This week, Jess Bush, who plays Nurse Christine Chapel,
joins me to talk to the emotional journeys
of this week's episode.
We take a logical look at Vulcan marriage rituals,
and we uncover Lieutenant Spock's fascinating human inside.
Fly a shuttle to The Ready Room for all this and more.
Hey, nerds! I'm Wil Wheaton, and this is The Ready Room,
your official behind-the-scenes hub
for all things Star Trek Universe.
In this week's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,
titled "Charades," Spock gets in touch with his emotions
in a major way.
But if just hearing that makes you emotional,
I'm going to call for a red alert.
Vulcans are masters of suppressing their emotions,
and I am a master of suppressing spoilers.
So, if you haven't seen this week's episode yet,
travel through interdimensional space with a couple of pals,
stream it and report back here to The Ready Room
for all the feels.
It is an exciting day here in The Ready Room,
because I have Jess Bush, aka Nurse Christine Chapel,
joining me in person to talk
all about her character's emotional rollercoaster ride
in this week's episode and her budding romance with Spock.
Speaking of Spock, for nearly 60 years,
the Enterprise's science officer has lived life
focusing on his Vulcan half, choosing logic over emotion.
However, in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,
he has explored his human half
in a deeper way than ever before,
especially in this week's episode.
Becoming fully human will do that.
Later, we will accompany Spock
on his journey of self-discovery.
But first, Vulcan weddings are a lot.
From the super harsh awareness ritual
to the kal-if-fee battle to the death,
being a Vulcan wedding planner
must be the most stressful job in the galaxy-
if Vulcans felt stress, I guess.
Well, here's a special look at the unique traditions
that surround Vulcan matrimony.
Control room? Engage.
We have to do the V'Shal dinner, now,
or the wedding is off.
T'Pring and her family have agreed
to have the dinner here tomorrow night.
What wonderful news.
The V'Shal ritual purely came out of us breaking the story
and thinking, "What would be a funny thing
to watch Spock go through
as a person pretending to be a Vulcan?"
We have all been obsessed with "Amok Time," right?
I mean, how can we not?
I mean, we all hum the theme.
[dramatic music]
We spend a lot of time trying to figure out
how we can have a lot more marriage proposals
and break 'em up and, you know,
'cause secretly we're kind of love stories in space,
and it's super fun.
Lock it up. Here we go.
- [Crew Member] Clear the set. - [Director] And action.
We come back to Spock and T'Pring in Episode 5.
The Enterprise is on a mission to go to Vulcan,
and it ends up being a last minute engagement dinner
for Spock and T'Pring,
which is gonna be very complicated for Spock.
Take off your hat.
You're human.
Hi, Mom.
I was really interested
in reading all about the engagement ceremony
that was laid out for us throughout the episode.
Vulcans are obviously, you know, they're very traditional.
The V'Shal ritual starts with the family tea.
That doesn't seem so hard.
That would be the handling
of a traditional Vulcan tea pot.
That's scalding hot.
We had a specific episode around a Vulcan ritual
that we had to figure out and create.
So, working with the showrunners, the writers, the director,
and kind of getting all the beats,
so what that ritual would be,
that was the best prop that we did this season,
the most expensive.
But it was a lot of fun because we were creating canon.
One of the big pieces was the kettle
that Spock is supposed to touch and not burn his hands.
So, the prop is 3D printed.
It was printed in white and then we dyed it black
to get to this color.
So, then we had to have the vessel.
It's made of solid brass, so it actually weighs a lot.
In the scene, Spock was to pick up the kettle.
He pours in the liquid,
and in one fell swoop it has to go through
and fill up the cup exactly.
So, we had to figure out how much liquid the cup took
and just have that amount in the kettle
so Ethan didn't have to worry about how much water
he was pouring in so he wouldn't overflow the cup.
Acceptable.
T'Pring was one of my favorite characters to dress.
It was scripted that she was wearing
a very modest, simple gown.
We, in the costume department,
we don't really do simple and modest,
so, we asked if we could do the opposite,
and it kind of worked with the storyline
because it was like T'Pring's mother
had put this gown on her
to make it look very formal and very regal.
We debated for three hours with this outfit.
That is...fascinating?
So, here we have T'Pring's beautiful gown.
It was custom-pleated in Montreal in a starburst pattern,
and then we did some leather detail around the bust.
