When Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was first announced, a lot of attention was paid to all of the old “Trek” characters that were getting new life in the Paramount+ series, from Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and Lieutenant Colonel Spock (Ethan Peck). ) for Cadet Nyota Aoora (Celia Rose Gooding) and nurse Kristen Chapel (Jess Bush).
Then there was Lieutenant Erica Ortagus, one of the series’ all-original characters, set in the USS Enterprise nearly a decade before the events of the original “Star Trek” series from the 1960s. When he was helmsman on the Enterprise under Captain Pike, Lieutenant Ortagus – pardon the pun – flew under the radar for “Trek” fans at first. But with the series coming to a close in Season 1 on July 7, Ortegas’ flirtatious wit and steely nerves have made her stand out from the show, even as the other characters get more spotlight this season.
Speaking with the actress who plays Melissa Navya, it’s easy to understand why. A working actor for over a decade, the 37-year-old has not been given a prominent role as Ortegas. She’s been enjoying the experience of making the show and watching “Trek” fans embrace it more passionately than any other iteration of the franchise in decades.
“It’s been a beautiful ride so far,” she said. “I’m still in awe.”
Navia’s particular fervor – for “Strange New Worlds,” but, really, just about anything – is also easily evident from even speaking with her for a few minutes. When interviewing the actor with diverse Turning to questions about Ortegas’ gender and gender identity (more on that soon), Navia was asked in passing about her favorite pronouns. Her answer could only have taken a second. Instead, Navia smiled and leaned slightly into her Zoom camera.
“He/she,” said she, in denial. “But, I mean, I’m from New York, and in a lot of our great NYC spaces, everyone is he/she, because it’s easier. So I’m also always open to that too. My whole life has been, like, from the back, with my short hair, people say.” ‘Excuse me, sir.’ So I have always, you know, whatever pronouns suit you, work for me.’ I laughed. “But the preferred pronouns are he/she.”
Navia also talked about trying to avoid “Star Trek” while testing for “Strange New Worlds,” why she became so tight-lipped about how the Enterprise Bridge controls worked, how long she trained to become a medieval knight in Episode 8 and what fans can expect. From Ortegas in season two.
“The universe bothers me”
Since Ortegas wasn’t already as part of “Trek” history as the Uhura or the Nurse Chapel, Navia was made aware of everything about the character in her first audition.
“The name was there in the meltdown,” she said. “She’s a pilot. A veteran. A Latina.”
Navia watched “Star Trek: The Next Generation” as a child — “this opening with Patrick Stewart and his amazing voice will never age,” she said — but she purposely tried to avoid being exposed to anything even “Star Trek” related during the audition process. to her. Resistance, unfortunately, was futile.
“No matter what I watched, there was a reference to ‘Star Trek’ in everything,” she said. “It was so wild. I’m like, ‘The universe is punishing me. What’s going on?!'”
Navia’s late partner, Brian Bannon, took a different approach, indulging in the ’90s series “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” while she waited to hear if she landed the role. (Bannon died in December, just days after being diagnosed with leukemia.)
“The funny thing is, I wouldn’t have known him as Tricky,” she said. “Brian was very smart. He just knows everything about everything. I remember we were doing a ‘Star Trek’ trivia game after I booked everything and Brian knew that. everything. We said, “What’s going on?!” He knew this was huge, and that ‘Strange New Worlds’ would be as successful as it is now.”
“How does a spacecraft fly?”
When Navia climbed onto the stunning set of the Enterprise Bridge with her colleagues, she remembered that everyone else stood in for the sparkle in the production design and detail.
She said, “And I was like, ‘How does this all work? “I still remember going back to our chairs after the first setup like us, and searching on Google, ‘How do you fly a spaceship?'”
While it’s been an old “Star Trek” tradition for spacecraft’s control panels to consist of a deliberately bewildering array of undifferentiated buttons and dials, for Navia, it was essential to really understand how her character would actually pilot the Enterprise. She had no idea How. That first night, exhausted, she returns to the hotel room she’s been sharing with Bannon.
“I told him, ‘I don’t know how this all works,'” she said. ‘He’s like, ‘Ask everyone.’ Find out.'”
So she coordinated with everyone from John Van Setters, Vice President of Brand Development, Star Trek, to the visual effects team responsible for the onscreen graphics on Lieutenant Ortegas’ dashboard.
It’s all touch, but it’s not interactive,” said Neva with a sarcastic smile. “I pointed out that it had to be, and everyone was like, ‘We don’t have the money yet for that.'”
However, with the “Strange New Worlds” crew, Navia has built a thorough understanding of how to use the controls to satisfy her need to feel like she truly guides the enterprise through all kinds of treacherous cosmic lands.
