This summer, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Marina Sirtis is beaming down to London’s West End to star in new play Dark Sublime about a fan’s relationship with an ageing sci-fi actress. Marina talked to Nick Joy about why she just had to do this play, hero worship, Patrick Stewart’s new Star Trek show, The Orville and getting directed by Jonathan Frakes again. Oh, and never saying never to playing Troi again… but she’s not putting on that spacesuit.

Hi Marina, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. Dark Sublime is a new play by Michael Dennis, so our readers won’t be familiar with it. Could you give us an idea of what to expect from it?

When I’d read the play, I called Andrew Keates, who’s producing and directing it, and said ‘Did Michael Dennis write this for me? Because this is me!’ He said no, he didn’t know me, and didn’t have anyone in mind. I had to play this part because not only is this about an ageing sci-fi actress – ergo, no research! – but it’s also about a relationship she develops with a fan. To a lot of sci-fi actors and actresses that would be a bit of an anathema because they don’t have relationships with fans but I actually do have relationships with fans.

Indeed, you have large groups of followers on Twitter and elsewhere.

I have what I call my ‘Posse’ in America and my ‘Euro mob’ in Europe, and they are fans that I’ve got to know over the years. And they’ve become friends. I know that William Shatner says that if it’s a play about an actor having a relationship with a fan then that would really be sci-fi. Well, that’s his experience, not mine. But although the background of the play is sci-fi – “Dark Sublime” is the name of the show that she was in – it’s actually about relationships. The sci-fi bit is the backdrop, and to be honest I wouldn’t have been interested in doing straight sci-fi – Forbidden Planet or something. For me, my favourite things to watch whether in the theatre, on TV, at the movies or on a plane, are relationship-driven. That’s what’s interesting to me.

The best sci-fi shows are ultimately not about sci-fi, it’s the human condition that engages you.

Exactly. And that’s what [Star Trek creator] Gene Roddenberry always used to say. It’s based in the future, on a spaceship, but it’s a people show. That’s why the ones that are successful are successful, because the audience gets invested in the characters. What I find at conventions when I’m doing my Q and A is that I’m never asked about the technological stuff – did the nacelles or forward thrusters do this or that? – I don’t know that stuff. It’s always about what it was like to work with so and so and who the best guest star was. It’s always about the relationships.

Your character’s name in the play is Marianne, which is only a couple of tweaks away from Marina.

I know. And apparently it’s total coincidence. When I was auditioning for Star Trek I was so crazy with it – it went on for six weeks – and I knew with every audition I was getting closer and closer, so by the time I did my last one I was a total wreck – I was on my knees. The job was important because I could see it was going to be a real turning point in my life if I got this gig, but the only two things I’ve read where I’ve said ‘I have to get this part’ are for Marianne in Dark Sublime and Mavis in Green Street Hooligans 2: Stand Your Ground. It took a lot of persuading for them to even see me on Green Street because they knew me from Star Trek, thought I was great, but that I just wasn’t right. I had to literally beg them to audition me for that part and I had the same feeling for Marianne.

If it hadn’t been you, I wonder who else Michael might have envisaged in the role for a matriarch of a popular sci-fi show?

There are a bunch of actresses who have a sci-fi association that he could have gone to – I’m not the only person in Equity to play this part. But I’m happy that he offered this to me first, and I snatched at it with both hands. There are other actresses that could play the part, but do they have relationships with a fan like that? Because I do. I have very deep relationships with quite a few of my fans. They are actual friends that I trust. They have my back; anyone that tries to attack me, they rip them to shreds. I have quite a unique relationship with my fans in that respect.

I understand the play’s journey to you involved Mark Gatiss? The plot thickens!

I know! The play hasn’t been published yet – that’s how new it is. Andrew [Keates] and I met at Destination: Star Trek last year in Birmingham and we hit it off. He said ‘I’d love to work with you’ and I told him that I’d love to do a play in England. He put the word out that he was looking for something for Marina, and Mark Gatiss gave him Dark Sublime, thinking it would be a good fit. And so we took it from there. The fact that it’s at Trafalgar Studios is a huge bonus. [Note: Subsequent to this interview, it has been revealed that Mark Gatiss will also be lending his pre-recorded voice to the production as talking computer Kosley.]

Some Star Trek groups are arranging special coach trips to come and see the play, and for many this will be their first exposure to live theatre. That must be gratifying for you, providing a gateway into the live stage experience.