And Jen Bowen here is our digital costumer,
and she was responsible
in bringing these shoulder pieces to life.
We went through several design iterations
and several 3D prints.
This is the first one we did,
really just to get the shape right,
just to, you know, see how it looked on her scale-wise.
And then we increased the size quite a bit,
started mapping out where the little cutouts would be.
We had a few print failures
that we had to figure out and piece together,
and luckily it all came together in the end.
Isn't it beautiful?
Seeing the story develop,
and, you know, the stakes kind of get higher and higher
as we progress through the story,
as far as, you know, all the relationships go.
And all those ceremonies kind of bring out more and more
of an eruption, you know, between all of the characters.
It's a lot of fun to watch that trajectory.
Everyone has been in a situation
where they have expectations of them
that they have to pretend to be something
just to get through it.
So, in that sense, that specific Vulcan experience,
we were really just trying to make it relatable
in a way that human beings can understand.
I'm joined today by Jess Bush,
who plays Nurse Christine Chapel.
Jess!
- Hey, Wil Wheaton. - Welcome to "The Ready Room."
Thank you so much.
I'm so happy so much to be talking to you in person.
I know. I can just like, touch you,
reach out and touch you.
You're like right here.
There's no screen in between us.
- I know. - We're like people.
Imagine that?
It's weird, isn't it?
Yeah.
Nurse Chapel, a fan-favorite character
going all the way back to the sixties.
Tell me about the fan response to your interpretation
of a beloved character.
It has been overwhelming in the best way.
I remember my first convention in Vegas,
and the first time that I actually, like,
kind of came in contact with the fandom.
I just couldn't keep it together.
I was just like smiling
and like tears were rolling down my cheeks.
Like, just the outpouring of love from the fans
has been so disarming,
and it's, yeah, it's been an incredible experience,
and I feel very fortunate that I have been accepted
with open arms in that way,
because it is such a responsibility
to bring new life to a character
that's already established and already loved.
It's been very special.
One of the attributes that I am seeing in Christine
this season is her ambition, her determination
to, like, way be the best at everything that she does.
Maybe to a fault.
How do you feel about getting to portray
that side of her personality?
The last time we talked you talked about
how Majel Barrett's Christine Chapel
maybe wasn't as fully developed as your Christine Chapel is.
Just talk a little bit about that aspect of her
and the aspects of her that you are discovering
that we don't already know about
from a previous iteration of the character.
Yeah, Majel was famously unhappy
with, like, how little she got to say.
She wanted to do more.
Like, she wanted to really bite into it,
and she didn't feel like she had the opportunity to do that.
And it was spoken about that her Chapel
was positioned as kind of just like a tool
to illustrate Spock's disinterest
or his emotional detachment.
And I think that the writers of this show
have really, really focused on that stereotype
and blowing it to pieces.
About that fellowship, the archeological medicine?
I'm thinking about applying.
I'm going to have to replace you, aren't I?
It's two months on Vulcan.
You're not getting rid of me that easy.
I feel really privileged and proud
to be a part of that dismantling.
And, you know, they've really gone to the nth degree
to make sure that they like really flipped that on its head.
So that's been like super satisfying as an artist
to like, be a part of that.
Chapel and I have some similarities in our hangups
and our fears and what drives us personally,
but she's just a whole lot more courageous
than I am, I think.
So that's been really illuminating for me
to embody that and kind of be like, "Oh, wow."
Like, it's shown me how I am in situations, you know,
by feeling it in a different way.
I feel like maybe she inspires you?
Yeah. Which is a crazy thing to think about.
You know, like?
- Well, Wesley inspires me. - Yeah?
And it's been 30 years since I was Wesley,
so, like, it's a thing that happens.
Isn't that such a special part of being an actor?
[Wil] It is.
Like it's such an intimate and unusual occurrence
to be inspired by someone that you are embodying.
Do you think about her being an inspiration,
particularly for young women?
Yeah, I think that, I mean, I'm so grateful to the writers
for giving me the structure to create something like that.
And there's been a few times when like fans have come to me
and said that their daughters and their sons are like,
they're really proud for their children
to watch a character like mine be portrayed.
And that is like, like I don't think I could ask
for anything more as an artist, to touch people in that way.
So, yeah.
A piece of your Christine's backstory that's new
is her experience in the Klingon war.
[Jess] Yeah.
[Wil] Christine and M'Benga just kick all kinds of ass,
and it looks really fun.
