With Star Trek: Starfleet Academy now in full swing, the show's actors are sharing plenty of backstage lore, their journey to joining the series, and how they feel about being part of such an amazing legacy.
Paul Giamatti, who plays Nus Braka, a Klingon/Tellarite hybrid and a foil for Captain Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) and her cadets, recently spoke with People about what led to his involvement with the series. He revealed it was his father who first introduced him to Star Trek: The Original Series. Plus there was his obsession with Mr. Spock. Giamatti said:
“I was probably 7, maybe, and I think he identified me as the one of his three kids who would probably be really into this. He was really psyched that was on again, and so he kind of sat me down and I watched it with him, and that's when it started... I was really taken with Spock, with Leonard Nimoy. I mean, everybody was great, but I really became kind of obsessed with Spock when I was a kid.”
While The Original Series was never massively popular during its run and really only gained the fandom that it has now due to syndication, many GenX kids probably remember their parents watching, and some, like Giamatti, fixated on the Vulcan/human first officer of the USS Enterprise, Mr. Spock.
For any kid who ever felt different, who ever felt like an outsider or someone who never "fit in," Spock felt like the ultimate safe space. He was someone to relate with and look up to, and he reminded all those kids who felt the way he did that differences also meant diversity, a concept that would spread like wildfire during the latter half of the 1960s.
You can see Paul Giamatti in Starfleet Academy on Paramount+ with new episodes dropping each Thursday through March 12. And for more Star Trek content, visit the Redshirts Always Die Facebook and X pages.