Star Trek: Picard’s Jeri Ryan slams foray into franchise as ‘worst hour of TV I’ve ever seen’
STAR Trek: Picard will hit Amazon Prime by the end of the week and will welcome a host of returning stars from the franchise.
Among them is Jeri Ryan, who made her debut in Star Trek Voyager back in 1997 as former Borg drone and human hybrid Seven Of Nine.
Jeri has admitted she was reluctant to audition for the show, despite repeated attempts from her agent to win her over.
She feared she would find herself typecast if she joined the sci-fi hit, but eventually gave show bosses the benefit of the doubt.
“They came through with the audition, and I passed, then they came through again with the audition, and I passed [again]. I didn’t know Star Trek at the time and I didn’t know much about it,” she told Metro Online.
“I just knew that it had a reputation for actors being pigeon-holed and not being able to get out of it.”
However, she said that a poignant scene she was sent about Seven remembering laughter as a human sealed the deal and she ended up going for a screen test.
However, Jeri nearly backtracked on joining the show after deciding to watch some episodes of Star Trek: Voyager for research purposes.
To say she wasn’t impressed by what she saw would be a major understatement.
“I said ‘OK, well, I’m just going to totally sign away a few years of my life, I should watch the show,’ which I did like this,” she recounted, running her hands down her cheeks.
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“[I was] in tears. It was the worst hour of television that I’d ever seen. I can’t tell you what episode it is, everybody’s asked,” she went on.
Fortunately when she took her issues up with producer Rick Berman he was completely sympathetic and was quick to admit there were some dodgy episodes in the mix.
“To his credit called me in my little apartment the next day asking how I felt about it. I said: ‘You got three hours?!’” Geri reminisced.
“He said: ‘Why don’t you just come in and sit down with the executive producers at the time and let them talk you through it?’
“So I walked in, I was like ‘so, I watched the show last night’ and all three of them went ‘Oh God no! Not that episode!’ So it wasn’t just me!”
Elsewhere, Sir Patrick Stewart revealed why he backtracked on returning to the franchise for Star Trek: Picard.
He also confessed that show bosses originally wanted him to wear a wig to reprise his titular role.
Star Trek: Picard will be available to stream on Amazon Prime on January 24.