Hey, nerds. I'm Wil Wheaton, and this is "The Ready Room,"
your official behind-the-scenes hub for all things
Star Trek Universe.
This week, we'll be digging into the latest episode
of Star Trek: Discovery, "The Sanctuary,"
which found our heroes on Book's home world of Kwejian.
Now, if you wanna avoid spoilers
like when Burnham and Book--
Then you'll definitely wanna watch that before you watch us.
Now, today I have two very special guests joining me.
Blu del Barrio and Ian Alexander are in the Ready Room
to talk about the latest on their characters,
Adira and Gray.
Then, later on, I have another brand new exclusive clip
from next week's episode of Star Trek: Discovery.
But before we get to that, "The Sanctuary" introduced us
to the nefarious Orion behind the Emerald Chain, Osyraa.
And wow, she does not mess around.
For more on this alien baddie,
let's see what Osyraa's actor, Janet Kitter,
has to say about her new character.
Control room, you look great today. Engage.
[Book] It's the Veridian, Osyraa's ship.
-: Osyraa's scanning us,
but she isn't blocking our scans in return.
She wants us to see her and all her firepower.
[Osyraa] Wow! It's been a while
since we've seen a Starfleet vessel.
Are you lost?
Osyraa is the leader of the Emerald Chain.
She is a very determined, highly intelligent,
somewhat fierce leader who doesn't always employ
the most diplomatic methods to get what she wants.
My ancestors knew that power is virtue
and that there is no nobility in suffering.
You do what it takes to get what you need or you don't.
She can be quite heavy-handed and employs methods
that would be very frowned upon by the Federation.
I'm Osyraa's nephew. This is her territory.
[Burnham] Where do you get your help from?
They owe Osyraa.
They work for us forever.
It's pretty simple.
We start hearing about her in Episode 5,
the Emerald Chain, and we start hearing the name Osyraa
and it comes up a little bit more in Episode 6.
Cuyahoga is reporting Orion and Andorian vessels
in the Sigma Draconis system.
It's the Emerald Chain.
[Michelle You're kind of getting, hopefully,
this growing sense of dread about
who is this individual who's running this salvage planet
and about whom people are speaking with
a little measure of fear.
We finally meet her in Episode 8.
Did you get blown to bits and forget to tell me?
The more we learn about her,
I think the more fully realized she becomes.
[Book] When the Burn hit, damaged to subspace shifted
our moons' orbit, causing tidal changes.
Sea locusts came out of the ocean and ate our harvest.
Millions, starving. Then the Chain came along.
Let me guess,
they had the solution to all your problems.
When Cleveland Booker has to go back to his home,
he's forced to go back to his home
because Osyraa is threatening the people of Kwejian
by depriving them of a pesticide
which allows them to regulate and control the agriculture.
You don't seem surprised, sir.
The Chain's turned Prime Directive violations
into an art form.
Right now, I'm tracking 50 star systems
in the same predicament.
Kwejian is a planet that I interact with.
Some people would say that I am not particularly fair
to the people of Kwejian.
Osyraa breaks people.
Ryn the Andorian, he was born into the Emerald Chain.
He tried to rally the people against them,
people were beginning to listen.
So she hacked off his antennae.
As we are moving through the season,
we were looking at, well, who are the other individuals
in this new future and how have they handled the Burn?
We see via Federation headquarters and Vance,
how the Federation has handled the Burn.
What about the non-Federation members?
And so, certainly, there would be those who would
respond in a different way.
You have just sealed your own fate
and the fate of the Federation.
I promise you will feel the full weight of the Chain.
I think hatred is the wrong word.
I think that she doesn't necessarily believe
that they deserve to be held in such high esteem.
She works very hard for her people to advance themselves,
and yet they don't enjoy
the same reputation as the Federation.
So I think possibly envy is a better way to go than hatred.
She'll be back, Osyraa.
And it will be bad next time.
My guests today are two of the newest members
of my Star Trek family, and I am so, so excited to be able
to finally talk with them.
Please join me in welcoming Blu del Barrio,
who plays as Adira, and Ian Alexander, who plays Gray.
Welcome, both of you, to the Ready Room.
-: Hi, thank you.
-: Hi, Wil.