People who go through war always come back
so fundamentally changed from it.
Knowing now that she and M'Benga
served in this war together,
how does that shade the relationship
between the two of them?
Is that bringing something new this season
that maybe wasn't talked about in the previous season?
Absolutely.
I think that it's been so wonderful
to explore my relationship with M'Benga,
and I think that learning of our experiences together
and experiencing them together on set
has brought a whole new dimension
to who we are to each other.
I think that it's a very unique
and very special relationship
that maybe only the two of us understand,
and also probably can't really be explained with words.
Yeah. I got a sense of like a ride-or-die relationship.
Especially earlier this season,
I just felt like things are really like not great
in this particular moment,
and I could really see her just turning to him like,
"We're doing this, right?"
And then the two of them go off and just do it.
I loved that.
Me too. Yeah.
There's definitely like a,
if it was to come to one of us losing the other,
like we wouldn't want to go out without the other person.
You know? Like we're - Yeah. I got that.
very much in it together.
And also there's this great sense of like,
we know what to do intrinsically,
like to assist the other person
or get through a hard situation.
We have an instinct
where we are aware of each other at all times, you know?
Which is really cool. - Come to think of it,
I imagine it's the relationship
a surgeon wants with their nurse.
- Exactly. Exactly. - Actually,
And I think that's why they work so well together.
- Now that I think about it. - That's very insightful.
Maybe I'm the last person on planet Earth
to put that together.
It was interesting to me that Christine was real interested
in going to do a fellowship at the Vulcan Science Institute.
Yes.
What motivates her to go, to take this
and potentially take a little bit of time
off of the Enterprise, which is kind of a cool place to be?
Yeah, first of all, she's insatiably ambitious
and always looking for newness,
so, I think that the opportunity to go
and exist in a different community
and learn about a new culture and expand her knowledge.
She always wants to be more,
she always wants to know how to know more, be more, do more,
and know new people, you know?
Like she just is always looking for that.
So that's one element,
but also there's the tension that's existing
with between her and Spock,
and I think that she can be quite avoidant at times,
and so she probably just sees it twofold
as like an opportunity for growth, but also an opportunity
to just like get out for a little bit.
Maybe get away.
You know, remove herself from the situation,
not have to face it head on,
just let it kind of simmer down.
'Cause if she doesn't do that,
she's gonna end up making out with Spock
at the end of the episode.
Right? And who would want that?
Yeah. Like everybody, as it turns out.
We're gonna get there in a second.
The Kerkhovians are an interesting species.
Hello. I am Yellow.
Yes. Yes.
I'm trying to find some help for my friend Spock.
Remediation was made. No further contact is...
No, we...
I know you think we shouldn't contact you,
but you made a mistake and we need your help to fix it.
I found their weird, bureaucratic,
"Your call is very important to us," kind of attitude
to be really interesting. - Yeah.
I presume that the scene
in that kind of liminal outside of space,
that was the AR Wall.
Yes, it was.
- Yeah. - Yes.
And it's beautiful.
Oh, it was stunning, but also nauseating.
Was it really?
I wonder, does that all of that feel like motion sickness,
like almost like you can't get your feet underneath you?
For sure, 'cause the entire floor was mirrors,
and the walls were like pulsating Rorschach paintings.
So like, usually on the AR Wall
it's already a little nauseating,
because when the camera moves, the entire landscape moves.
But with the interdimensional space sequence,
there's no point that you can focus on,
'cause it's just all moving.
You can't even like, fix yourself
on like an imaginary staircase.
It's then moving and you can like, follow it.
It was just all...
I can see how your inner ear
would have a real big problem with that.
Oh my goodness.
And also like our marks on the floor,
like you could never see them. - Oh, of course.
- So we were just like. - Yeah. Yeah.
And whenever the camera moved.
Dots, right? Just tape dots?
Just, yeah.
Like, or even, I think there might've even been marker.
I can't remember.
But there was like, they were really hard to see,
and they kept rubbing off,
and we didn't have any reference points.
So whenever the camera...
And we were in there for like, I don't know, 15 hours.
That's a long time to be in a space
that makes you feel like you're upside down
in different ways.
Yeah, but it was fun.
But, I think by the end of the day,
like Melissa, Celia, and I were just like, "Oh gosh."
Like, "This is a lot."
And whenever the camera would move,
we'd all just like grab each other.
- Yeah. - And like try and like...
