make them feel comfortable. When I have a new batch of people on my side, I say there are no mistakes. Don't worry about anything. Feel free to make mistakes. Nobody's going to f*****g yell at you. Some of these things may work. Some of them won't. I'm going to ask you to do stuff"
"For instance, the falling in the doorway. I said [to George], ‘What if you fell, instead of just leaning against the door?’ And he just jumped in, embraced it, and that ended up being the take. He’s great. The same thing when he's yelling at Sandro [Rosta], when they're in mom's room, and he turns the volume up and the emotion up."
Frakes added:
"They're great. And by the time I got them, they had been on the show for months. So they had gotten used to working together as a team. They were comfortable with each other. They got each other's rhythms. So I was the beneficiary of all that went ahead of me, in terms of eight episodes of them finding themselves."
One has to wonder if Frakes looked back to nearly 40 years ago, when The Next Generation was the new kid on the franchise block and the cast came together under viewer criticism. (Continued on page 2...)