So I have been so excited to meet
and talk with the two of you
because, though our lives are unbelievably different,
we are three of four people in the world
who are teenagers on Star Trek,
and we are part of a tiny, tiny, tiny little secret club.
I just wanna know,
now that we're about halfway through the season,
what has the experience been like for you
working on the show
and being the new young face of Star Trek?
I feel like a baby.
I mean, everyone is ...
As much as everyone is older, everyone is also like
really far along in their career and has been--
-: Yeah.
-: And even with Star Trek.
I mean, this is their third season.
So they're like really settled, really grounded.
So I just ...
I felt ...
I don't know how else to say.
I just felt like a baby.
That is so funny.
Yeah. I have never joined a franchise
as well-established as Star Trek.
I mean, it's been around since well before I was born.
So yeah, it's a little intimidating to be joining
such an amazing, massive franchise
that has such rich history,
especially when it comes to like diversity in television.
I feel though, like, along with Blu,
we've settled pretty well
and we found a lot of, you know,
friendship and fun times on set.
So I'm just really excited to keep seeing how
our storylines progress
and how much further involved we get in the story.
I would love to talk a little bit about the diversity
that you mentioned because Star Trek
seems to always be really in the vanguard of diversity
and representation in the world,
and it is groundbreaking and wonderful that
Star Trek has introduced non-binary
and transgender characters into this universe.
I would love so much if you would talk about
what it means personally
getting to represent these communities,
getting to represent your communities
in a mainstream science fiction show.
Well, there's this song lyric that I really like.
It's from an FKA Twigs song, and she says,
"I've never seen a hero like me in a sci-fi,"
and I really resonate with that lyric
because, up until this point,
I really hadn't seen a hero like myself
in a sci-fi franchise like Star Trek.
So I'm just so glad that I can be one of the first
trans characters on Star Trek,
and that there can be trans youth who--finally,
they have a character to cosplay
that's made for them, you know?
Wil: Yeah, of course. -: So I'm so excited to see.
I absolutely agree.
I love that song as well.
Yeah, I agree with everything you've said
and I think we got really lucky as well.
Our cast is already so, so diverse in a beautiful way,
and they've gone even farther by just having
two trans characters
and two very different trans characters,
which makes it even more beautiful.
Like there's a lot of similarities between Ian and I,
but we are also so different
and I think it's so beautiful to see
two very different trans characters in one piece,
in one show, interacting with each other.
So I think we're really, really lucky to be able to do that.
Blu, there's this moment in the episode
that we just watched where Adira tells Stamets,
"Listen, I'm they, them."
They're fast.
Hm?
Um, they. Not--not she.
I've never felt like a she or her.
So I would prefer they or them from now on.
Okay.
[Wil] And I watched that and I just thought,
this is one of those groundbreaking moments
that's really gonna matter to people.
It's going to be one of the things
that people look at it and go,
"This is when the change started."
What do you think it means,
and what did it mean for you personally
to play out that scene?
If this is too personal a question,
tell me and I'll back off,
but I felt as I watched that,
like I felt like I think Blu's had a moment like this.
Yeah, I ...
That was very surreal for me because
I was still struggling a lot with my own gender
when I started this show,
and trying to figure things out about myself
as I came on to join Star Trek.
And so when we filmed that scene,
that was around about the time that
I was coming out to my parents and a lot of my family.
So yeah, it was--
-: That must have been intense.
-: Yeah, it was really, really weird.
But also really ...
It was a mix. It was wonderful and it was weird
because Adira is a character,
but a lot of the things that I was going through
really matched exactly where they were.
-: Yeah.
-: In the story.
So it was pretty surreal.
Anthony also knew what was going on.
So every time we would ...
[laughs]
Every time we would cut, he would just look at me like,
"Are you okay?"
And then I had to stop him 'cause it was a lot.
But it was really meaningful and really hard,
and it means a lot to me as a scene
just because of what was going on in my own life.
And I hope that, if anything, that comes off to anyone else
who's like trying to come out to their families.
I hope that whatever I was feeling comes across
'cause I was feeling a lot of turmoil and a lot of stress
and also a lot of relief.
So yeah.
For what it's worth,
I got all of that in your performance.
Thanks.
[Wil] The two of you, your characters
are pretty close to Stamets and Culver.
And I was going to ask you,
are you close to Anthony and Wilson in real life?
We call them dads.
-: They are like our dads.
They are.
