Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

And now for something strange and new,

my next guests are part of the upcoming,

highly anticipated Star Trek series,

Strange New Worlds,

which continues the adventures

of Captain Pike, Spock, and Number One,

aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise,

coming soon to CBS All Access in the U.S.

Now, it is my honor to welcome our cast

and creatives together for the first time ever

to talk about the series.

We have Anson Mount, Ethan Peck and Rebecca Romijn

and we also have executive producers.

Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers,

as well as co-EPs and writers, Akela Cooper and Davy Perez.

Let's start in on some questions.

This one is for Akiva and Henry.

When did you decide that Strange New Worlds

would actually become a reality?

Since I know there was a huge fan push for the show

to even get made before it was announced.

I, uh, uh... came into, uh,

Season 1 of Disco

because our partner,

Alex Kurtzman, was away and asked me if I could come

and sort of hang around the show a little while,

it was just forming.

And I didn't know what the show was about.

I'm a huge Star Trek fan, but all I knew was

what was on the Internet, and what was on the Internet was,

it was a show about Captain Pike and Number One.

So I came rushing to the first meeting,

ready to talk about Captain Pike and Number One,

only to discover that not only were they not in the show,

but from that moment on, became my singular cause

of trying to get that era

of Enterprise storytelling onto the screen.

My favorite thing I've read about this show

has been that if you think of "The Cage",

the original pilot as being the actual pilot,

that this is the longest pilot to

series pickup in the history of television.

I can't take credit for it, but I'll say it anyway.

For Akiva and Henry, Akela and Davy,

I know you can't say much yet,

but what can you tell us about what the show is about?

Well, one of the most exciting things about

this was coming into the room

and interviewing all the writers and basically saying,

"Hey, we wanna really do Star Trek,

like we wanna do Star Trek in the classic mode".

Star Trek in the way that Star Trek was always, you know,

the stories were always told, that it's a ship

and it's traveling to strange new worlds,

and we're gonna tell big ideas, science fiction adventures,

you know, in an episodic mode, so we have room

to kind of meet new aliens, see new ships,

visit new cultures.

And, you know, while still maintaining...

audiences are sophisticated,

and so, if Kirk falls in love and the love of his life

dies one week, the next week, he's gonna still feel it.

And that's the thing that we really wanted to kind of carry over,

is to bring a modern character sensibility

to the kind of classic episodic storytelling.

For Anson, Ethan and Rebecca, after Season 2

of Discovery, we didn't know

if we'd actually ever see your characters again,

and for each of you,

can you guys describe the moment you got that call

that Strange New Worlds was happening?

How and when did you hear about it?

How did you feel?

When we finished Season 2,

Alex had already started talking to us about

doing some Short Treks

'cause we had built this huge,

very expensive bridge.

I remember

calling Alex because I was a little concerned about

what are we actually giving them other

than just three scenes?

Is there some way that we could give this closure?

And he said, "That's a good point. Let me think about that".

And so, he calls me two days later,

and I remember him sort of nonchalantly eating an apple

on the phone, and he goes,

"Hey, so I think we got a show".

"A what?"

Only man I know who can go and sell a show in two days.

But what I found out later, apparently, that Akiva

had been pitching this for a while.

And I was like, "I'm so glad you didn't tell me that"

when I was working on Discovery,

'cause I don't think I could have handled the pressure...

I got a phone call also from Alex, very nonchalant.

It wasn't eating an apple,

but led in with a bunch of questions.

Like, "How are you doing?"

What've you been up to?

So, uh...

Your show's going...

And I was like,

"Are you serious?"

Asking the most serious man in the world, right?

And he was like, "Uh-huh".

And I went for a walk, like in shock.

And went to the grocery store,

and like stood in and stared at cold beverages

for 20 minutes, and I called Anson and I was like,

"Dude, this is crazy".

And then the three of us got into a call at some point.

I was gonna say, we've been sitting

on this information for a while.

Like we've been sitting on it for, I mean over a year, guys?

Is that right?

We didn't get an actual green light, green light.

- Right. - It was a long process.

But it felt like there...

It also felt like when we were on set,

something had clicked.

We were really hoping that this would manifest, and it did.

It just took a while for us to be able to share the news.

Yeah, there is definitely a ton of moments on set

where we were all like, "This is great.

We get along wonderfully".

For Akela and Davy,

can you guys talk a little bit about

how you'll be developing the central trio?

Not just as colleagues, but as friends as they clearly are,

which is heartwarming.

I think it's just like building off of the dynamic

that Disco like so wonderfully built.

And then for us, the fun thing in the room

has been coming up with cool and unique situations

and scenarios to put them in,

that will bring out certain aspects

of their personalities that we can play with

and see how they would bounce off of each other,

complement each but also contrasts against each other

and just see how those puzzle pieces fit.

Like that's been the most fun for us.

Yeah, no, echoing all of that

and I'll just add one little thing

that we did have conversations about Pike and Number One,

sort of being almost like parental figures to the ship

and in specific, Spock, 'cause Spock is a younger Spock,

he's not the wise old Spock from the original series.

This is the young guy who's just out of Starfleet Academy

and still finding himself and what kind of Spock

will he become?

And so, you have great mentor relationships,

mentee relationships, and often times you can learn

from your own kids just as much as you teach.

So there's a lot of interesting relationship dynamics

that's played in there.

Anson, we saw in Discovery

what a born leader Captain Pike is,

but he also know harbors the knowledge of his tragic future.

Can you kind of talk about this unique side of the character

and how you'll inform your performance, if at all?

The most honest thing I can say

is I'm still figuring it out,

and it's gonna... I think more of that weight

is gonna come down on the shoulders of the writers, but.

Pike didn't just learn how he dies,

he learns in what circumstances.

So we do know that at some point

he's going to be presented

with a promotion opportunity to Fleet Captain,

and he has to accept that

in order for the fate to come into existence.

So what is it that's going to allow him,

both in terms of circumstance and emotion,

to accept that promotion.

It's a tough question,

but I think we'll figure it out together.

I know that I'm excited to watch you figure it out,

so I'm sure all the fans are as well.

Ethan, in the final scene of Discovery Season 2,

we finally saw the Spock that fans are pretty familiar with

from the original series.

So are you excited to explore more of that iconic side

of the character post the Discovery encounter?

Yeah, I'm very thrilled to...

to find the balance in Spock, right?

He's between two worlds of...

uh, logic and control

and sort of emotional volatility that we all struggle with.

And so,

it's gonna be an enormous challenge

and there are plenty of scenarios

in which we could sort of play with that,

and I'm very excited to see what the writers come up with

and I'm just gonna throw myself in, I can't wait.

Awesome.

And for Rebecca, of the three main characters,

Number One is by far the most enigmatic.

So for you, what are you most interested to learn

about your character moving forward?