“I’ve been advised not to talk about it. But… I… I… I don’t care, I don’t give a damn.”
“What are they gonna do, fire you?”
“It’s a little too late for that.”
Patrick Stewart and LeVar Burton erupt in laughter. The kind of laughter that can only come from the dearest of old friends. And they are old friends: They’ve been on a 36-year journey together playing Jean-Luc Picard and Geordi LaForge — in fact, the two of them, along with Jonathan Frakes, were the very first cast members announced for “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in May 1987. Now they’ve come to the end of that journey, with “Star Trek: Picard” Season 3, a reunion for the whole “Next Gen” cast that put them on one final mission among the stars.
“I think for the most part all of us feel the same way basically,” Burton said. “If this is indeed it, I don’t believe we could have possibly gone out at a better moment for the crew — and as a family.”
Or is it really the end?
In a conversation for IndieWire’s Awards Spotlight, Stewart and Burton talked about the unique opportunity “Picard” Season 3 offered to evolve their characters. This wasn’t just a nostalgia trip, repeating what we had seen of the crew in 1994 or 2002. It was to show where they were “now,” 20 years later.
“When it was first pitched to me, I was very reluctant to go and join this plan of reviving ‘Star Trek,’” Stewart said. “With, at the beginning, some of the original cast. I think if anybody had said to me, ‘And we’re going to have this big reunion where everybody comes back,’ I would have said then, ‘Count me out, that’s not what I want.’”
But then some combination of creators Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, and Michael Chabon got to Stewart and said, in the actor’s words, “‘Look, guys, in the last 20 years your lives must have changed. They’ve transformed. There’ve been excitements, there’ve been disappointments. There may even have been tragedies. But we don’t know what those things are yet, so we have to explore and find out.’”
That was the hook. And discovering the changes to these characters because of the passage of time was electrifying for Stewart.
“One of the things I’ll never forget is the first time [LeVar was] on the set for that and I looked at your face and went, ‘My God, this is not Geordi. Something’s happened here.’ There was such an intense seriousness about you. Which there always had been along with a twinkle in your eyes, which never went away. But there was this solid, unmoveable feeling about you.’”
For Burton, the passage of time meant an opportunity to show a different side of Geordi, and be involved in the process of creating where his character would be now (in the ‘90s “Trek” shows there had been a dictum saying that writers and actors should barely interact).
“I don’t think any of us have been better,” Burton said of “Picard” Season 3. “And I gotta say I think it’s because we were invited into the process. When it began in earnest for me it was with a call with [showrunner Terry Matalas] and he asked me, ‘What would you like to see?’ And I had one request: I want to rehabilitate Geordi’s canon where relationships are concerned. That little stalkerish episode with Dr. Brahms never sat well with me and I never wanted that to be his legacy: ‘He was a great engineer but he had this one #MeToo moment and he never experienced a consequence for that.’ So I said, I want him to be a family man, I want him to have healthy relationships. And [Terry] went away and came back with the LaForge sisters. My children are 42 and 28, and I was then able to bring all of that depth, all of that weight, all of that anxiety that we feel as parents, all that gravitas… it was right for Geordi. It was right where I felt he needed to be.”
Stewart recalled how seeing Burton’s daughter Mica — who plays Geordi’s daughter Alandra in the show — grow up over the years was indicative of the close bonds “Star Trek” had created in his life.
“Every time I encountered her I would be shocked because she was growing into a woman and I had remembered her as an infant and that was one of those indicators that [‘Star Trek’] has been a significant part of my life. In fact, there’s no question, the most significant part of my life. There have been moments — but nothing ultimately had the impact that ‘Next Generation’ had.”
Burton was thrilled that it was Geordi who was responsible for bringing the Enterprise-D back to life in Season 3, when it’s revealed he’s been spending 20 years restoring it after its destruction in the film “Star Trek: Generations.”
“In the whole of Season 3 I think that the moment of that reveal is one of the most emotional,” Burton said. “There are a lot of emotional moments in Season 3, and I know that there are for fans, but that was one of the most satisfying. Like, come on: it’s like he’s been working on the ’57 Chevy in his garage all these years, restoring it. It was absolutely relatable to the audience that this is how this man spent his time.
For Stewart, that bridge set represented everything about how Picard was defined by collaboration. “When I discovered that the set was almost finished, not completed, but almost finished… it might have been lunchtime and the stage was cleared so I went down there and I walked around the bridge alone and simply allowed all the memories to flood back,” Stewart said. “And yes, there had been from time to time difficulties, of course there had. But mostly the bridge signified to me creativity, work, and companionship — and also dependency. As Jean-Luc Picard, I needed every single one of my fellow actors up there. And I think it was the same for all of us. There was a combination of dependency and freedom.”
If Season 3 was it for Picard & Co., that was quite a finale. But there’s the undeniable fact it was so good it’s left fans wanting more. Which gets back to a certain pitch Stewart wanted to make.
“I think we could do a movie, a ‘Picard’-based movie,” he said. “Now not necessarily at all about Picard but about all of us. And to take many of those wonderful elements, particularly from Season 3 of ‘Picard’ and take out of that what I think could be an extraordinary movie. I keep telling people and mentioning it, and so far there’s been no eager response, but it might well happen. And that would be I think a very appropriate way to say, ‘And goodbye folks.’
Watch the full Awards Spotlight conversation between Stewart and Burton above.
