Marina Sirtis on TNG Season 1

Sun 7th Apr 12:00 am

The Ultimate DVD Magazine in the UK has focussed on the release of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 1 on DVD - and has printed some interesting comments from some of the cast members.

Marina Sirtis (Counsellor Deanna Troi) talked about her character in Season 1. "[Troi] started off just sensing and feeling, and we exhausted that pretty early on. Then there was a rough patch where they didn’t know what to do with her because they realized there’d be no plots because you give the game away in the first scene. Their answer to that was to take her out of the episode."

She went on to talk about clothing. "When we first started I was a stone and a half heavier than I am now, and it didn’t look nice. I was too lumpy and they made me wear things that they thought were more flattering. I’m taking about what I call the ugly grey space suit of the first season. We lost the other two young women on the show by the end of the first season so, by process of elimination, I had to be the chick and they gave me sexier clothes to wear."

"During the first season I got a phone call from [one of the producers] who said 'Your work yesterday was wonderful, but you look fat. We pay you a lot of money to look good. Think about it.' and put the phone down!"

She also commented on one of the more memorable Star Trek directors. "We had a director – who shall remain nameless – who directed two shows and then refused to ever come back because we were too rowdy, and we got hauled into like, the dean’s office and we were chastised: ‘This has never happened in the history of Hollywood before that a director would refuse to work with a cast!’ But we got the job done."