Lieutenant are you wearing your hair differently?
It's still regulation Admiral. Mm hm.
May I speak sir?
I was offered the third one, but it was a very...
In January of 1982 I drove out in a little dodge colt with my younger brother to Los Angeles, and,
and prior to my getting there, this gentleman, this manager. His name's Michael Mann.
He, he went around the studios and flashed this picture of me.
It was a half-assed offer.
Those first 2 to 3 months I did probably several dozen meet and
greets. You know you're, you're not meeting someone for, in relationship to a project,
and you're not actually doing an audition, you're just going to meet them.
They're, they're this, they're the perhaps the head of casting at that particular studio.
It was like, look her character's a lot bigger, she's going to be a lot more
important character in the movie, and we'd like to pay her less money than we paid her
for the first one. *Laughter* And it was like... So I queried it, and I said "How
does that make any sense?". (right) And then it was like OK we get it, you don't want to do it.
Www I, I mn, mn, you lost me on that ss, du, eh, go back.
But the, it never got to... (They didn't really engage you in a negotiation) It wasn't,
and so it made me think they don't really want me in the third one. Now I've heard, since then I've
heard other people speak, I even heard Leonard Nimoy say "No, we really wanted her in it",
but, it, that just sort of didn't make sense. So that still remains a bit of a mystery to me.
I had a meeting with Elza Bergeron and Stuart Jensen, and then the very next day I had a meeting
with Leonard Nimoy, but I'm, I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. So looking back that,
that journey from New York to LA was very planned, very calculated, and I said to this
guy "Look if I don't get any work in the first six months I'm going back to upstate New York".
No, I asked for the job. They came to me and asked if I wanted to be involved
in Star Trek III in some way. Spock had died at the end of two, we had no future
legal relationship, there was no contract with Paramount for Star Trek III, and they asked me
if there was something I wanted to do, and I said "yes I would like to direct the next picture".
Will you tell me what you did? I'd really like to know.
Listen I remember going and meeting the eh, eh, casting department at eh, at Paramount,
and I offhandedly said during the meeting "You know if I was going to be a part of the Star Trek
franchise, I, I would really hope to be a Vul... a, an alien of some kind. (Hehe) And I left them
with that little nugget, and, and not, I swear a day or so later I met Leonard Nimoy one on one.
Well first of all Nick Meyer, you know you're very fortunate in your life if you have someone who
champions you, and he is probably the most significant champion of my career, not probably,
he is. He uhm, when I did Star Trek II, before that I had done nothing. I wasn't a member of
the screen actors guild. Uhm he knew that I was brand new, and he championed me. Uhm you know he
just kept auditioning me, and you know I was up against a lot of people who had a lot of work,
and he kept championing me, and then finally in the final hour, you know he gave me the role.
But you know you have the studio, you have Paramount studios. They have to,
you know those guys have to approve, and they can say things like, well you know she's never done
anything before, and except for her lousy resume that she made up *Laughter* So you know uhm he, he
really did champion me, and he really did it at a time in my life. I was talking about it earlier
this morning, that uhm, eh I had auditioned three times for Star Trek, and then I was supposed to go
back and audition on a Monday, and my parents were in a very bad car wreck, and my mother was killed,
my father was eh injured badly, and so I flew to Wichita, and eh, I flew back home, and uhm
I called my agent and I said "My parents have been in this car accident, and I can't leave my
Dad 'til I know he's OK, so you have to call them and tell them I can't come on Monday",
and you know like I keep saying I hadn't done anything, so they could've just gone 'well
forget it', because not only had I not done anything, but now even if they did hire me,
I was coming into the production on the heels of this incredibly tragic stressful thing. So
anyway he said "Well if I tell them that you won't get the job", and I said "Well I'm not leaving
my Dad so tell them that". So he said she can't come in until her Dad is out of intensive care,
and Nick said "OK we'll wait for her". It still makes me wanna start crying because I mean 'OK
we'll wait for her' the girl that's done nothing except clean people's houses, I mean.
Then, then they said "OK fly in", and two days later I flew in and I auditioned,
and then here's another nice thing that really doesn't happen all the time because,
when you go on interviews, and studios are pretty tough, and they're not necessarily out to
cut you the biggest break, especially when no one knows who the hell you are. (Right) So uhm,
anyway I came into town. I read again for all the executives at Paramount and Nick, and then
I walked out and he said "Well just sit over there a minute", and I sat over there a minute,
and he came out and he said you have the role.
Fire all phasers. No power to the weapons Captain. *Explosions*