“He knows what you’re doing,” she said. “A lot of what we do is all about, you know, technical jargon. We believe, but it’s real for a lot of people. It has to be real for us.”
She laughed to herself. “I don’t consider myself a method actress,” she said. “But really, whenever I described how I was approaching this role, I was like, ‘Star Trek’ finally made me a style actor.”
It doesn’t have to be labeled.
Navia is well aware that Ortegas’ androgynous looks—not to mention the chemistry with both male and female co-workers—suggested to many LGBTQ+ “Trek” fans that Ortegas is gay. It’s a visualization that I played happily with.
“I played Ortegas to be pretty much like, ‘She’s so loyal to her crew and also has an admiration for all of them,'” she said.
Since launching Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, the series has explicitly included many LGBTQ+ characters in its stories, as part of a broader effort to bring “Star Trek’s” main direction of endless variety into endless combinations to storytelling in the 21st century. . Most recently in Strange New Worlds, actor via Jesse James Keitel played a non-binary space pirate who befriends (and then betrays) Lieutenant Spock.
But Navia is relieved to leave Ortegas’ identity more obscure. For her, that’s the point.
“I don’t want to look like a fake thing,” she said of Ortegas, “but she doesn’t have to put a label on it.” “I like that we handle it in a way that no one else can. Like, they shouldn’t, right? Everyone has to be a little bit gay. Everyone. he is A little weird, I feel, you know? “
I stopped. “And that way, me too,” she said. “This has been my whole life and I am very happy with it, but I know I give off this wonderful queer energy. It was just a part of who I am.”
Now that Navia has finished Season 2 in Toronto, will audiences see Ortegas channel this strange energy toward someone else?
“I guess we’ll see–I mean, I can’t say anything–but I think we’ll see that for Ortagus, if she’s related to someone, if she’s in love with someone, it doesn’t matter who they are where they come from.” “If there was a connection, you would go for it.”
Like, perhaps, the relationship between Ortegas and the Nurse Chapel in “Spock Amok” episode five of season one?
“When I read the script, you know, I saw it,” said Neva with a smile. “They’ve been friends for a long time, but there’s definitely something romance could be a thing for. she has Was something? we will see.”
“It was the most talked about episode of the season.”
One day early in the beginning of filming for the first season of “Strange New Worlds,” Navia visited the appropriate costume department and someone asked her if she knew how to fight with a sword.
“And I was like, ‘Well, I have a background in martial arts and I’ve done a sword fighting stunt for a movie before,'” Nevia recalls. ‘And they were like, ‘The writers should know this.’ I’m like, ‘Why?’ And they’re like, “We can’t really say much.”
At some point later, Navia saw a sketch in the dazzling costume of a medieval knight, hinting that some kind of fantasy episode was looming. She was not alone in obtaining capital.
“It was the most talked about episode of the season,” said Nevia. “Everyone was like, ‘…and you’re going to play a princess and you’re going to be a magician.'” “Like, what’s going on?!”
The episode in question was Episode 8, “The Elysian Kingdom,” in which a semi-omnivorous alien transforms the story of the night read by Dr. Joseph Mbenga (Babs Olsanmokon) to his terminally ill daughter into body and blood. The imagination that controls the enterprise. Naturally.
“It’s a very nice script, but we only got it the day before,” Nevya said. She and the sexy cast got heads Something It was coming months ago; However, the actor was able to train months in advance.
“We basically designed this fight scene that kept changing as the stunts kind of gained a bit more of the story,” she said. When they finally got the text, “We figured we were doing this in a corridor opposite, you know, in our heads, this beautiful battlefield where we had a lot of space.”
However, Navia has no complaints. “I appreciate having the opportunity to play Knight because I don’t know what other show would allow me to do that,” she said. She was particularly surprised that Ortegas was playing a male knight from the M’Benga storybook; Someone described her character as part Aragorn, and part Indiana Jones. She got a lot of feel for what she was doing from the start with Ortegas’ identity – and her identity.
“Indiana Jones is the one I wanted to grow and also, I liked Harrison Ford,” she said. “In my life, I’ve always challenged gender norms without even acknowledging that they were gender norms, if that made sense. He has this weirdness that makes him so interesting, so interesting, and so real.”
The payoff will be there.
Navia knows that although Ortegas often had a big role to play throughout the first season, she didn’t get a show episode the way the rest of her co-stars did. She is fine with that.
“The biggest event of season one is not me,” she said. “The thing is, like, I’m flying a ship. I don’t have time to have all these emotional conversations.”
While the actress is tight-lipped about what’s to come for season two, she can hardly contain her enthusiasm for it.
“You’ll definitely see some big arcs,” she said. “The payoff will be there. I think we create something really beautiful and compelling. It is a pleasure to play the role.”
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