It's so great 'cause they are kind of--
-: I love that.
-: Yeah, them along with Sonequa,
I feel like they were the first people to sort of reach out
and make sure that Blu and I really felt
welcomed into the family.
Yeah. Anthony and Wilson,
we got very close with super fast,
and it does feel like, in show and out,
like a little queer family, which is really nice to have.
-: That's awesome.
It is so wonderful to me to hear that
you call them your dads
because that's what I called Frakes and Brent Spiner.
They are my two dads.
They were dads to me when I was on the set.
Isn't there like ...
Like there is nothing better in the world
than those moments on set or in the makeup trailer
where one of the adults is like, "I think you're cool."
Am I right? Like, isn't that just the best thing?
It's so validating because--
yeah, it just means so much coming from someone
that is well-established on the show
to have that validation, definitely.
-: Yeah.
-: In the episode we just watched, Ian, Gray is MIA,
and he is kind of like off doing his own thing.
We gotta be a little careful,
so we don't give anything away.
But do you have some insights into why
he might be avoiding Adira at this time?
Without going too far into spoiler territory,
I think that Gray is really just coming to terms
with his place in the world and who he is,
and also just sort of trying to figure out
how to make himself happy.
And he really doesn't have those answers
at the point in the show that we're at.
And so he does take some time,
some space to himself to really figure things out
and then comes back to Adira later
once he has processed everything that happens.
'Cause there's a lot.
I mean, it's very traumatic and it's very hard
for both of them, but especially Gray,
undergoing such a massive change,
which I will not mention what it is.
And so yeah, he just needs time and space
to figure things out.
Both of you have ties to Trill,
and I am wondering what sort of research, if any,
you did regarding the species.
Did you watch any Trill specific episodes
of Next Generation or Deep Space Nine?
Did you do some homework on that
or did you just sort of get a piece of the writer's Bible
and build your own headcanon?
I got an immediate email from Nick Adams at GLAAD,
who is a massive Trekkie,
and he just sent me a huge list of like Trill episodes
and he was like,
"You have to watch these Deep Space Nine."
So I watched Deep Space Nine and all of Jadzia's storyline,
who's mainly in there.
But, yeah, I definitely had to get recommendations
from people who are Trekkies and who like have a really good
familiarity with the whole franchise
and where exactly we could find information about
the Trill species.
'Cause it's pretty scattered, other than Deep Space Nine.
You are playing these characters
who have a connection to a being
that is hundreds of years old,
just a centuries-old character.
Would you talk a little bit about playing that aspect
of each of your characters?
And are you thinking about that?
Do you think about,
"Oh yes, I have a X-hundred-year-old creature inside of me,
and their ideas are coming through," or do you ...
or am I overthinking it?
I think actually the symbiont
provides this gender metaphor for me, personally.
-: Yeah.
-: There is a lot of allusion to being transgender,
like with the Trill and with their joining
with the symbionts because you gain all of the knowledge of
the past hosts of the symbiont.
And so those people can be of any gender.
So for me it was kind of like this encompassing
trans metaphor for like, oh, I'm like taking on all of
this prior knowledge from my ancestors
and sort of absorbing all of their gender identities
and their wisdom.
And yeah, I was definitely keeping that in mind of like,
you know, Gray becomes this very wise soul
with hundreds of years of experience.
Yeah. I think whether it was meant to be canon or not,
I think the Trill species does definitely mirror
a lot of the trans experience,
and trans fans definitely always caught on to that.
So it's really nice to be able to follow that,
now with two trans characters.
Wil: Yeah.
-: But otherwise, I totally agree with everything.
I think it is really, really nice to have the awareness
that there are multiple consciousnesses inside of you.
And it also makes it a little bit hard to play
because you can't like focus on all of them
because then you can't focus on anything.
-: Yeah.
-: So it's nice to remember that you are the host,
so Adira or Gray, at their own time, is the host.
So they are the one that is in control,
the one that has some semblance of control
and they are allowed to be like the front foot.
The symbiont has brought to each of your characters
this gorgeous musical ability.
And the two of you, each of you handles a cello beautifully.
I'm going to ask you if either one of you
actually plays the cello.
Now, you can lie to me and say yes, and I will believe you.
I suspect you're going to say,
"No, we're just good actors,"
which is what I would agree with.