I’ve just come back from Bridlington [Yorkshire] where I was doing Jack and the Beanstalk, and people came to a pantomime for the first time just because I was in it… and we sold them on it. They said they’d come back even if I wasn’t in it. That’s what you hope for. There’s always been this view about the theatre and the opera that it’s elitist, and I think that sometimes working class people feel intimidated going in to the West End, wondering if they have to dress up. They don’t! Come in your jeans and T-shirt if you want – nobody cares what you’re wearing, we’re just happy to have your bum on a seat and hopefully you’ll discover that the theatre is accessible for everybody. If I can get just one person into the theatre who has never been before, then that’s a success for me.

I understand that in the early part of your career you spent time in repertory theatre in Worthing – did the learning and disciplines there set you up well for your subsequent time on TV and in movies?

That was my first professional engagement, 42 years ago. I did a few plays there and then left to do some telly. I’m going to be 64 in two months and I’ll be making my West End debut at that age. It brings tears to my eyes just saying the words out loud.

And if you take yourself back to that time in rep, could you ever imagine you’d be doing this, 42 years later?

No, I couldn’t imagine that. Well, maybe. Before I left England I was a theatre actress – I understudied in the West End but never got on [the stage]. I kind of thought in the back of my head that one day I would appear in the West End, though maybe not the star. But what I never imagined in a gazillion years when I was in Worthing rep was that I’d end up in Hollywood on one of the most successful shows of all time. That’s the big ‘head explode’ moment.

Someone to whom the West End is not new is your former co-star Sir Patrick Stewart. Has he given you any tips, or would he never dream of doing that?

Ha ha, someone else asked me that. And my answer is that I have worked in the theatre before, so it’s just that the venue is different – I won’t approach the play any differently. Mind you, I haven’t done a play in 20 years, so I am a bit nervous about learning all the words. I think the tips I’d get from Patrick would be more around which restaurants I should go to after the show with my guests. And also, can I use his name to get in!

If Patrick was to come and watch your show in the company of your fans I think you might be in danger of being upstaged. He’d have to sit at the back, in the shadows.

I’m hoping that he’ll be able to see it, but the problem is he’s going to be shooting [the recently-announced Picard series]. You never know. We’re very supportive of each other. He’s brilliant, but he’s extra brilliant when he does theatre.

I like the often-repeated anecdote that he shares about you all being on the set of the Enterprise, lurching from side to side, muttering: ‘37 years at the RSC for this!’

There were moments when we were doing the ‘shaking acting’, especially at the beginning, where we were just so mortified that we had to do this. I don’t know how the Americans felt, but I know that Patrick and I were absolutely embarrassed. I think that was one of the times he said it – ‘37 years at the RSC for this’.

Hero worship is one of the themes tackled in the play – was that a gradual thing that happened for you, or pretty much once Next Generation started airing?

No, no, we earned it. We absolutely earned it. In America we weren’t welcomed at all. It was: ‘How dare you try and take the place of our heroes?’ We were met with a lot of hostility when we first started and it was only at the third season that we started winning everybody over. But let’s not forget that TNG brought a whole new audience to Star Trek, though it wasn’t straight off the bat.

And the hero worship?

I don’t know what to think about hero worship; it’s a weird thing. I don’t see how I could be classified as a hero, insofar as I haven’t actually done anything heroic. Heroes does something to earn that, and I haven’t done anything more than be blessed to be in a TV show that affected a lot of people. I hear the stories at conventions of ‘how you saved my life because I was going to give up’ or ‘This was our family time together watching it with my dad and he’s passed away now’ and I’m blessed to be part of that show, very privileged, but I didn’t write the lines, I just interpreted them.

I’m not comfortable with hero worship, but I personally love meeting the fans, and it’s one of the reasons that I do as many conventions as I do; I really like that contact with them, and it’s totally a privilege. And I do tip my hat to Patrick, because it starts from the top, and he was so great and determined not to be in something that was rubbish.

In the play, fan Oli comes round to your apartment looking for an autograph. But is he looking to meet the character from the TV show or the actress who played her?

Marina in The 5th Passenger

When fans meet you for the first time they think that they’re meeting the character, and that’s because they don’t know you as a person. When I first started doing conventions, fans would come up to me after I’d done my Q and A and say things like ‘We think that Troi is really boring, but we love you!’ When a fan knocks on your door they think it’s going to be opened by the character. It doesn’t matter how much they’ve read up on you, that’s who they’re hoping to meet. Sometimes I do apologise to fans who discover that Marina is so different to Deanna. The only thing that we have in common is that we’re the same height!

