You might recall that in 2019 actor Paul Giamatti revealed that one of his biggest dream roles would be to appear on Star Trek.
Well, now, in 2025, Giamatti’s dream has come true as he’s set to appear as a blue-skinned political antagonist in the upcoming series Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
“My dearest wish in the world as a child until this moment is to play a Klingon, basically. Or to be something,” he said on the Colbert Show, adding, “I would love to play a Klingon, or something. I’ve never – for some reason, those jobs don’t come to me.”
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Apparently Giamatti’s character will likely be a Klingon/Vulcan hybrid, a true Trek first.
According to EW, he is a character ‘whose moral core swings between cold logic and fiery aggression’.
According to showrunner Robert Kurtzmann, Giamatti’s character “represents a tide that has swept across the world in a very profound and upsetting way. I say this without taking a political stance. That is part of what it means to invite everybody into the tent. One of my favorite things about Star Trek is that it reaches across the aisle. People on all sides of the political spectrum love it for different reasons. That is something that we really wanted to hold true to here.”
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Kurtzmann goes on: “One of the things that we see all across the world now is how much hate is relied on to sow division between things that connect us as human beings and how hate is used as a bludgeon to destroy empathy, which I think is ultimately what Star Trek is about.
“At its core, it’s about: We may not look the same, but we are the same. Finding that common ground and figuring out a way to understand our differences is at the heart of what [Star Trek creator Gene] Roddenberry was talking about.”
Excitingly, the show will also feature the return of the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, a fan favourite character; how he fits in here is unknown at this moment.
Lastly, perhaps as exciting as Giamatti’s casting is Raising Arizona star Holly Hunter who will appear in the series as a Starfleet Captain, unlike, according to the report, any we’ve seen before.
But, as this is a Starfleet Academy series, the star is Sandra Rosta’s newly recruited cadet: “Once the cadet enters into the school and meets all the other cadets, the balance of the storytelling begins to shift slightly. By the end of the season, you really feel like you have this incredible understanding of everybody and how they function as a group,” says Kurtzmann.
Check out Hunter’s Captain, Giamatti’s alien character and the return of Robert Picardo’s Doctor from Voyager:
Source: StarTrek
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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