Yeah, it was a lot, but it was really great.
It was beautiful.
When they turn to her, right?
Like, I'm sitting in my chair in my house going,
"Tell it how you feel about Spock," right?
When they finally turned around, I was like,
"Finally somebody said it."
This entire episode. - Yeah.
If we're accepting this is real in real time,
she has very strong feelings for Spock
and is at the extreme edge of losing him forever.
Yeah.
Just talk to me about keeping that alive
in your performance over the, what, seven or so days
that it takes to film an episode.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
It was interesting
because actually we shot that sequence months later.
The interdimensional space sequence
was actually shot months after the episode finished.
Really?
We had to, just for logistical reasons,
we had to come back around and do it.
That's like, we're gonna shoot the climax of this episode
after you've done however many other episodes.
- Yeah. - That's... wow.
I just like, I know the other film industry professionals
are doing this.
Like, that's, I know how hard that is.
Yeah, in my experience, once something lives in your body,
you can access it forever.
So, it was still fantastic in a sense that like,
I had experienced the whole story and so that lived in me,
and so that loss, that possibility of loss was there
whenever I wanted to tap into it, you know?
And so in that moment, it was just like a mess
of just like, deeply instilled fear of exposure
and coming to terms with the possibility
of losing a very good friend,
or some...
She was like, you know, I think she's in denial
about it as well.
Like, she's like, "No, he's..."
I think she was like, is convincing herself
that they're just friends.
She's just trying to protect herself.
Going back to The Original Series,
I think, I agree very fully that Chapel was in service
of Spock's character.
It was the sixties, and it was like,
"Here's the woman to support the man," right?
Your Chapel is completely different.
She's an independent woman.
Like, she has her own story and her own everything,
and is much more fully realized.
And still there is something about Spock
that she really loves.
What we always got before was,
"Chapel loves Spock. The end."
But there's something, it's different.
It's so much more developed in you.
Would you talk a bit about what are the qualities in Spock
that she is drawn to.
Why Spock and not, not a pure Vulcan,
or why not somebody else?
What is it about Spock specifically?
Yeah, I think, yeah, you asking, "Why not a pure Vulcan?"
is actually a very interesting question,
and I think, you know, we've spoken before
about how his honesty, his consistency, his directness,
his morality, like, is unshakable.
Spock, I know where I stand with you.
You're an honest man.
You're not the guy who would chase after another woman
while you have a girlfriend.
I think that she feels like she can actually trust him
in a way that I don't think she really trusts other people.
Like, she's very open and she's very like, you know,
warm and all of that, but I think with the real her,
she doesn't really let that out very often.
And I think that Spock provides a really grounded
and safe net for that to happen.
Thank you for your advice.
If I can ever return the favor,
please do not hesitate to ask.
What are friends for?
That was a rhetorical, Spock.
Oh, I know.
Humans are almost as easy to tease as Vulcans.
There's an element to him
that's also messy and mixed up and human,
and I think that she relates to that.
There's like a kinship in that.
So she provides something that she doesn't,
I mean, he provides something that she doesn't have,
but also he's kind of a mirror for her
in some ways as well, I think.
So, let's take the relationship from the other direction.
Spock very clearly has strong feelings for Christine,
and we knew that before this episode.
What is it about her that inspires that in him?
I think that he feels seen by her.
Yeah.
I don't think that she has any expectations of him.
Like he's allowed to kind of be messy
and experience and feel things
that he can't exactly explain,
and she has space for that, and she has compassion for that,
and she has love for that.
So, I think, yeah, they make each other feel safe
in a way that's sacred and maybe not shared by other people.
For all of us who have been shipping Christine and Spock,
specifically the two of you, are you prepared
for how fandom is going to react to this week's episode?
I'm so excited.
It's like, as you know,
it's like I've just hidden a little present
and I'm waiting for the person to find it and open it.
- Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. I'm very excited.
So, I just can't wait. I think it's gonna be great, yeah.
Thank you for making time to come and be here today.
Oh, my absolute pleasure.
Awesome to be the same as you.
Thanks, Wil.
Great to see you. - Yeah, it's exciting.
Let's play a fun game of word association.
I will say a word, and then you're gonna say the first word
that pops into your head.
Ready? Here we go.
Spock.
I bet that one of the first words that popped into your head
was an adjective, like logical, emotionless, or fascinating.
Listen, I totally get it.
