Jack Quaid, Tawney Newsome, Ethan Peck, and episode director Jonathan Frakes preview the buzzed-about crossover episode.
According to Quaid, Newsome inadvertently broke some stuff.
“I would see her just fiddling around.
Jack Quaid’s Boimler debuts in live-action opposite Ethan Peck’s Spock in ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’.Paramount+
Newsome feigns shock when she hears Quaid shared that story.
“He’s right, though.
I broke so many things.
Tawny Newsome’s Mariner meets Celia Rose Gooding’s Uhura on ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’.Paramount+
Immediately a props person had to come up and fix it.
“There were definitely moments of fanboying, but I have the same feeling too,” Peck says.
Newsome uses the phrase “chaos bomb” to describe the dynamic.
Director Jonathan Frakes behind the scenes of the ‘Star Trek: Stranger New Worlds,’ ‘Lower Decks’ crossover with some of his stars.Michael Gibson/Paramount+
Quaid concurs: “Our characters are complete agents of chaos on that show.”
Enterprise, now in live-action form.
Boimler naturally fawns over one of his idols, Spock, a vibe that extends offscreen.
They soon earned the nickname “Spoimler” on set.
“He and I got along famously.”
“And I said, ‘I think we gotta have her talk to Uhura.’
I think we need to see where these two very different characters might find some common ground.
I was thinking of it from a comedic standpoint.
Newsome credits Frakes for giving her and Quaid “so much permission.”
He adds, “The pace to me is so breakneck.”
Then comes theLower Decksstars, who are used to ad-libbing and improvising alternate takes in the voiceover booth.
“They bring a really boisterous and fun energy to set,” Peck says.
So, it was really great to have that levity.”
They both, however, were hands on with the physical looks of their characters.
Newsome had many conversations with makeup artist Scotia Boyd about giving Mariner a “winged liner.”
She also workshopped her hair style.
Newsome was determined to have curls.
When it came to Boimler’s purple hair, Quaid notes, “The wig process was interesting.”
Then, of course, there were his other commitments to consider.
One wasThe Boysseason 4.
The other was Christopher Nolan’sOppenheimer.
“I was shootingOppenheimerright up until I went to shootStrange New Worlds,” he says.
I just didn’t really quite have the time.”
The crew tested a few different wigs on Quaid.
“We tried a few different colors of wigs,” Quaid adds.
“There was one that was a little more cartoonishly purple and we screen-tested a bunch.
That one just didn’t quite work because I looked like an anime character.
We settled on this slightly more subdued, more realistic purple.”
Then came the Starfleet uniforms themselves.
“[He] talked about the point of the top,” Newsome remembers.
“That whole experience was just living out a nerd fantasy.”
All interviews for this story were conducted prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike.
