Celia Rose Gooding (‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’): ‘I felt like the angels had parted the clouds’ for the musical episode [Exclusive Video Interview]
“Oh my, not only do I remember it, but I remember what the air smelled like when I walked onto the bridge for the first time” exclaims “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” star Celia Rose Gooding about what was going through their mind on their first day on set. “My first day on set was a bridge day. It was on the iconic bridge set of the Enterprise and I remember having to remind myself to breathe deeply because I was so nervous. It was my first time on a big TV set like that ever in my career. My first day on a major TV set, my first day as this character in this role, and also my first day on the bridge. It was a lot of firsts coming at me at the same time,” Gooding says incredulously.
Not only where they debuting in a high-profile “Star Trek” series, they were also fittingly portraying a younger, more inexperienced “fish out of water” version of the iconic Uhura character, made famous by Nichelle Nichols in the original series and Zoe Saldaña in the more recent “Kelvin timeline” “Star Trek” movie trilogy. “A lot of her early beginnings remind me a lot of myself; of somebody who has had a lot of complex trauma and really is trying to put that to the side in order to be present. As this incredibly young person in this massive machine,” Gooding explains. “Our stories really met at this beautiful intersection, and so I got to bring a lot of my natural ‘isms’ and quirks to this character.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” was co-created by Emmy nominee Alex Kurtzman (“Star Trek: Lower Decks”) alongside Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman (“A Beautiful Mind”) and Jenny Lumet. The sci-fi series is a prequel to the legendary 1960s “Star Trek,” following Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Science Officer Spock (Ethan Peck) and First Officer Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), Security Chief La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), Cadet Nyota Uhura (Gooding), Helmsman Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) and Chief Medical Officer Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), who reprise their roles from the second season of “Star Trek: Discovery.”
Critics and fans’ response to the 10-episode second season has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly because Season 2 was so ambitious, by experimenting with various genres and storytelling formats as the U.S.S. Enterprise crew explore new worlds around the galaxy during the decade before “Star Trek: The Original Series.” Season 2 shifts from romantic comedy and time travel (“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”), court-room drama (“Ad Astra per Aspera”), horror (“Lost in Translation”), existential sci-fi (“Among the Lotus Eaters”), broad comedy (“Charades”), a crossover episode with Paramount+ stablemate animated series “Star Trek: Lower Decks” (“Those Old Scientists”), war drama (“Under the Cloak of War”) and action-adventure (“Hegemony”).
And then of course, perhaps most risky of all, was the penultimate episode of the season — a musical episode (“Subspace Rhapsody”) in which a spatial anomaly causes the Enterprise crew to spontaneously break into song. A huge risk for a second season sci-fi series, but perfectly suited to the Tony-nominated Gooding (for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for “Jagged Little Pill”), who’s become a natural at belting out musical numbers on Broadway. “I felt like the angels had parted the clouds, and there was this golden nugget of opportunity that was laid into my hands,” Gooding beams. “At first I thought it was a joke. At first I was, when I heard about it, I was like, ‘oh, y’all are being really funny telling the musical girl that we’re going to do a musical episode in ‘Star Trek,’ something that’s never happened before,” they laugh. “Then the showrunners were like, ‘no baby, we’re doing it, and you’re singing the 11 o’clock number at the very tip-top of your lungs.’ Once I knew that it was actually happening, that’s when I really sank my feet into the sand and got real comfortable and said, ‘this is something I know how to do. TV and film, I’m still learning and mastering.’ I don’t think I’ve mastered theater by any stretch of the word, but I am definitely more comfortable in that space. That’s where I started. That’s where my heart is.”
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