Those are the words I thought of,
which is why they're in the script.
Spock has fully embraced his Vulcan side,
but his human side shines through from time to time,
especially in this week's episode.
Recently, the cast and crew that is behind
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds sat down
to talk about exploring Spock's emotional evolution.
Check it out.
Mr. Spock? Try to be still.
You were in a shuttle accident.
You were healed, only whoever did this
seems to have made you human.
What the...?
We pick up with Spock at the beginning of Season 2
in a very precarious situation on the Enterprise.
How's feeling going?
It's a lot.
It's not all bad. Sometimes I don't cry in the shower.
He's really in conflict with his human and Vulcan sides,
so he's trying to work out how human to be, how useful it is
to be more human than he has been previously.
That's sort of an ongoing theme with him.
Spock, I think, is exposed to his human side
in a way that he's not ready for.
Don't test me, Kirk. I will break you.
I'll clean it up.
But, I think he starts to discover that intuition
and emotional uptake in information really serves him
and serves his problem solving.
Vulcans have emotions. We learn to suppress them.
These human feelings are different.
What is that amazing smell?
- Oh, it's the bacon. - Bacon?
So, in Episode 5 we took Spock to human and back,
and the instruction given to me was, "As fast as possible."
We did certain tricks.
Couple times I didn't glue the ears on.
There was one scene in particular
where his ears had to go on and off
like within the scene itself.
Fascinating.
They weren't glued on, but they were almost seamless.
Like, if maybe you paused it, you could see a seam.
Otherwise, it was great.
If I didn't know better, I'd say you were experiencing
what we humans call stress.
M'Benga has dealt with the Vulcans.
He's studied, you know, with Vulcans before,
and so he's got a great appreciation for Mr. Spock.
So to help him through this moment
of discovering his human side was lovely.
I'm concerned my emotions may impact my judgment.
You will just have to learn to live with them,
like we all do.
You could see his panicking, but it was like,
"Man, this is what we have to deal with every day.
You're welcome."
I have always loved the character of Spock.
I was always interested, because in The Original Series
he is very much decisively, "I am Vulcan,"
but Spock isn't a pure Vulcan.
The interesting thing
is that there's actually canon to back this up.
You were told to report to me at once.
I didn't want to, Jim.
When you look at Spock in "The Cage,"
you know, he's a laughing Spock.
He's a Spock who sees these flowers and giggles,
and it's sort of like an emotive Spock,
a Spock that we hadn't seen, really, before.
If you look at Spock's life as a whole,
it really is a waveform.
He's in a waltz with himself.
Human, Vulcan, human, Vulcan, human, Vulcan.
So, he's a Spock that is more emotionally bold,
although also emotionally convulsive,
'cause he's not so good at it.
Oh, hey, Spock.
Are you okay? You look upset.
I don't really wanna talk about it.
I think that Chapel and Spock
have a really beautiful friendship from the get-go,
and I think that's based in the fact
that they kind of balance each other out.
She loves Spock because of who he really is.
When you healed him, you changed him.
It's not him.
At least it's not all of him,
because you took away the other part,
a part that I was connected to, and I miss him as he was.
He's a complicated person, and she likes him as he is.
There's something missing when he's not his full self.
Spock and T'Pring have decided to take some time apart,
and that inspired me.
I think we should take some time apart, like seven days,
just so that we can explore ourselves a bit.
But before it's time for us to get back together,
I have a gift for you.
An exclusive clip from next week's episode.
Finally. Okay, life support's been stabilized.
Are you kidding me?
We need to send a team to deck five
to get the EPS regulators back online.
Yes. Well, that is going to have to wait.
One of my teams found something
in the fuel distribution system.
That system was online already. What were you...?
You disobeyed my direct orders
and went digging around in the functioning systems.
If I had followed your orders to the letter,
we would never have found evidence of sabotage.
Sabotage?
I know, seven days is a long time,
but there's a ton of Star Trek
for us to stream while we wait.
Let's do that.
Absolutely. Good plan.
Thank you for joining me here
in The Ready Room this week.
And also thank you to Jess Bush for stopping by
for a great chat.
Next week I will be talking to Celia Rose Gooding,
who plays Ensign Nyota Uhura, and Carol Kane,
aka the Enterprise's new chief engineer, Pelia,
about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Season 2, Episode 6, "Lost in Translation."
Until then, I'm Wil Wheaton. Live long and prosper.