The character that I played in Green Street 2 was 180 degrees away from Deanna – one of the most evil characters on screen – and you wouldn’t expect to meet her when you open the door… hopefully you wouldn’t!

You have a very public love of football – you’re a big fan of Tottenham Hotspur – so you do know how it feels to be a fan yourself.

I am a fan, so I get it. Sometimes people burst into tears when they meet me or they’re shaking from head to foot and I’m like ‘Please don’t be embarrassed, because this is how I get around footballers… especially if they play for Tottenham!’ I totally freak out. I totally understand it. I’m such a stupid fan of Tottenham – they send me a Christmas jumper every year to wear on Twitter.

Maybe you could get some of the players along to the play. Harry Kane? Dele Alli?

Don’t! You know, they did invite me along to watch them train when they had a pre-season game here in Los Angeles. I could have died right then, a happy woman! They have figured out who I am, and that never would have happened without Star Trek. I would be just another fan, but now I’m a celebrity fan that they know all about.

I interviewed Patrick about 10 years ago and he said that his Picard days were now in the past – and here we are with a limited series based around his character in pre-production. Are you surprised that Star Trek has such a long tail and just keeps on going?

If you’d asked me this many years ago I would have said yes, very surprised. But not any more. You have the ‘successes’ and the ‘not-so-big successes ‘and the ‘oh dears’ like Nemesis – even though I loved Nemesis, and I know I’m in a minority. Star Trek the original show has weathered getting cancelled, and as much as I like Enterprise, the fans feel like they went to the well one too many times. Even after that, when everyone said that Star Trek is dead, it isn’t! You cannot kill it.

Absolutely. And its legacy is such that we now have second generation pastiches of TNG in shows like The Orville, which I understand you’re appearing in soon, directed by Jonathan [Riker] Frakes.

It’s homage to TNG. Seth [MacFarlane – creator and star], God bless him, loves our show so much that he wanted to do an homage to us. It’s amazing. It’s ridiculous and brilliant at the same time. Star Trek did something in people’s hearts and it looks like that’s going to burn for many many years to come.

How was it being directed by your screen husband Mr Frakes again? Was it just like yesterday?

It was. He’s lovely. He knew what I wanted – a lot of light! Just being on the Orville, everything looks like TNG – the corridors and everything – it was almost like stepping back in time with Jonathan directing. It felt like a comfy pair of old slippers.

By being the guest star, did you get a sense of how Carolyn Seymour felt when she joined you in Face of the Enemy?

Well, I don’t cause any trouble. I can’t tell you what the part is, but I’m not a troublemaker. I’ll just leave it at that.

And mindful of that Patrick Stewart is now returning as Picard, are you open to the possibility of returning as Troi, or is that all behind you now?

Ten years ago, Patrick told you ‘never again’. Ten years is a long time. A lot can happen in ten years. Things change and your priorities shift. I don’t think that I have ever said that I would never play Deanna again. But I’d like to think I’d never have to wear that blimmin’ spacesuit again! I don’t that I’ll ever be that skinny again in my life.

I doubt that Patrick will be wearing one!

I wish Patrick every success. I love him to death. But I’m not holding my breath [about returning].

Star Trek as a whole is in great shape at the moment, what with Discovery airing, animated shows in production, a Michelle Yeoh series…

It really is. And if you’re involved with the franchise in any form, it works for everybody; It retains interest in the franchise and just keeps it alive. It brings new fans. I’m of an age now where I feel like I’m in a rock band from the 80s, because when they go and play their concerts now you’ve got the people of my age and their kids. That’s what it’s like at a Star Trek convention; you’re looking at kids who weren’t even a twinkle in their dad’s eye when TNG was first showing. Their dad was probably still in grammar school. It’s like the Borg – they keep regenerating.

Thank you so much for time. I wish you all the best for the play.

Thank you. People are coming from all over the world, which is a bit scary actually. A lot of clubs are doing coach trips; one of my fans is terrified of flying and yet she’s going to get on a plane from America. It’s quite a responsibility, and I have to be honest, I am feeling a little bit of the pressure that you’d expect now. You’re number one on the call sheet and you’re the one who people are going to be looking at.

I’m sure you’ll knock it out of the park.

Hopefully. ‘From your mouth, to God’s ear’, as they say over here.

Marina is appearing at Trafalgar Studios, London from 25 June to 3 August 2019. You can get tickets directly from the venue. https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/dark-sublime/trafalgar-studios/

Thanks to Andrew Keates and Tilly Wilson for arranging the interview