But I'm so curious to know how you approached the scenes
where you are playing that music
that is so important to your symbiont.
We had a wonderful teacher named Emma,
who was just fabulous,
and she really tried to help us as much as she could.
But every time, when I had to sit down and play it,
it just sounded like ear blood.
[all laughs]
Awful, awful noise, horrible noise.
And there was a specific moment where Sonequa
had to come in and listen to me playing and say,
"That is so beautiful."
[laughs]
And I cracked every time because it was just the most
horrible noise that I was making.
That's beautiful.
She had to walk in just be like,
"God, that was so beautiful."
-: That's amazing.
-: Yeah. I ...
[chuckles]
Yeah, you can go.
-: Did they end up putting the silenced strings
on the cello so that it wouldn't make any noise?
Yeah. Yeah. So we had a tutor named Emma
who sort of taught us like the proper bow holds
and sort of like the first few notes of the song.
And I actually really, really enjoyed learning
how to play cello and was like,
"Hmm, do I wanna play cello?" I don't know.
I haven't taken lessons,
but I would consider like actually learning how to play
the instrument in the future.
Blu, when I was introduced to your character
early on in the series,
I had an interview with Frakes.
Like I said, Frakes is like my dad.
So I texted him and I said,
"I just wanted to talk to you a little bit
about this episode and I really wanna talk to you
about Blu del Barrio."
And he texted back with this just incredibly effusive list
of reasons he thinks you're amazing.
And one of the things he told me, which I did not know
and I wouldn't know from watching,
is that this is one of your very first gigs.
Like you are brand new on television
and you're brand new on something like Star Trek.
Holy crap. Like, what is ...
How do you even come into the room?
How do you ...
Like that has gotta be ...
That's so much.
It's so much.
[laughs]
It's a lot, for sure.
I still don't feel like it happened at all.
Like it felt--I came from ...
I started a little bit after graduating drama school,
and because Ian and I weren't announced
for like a long time after we finished filming,
it sort of still felt like school, because of that.
So I got to film a whole season
and get to know all these people sort of in private
which is, you know, sort of weird
once-in-a-lifetime experience.
It made it a lot easier to kind of relax,
and it made it a lot easier to also have Ian there
with me because Ian knows more about everything and--
-: Yeah.
-: He's definitely more seasoned and has been working,
and he was just like a really big lifeboat for me
when I was super anxious.
And I struggle a lot as well with depression and anxiety.
So Ian was really, really wonderful to have as a friend
and as an ally.
I have depression and anxiety as well.
And I am used to it telling me that I'm terrible
when I'm on-set and I'm used to it, you know,
just telling me that I can't do anything,
and they're all gonna laugh at me. Right?
Like they're all ...
Somebody's gonna figure it out.
That's like, that has been my fear my entire life.
They're gonna figure it out,
and I'm just never gonna get to work again.
I presume you have mentors on the set.
Do you wanna talk about that at all?
Yeah. One of the first episodes where I had a lot to do,
which I think was the fourth episode,
I was pretty much, every day, with Sonequa,
like constantly, all the time,
and I don't think that there is a better role model
for, like, as an actor being on set
and being a part of a show.
She is unreal.
She takes the time and energy to be
the kindest person in the world to everybody
that is on set at any given time.
Everyone in the crew, everyone in the cast,
everyone in the extras.
She gave like ...
She gives 100% of herself the entire day,
which seems crazy because she's there all day every day.
-: Yeah.
-: And so, she immediately just became a huge mentor for me,
not only for this show, but I know I'm gonna be thinking
about her and the way that she handles herself
for the rest of my career
because it's truly magical and wonderful
and I wish that everyone in the world could be like that
'cause it's just amazing.
[Wil] My last question for you both
is about your interactions with the cast
as it relates specifically to Star Trek canon
and the experience of being on Star Trek in particular.
So, this cast has been doing Discovery for three seasons.
They know the shakes,
they know not to talk when the doors are closing,
they know how to hold still for transports.
Like they know all those things.
Y'all are sort of new,
these are all new experiences for you.
Have you been able to take anything away
from your fellow cast members and crew
who have been on Star Trek for three years now?
Is there anything that you're like,
"Oh! Man. Yes, I am so glad
that I have that in my toolbox now?"
I think the biggest thing was that
it's allowed to be a playful space.
