Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Deanna Troi makes a welcome appearance in Star Trek: Picard this week, but as Marina Sirtis shares with Nick Joy, scheduling conflicts nearly scuppered the entire… ahem… enterprise.

Marina is headline guest at Sci-Fi Ball 26, an annual convention on the UK’s South coast, and she’s preparing for a day of interviews, talks, photos and autographs. Everyone wants to talk about Picard, but understandably she’s limited in what she can say before her episode is screened. Details are shrouded in a secrecy that the Romulan Shat Vash would be proud of, but we manage to gain some tantalising insight.

Marina, I have to compliment you on your… it’s not a poker face, but rather a poker voice. When I spoke to you last year about the show you clearly knew a lot more than you were letting on about your involvement in it. Well played!

[Laughs] I knew! I was lying through my teeth. Before I went to London to do my play Dark Sublime I got a call from my agent and he said ‘They want you to be in Star Trek: Picard’ and I said ‘Great, what are the dates?’ He gave me the dates and I said I couldn’t do it. He said ‘What? Why?’ I explained that this was when I was doing my play. ‘But! But!’ And that was that.

But it wasn’t the end of the story!

No, so that was my agent. I then got another call from my agent and manager both together, bullying me, and I said ‘Look, I can’t do it. I’ve committed to the play, the theatre is booked. There’s no way I can get out of it, and I don’t want to get out of it.’ So, the next day, Alex Kurtzman [Star Trek: Picard’s showrunner] calls me and I say to him ‘I know why you’re calling me, Alex, but the dates don’t work.’ He asked, ‘Can’t you put an understudy on?’ And I explained that I won’t have an understudy because it’s my face on the poster. I know that it’s a bit tough for you but I know for a fact, because they’ve contacted me, that some of my fans are coming from America, Canada, countries across Europe. I can’t not be there.

Some actors use understudies for this sort of clash.

I know that Patrick Stewart sent an understudy on once when he was doing the Scottish play in the West End and I was passing by the theatre at half time. I knew he wasn’t on – I’d had dinner with some mates in town – so I thought I’d just stop and listen to what people were saying because he wasn’t on. They were going bonkers! They’d come from Manchester and Birmingham and bought tickets at the Gielgud – which is not cheap – and then they didn’t see Patrick Stewart. They were all asking for their money back.

What broke the deadlock?

Alex wasn’t happy, and he said ‘So when are you finished?’ I actually told him the truth and realise now I should have lied and told him a week later. But I was trying to be honest and amenable. He said ‘Ok, so you’ll be available from the next day?’ Well, not really, as I’ll be flying over on a plane the next day! That took a bit of explaining. Basically I closed on Saturday at half-past ten, had a drink with the lads in the dressing room, couldn’t even go out for a proper booze-up afterwards, got on a plane at 10:30 the next morning, and I’m at the studio at eight o’clock on Monday, filming on Tuesday.

How did they do the costume fitting?

They’d already made the costume and it was like ‘Please God it fits!’ They had a few alterations and it was fine. They brought me in a lot of stuff to try. They buy much more on Picard than they make. They make a lot of stuff obviously, but my stuff because I’m a civilian – I think I can give that spoiler away – I don’t have to wear a spacesuit, so basically it was like going in to a shop and saying ‘I’ll have that and that’.

Was it lovely not wearing a spacesuit?

I don’t fit into mine any more. I wouldn’t be comfortable in a spacesuit. I’ve put on a bit of weight since then and at my age to be too thin I’d look awful… like Joan Rivers. All squidged in. It’s not an attractive look. As women get older, I always say that Catherine Deneuve said it best – ‘After 40, a woman has to choose between her bum and her face’ I chose my face.

When you were on set, did it feel as if no time had passed?

Yes it was. It was basically me, Jonathan [Frakes – Will Riker], Patrick [Stewart – Picard] and Isa [Briones – Soji] and the young girl who plays our daughter. And so most of the scenes were me, Jonathan and Patrick. It was like putting on an old comfy pair of slippers. Patrick was absolutely thrilled that we there and on the last day of filming LeVar [Burton – Geordi] and Michael Dorn [Worf] showed up, and then it got really loud! After they left, the rest of the crew came over and said ‘Blimey, we could hear you laughing 300 yards away. Is that what it used to be like on your set? I wish we’d worked on that show.’

If that was now your final appearance as Troi, would you be happy to draw a line under the character?

Yes, it’s a lovely episode. Alex said it was favourite of this first season, so that’s nice.

That’s great to hear. I always thought that Star Trek: Nemesis was not the best place to leave Troi. Even though you had appearances in Voyager and Enterprise, they didn’t really feel like Troi.

Yes, they were absolutely cameos. She wasn’t really involved in the storylines of those episodes… maybe Enterprise a bit… but, no, that was a hologram and we were watching them. I thought after Nemesis that we were done and dusted. Patrick always said that he was never going to put a spacesuit on again, so we thought that if Patrick’s not going to do it, it’s never going to happen. But he tells the story that he went to the meeting to tell them that it was a ‘no’ and walked out of the meeting agreeing to do it.

Was it easy to find Troi again?

People say to me ‘Were you excited to play Troi again?’ Not really. Not excited to play Troi. I’ve pretty much done Troi. There’s no challenge in playing Troi for an actor, a part that you’ve played for 15 years, off an on. What I was looking forward to was working with my chums again.

What always upset me about the Next Generation finale All Good Things… is that future Troi was dead.

I was very upset about that!

It’s reassuring to see that future Troi in this timeline is alive and well. And at least you didn’t have to wear the old-age makeup like most of your cast members had to in the finale.

You have to guess how someone is going to look in the future, and this is before they could do stuff with computers to give you an idea of how someone is likely to look. We didn’t have that back in 1994. This time, Jonathan was like ‘How come you don’t have any grey hair?’ And I said ‘Because I’m a woman and that’s why God invented hair dye!’

So you had no nerves in returning to the role?

Jonathan was really nervous. I wasn’t. Patrick wasn’t nervous because this was episode six [possibly 7?] and had settled into it by then. But Jonathan was nervous. He said ‘You’ve just come off a play in the West End and Patrick’s been doing this. You’re sharp and honed and ready to go, and I haven’t acted in years.’ But he’s lovely. Warm and gorgeous.

He’s happier behind the camera?

He’s much happier behind the camera. I’ve been in the business now for 43 years and he’s my favourite director. And I’m not saying that because he’s my mate, he really is my favourite director I’ve ever worked with.

 

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