-: Oh, yeah.
-: 'Cause it's really daunting seeing everything first
and like, oh, there is a ...
The ship is real.
Like there is an actual ...
You know, you don't wanna break anything,
you don't wanna touch anything,
you wanna be quiet at all times.
But immediately seeing how playful the whole cast is,
and a lot of the directors.
I mean, Frakes is way up there
in terms of just being a fool on set.
We're allowed to be,
that was really quickly learned from
just watching everyone else,
and that's the one that is most resonant with me.
'Cause it took away a lot of stress
and it made asking questions easier.
So that was the big one for me.
Does Frakes ever sing on your set?
Every like 45 seconds, give or take.
[laughs]
I'm so glad he's still doing that.
He'll start singing and then Anthony will join,
and now it's suddenly Broadway and it's fantastic.
It's wonderful and I love it so much.
I love that you get to have that.
That was one of my favorite things about
working with him when I was a kid,
was just that playfulness.
And the professionalism of getting it done,
but the playfulness and the permission
to have fun while we're working.
Oh yeah, he does it so quickly and you don't even notice.
I think that's the great part is he'll do it,
he'll make everything happen speedily,
but he doesn't feel like that.
Wil: Yeah.
-: It feels like you're playing around and, you know,
just doing fun things and then you're done and, you know,
it's early in the day and somehow he did it.
If your experience is similar to mine,
you're going to have this family for the rest of your life.
I've heard you say you choose your family,
and my biological family sucks.
So I chose my family and my family is my Star Trek cast.
And it is so incredibly meaningful to me to have that.
I know that the two of you are still kind of
at the beginning of Star Trek being part of your life.
But for what it's worth, from this middle-aged dude
who has been part of Star Trek longer
than your lives combined,
welcome to the family,
and I am so honored to share this time with you.
And I'm so honored and privileged to share Star Trek
with two remarkable young people who are great actors
and incredible voices for what Star Trek is really about.
And I'm so grateful that y'all made some time to sit
and talk with me today.
I'm so excited to watch the rest of your character
interactions this season.
-: Thank you. -: Thank you so much, Wil.
Thank you.
-: Thanks.
I will burn 10 hecapates of forest
every minute of delay.
[Wil] Hecapates are a unit of land measurement
native to what alien race?
Bajorans, Orions, Andorians, Cardassians?
Don't boldly go anywhere. Stay tuned for the answer.
To borrow a phrase from Saru's delightfully
cringy go-to-warp lexicon,
I think it's time to carry on into next week's episode
of Star Trek: Discovery with this never-before-seen
exclusive clip.
Please watch and enjoy.
[Kovich] If you'd come to me sooner,
I could've saved you a lot of trouble.
[Culver] I wasn't aware that you had any medical training.
Yes, I'm a man of widely varying interests.
And I understand she's been presenting
with physiological symptoms.
But the cure won't be found anywhere in this room,
or in this galaxy for that matter.
Computer, open classified file beta 4895 omega.
Lieutenant Commander Yor, deceased. Time soldier.
Time soldier?
Consider yourself lucky to have skipped the Temporal Wars.
Amongst the many horrible things we discovered
when weaponizing time,
temporal travel can make you pretty sick.
It turns out our molecules are designed to function
in the time at which they're created.
But everyone on Discovery traveled through time.
Yes, but only one of you is also
from a parallel universe.
Yor, here, traveled forward from 2379
and across from an alternate universe created by
the temporal incursion of a Romulan mining ship.
Before Georgiou, Yor was the only individual known
to have traveled across both time and dimensions.
So you knew this would happen to her?
Suspected. Every molecule fights to either go back in time
or jump a cosmic divide.
[Wil] Hecapates are a unit of land measurement
native to what alien race?
Bajorans, Orions, Andorians, Cardassians?
The answer is Bajorans.
Hecapates were previously referenced in Deep Space Nine
when Benjamin Sisko purchased
12 hecapates of land on Bajor.
Thank you all for stopping by the Ready Room
to talk about this week's episode of Star Trek: Discovery.
Next week, we have a Ready Room first planned,
and I cannot wait.
Disco's bridge crew.
The bridge crew is joining me to talk about the new episode.
I know that I cannot wait to find out
what they have going on.
Until then, I'm Wil Wheaton.
Live long and prosper.