The hours were so long and I was, I had absolutely no dialogue
and all I did was have to be in that position above you know, the cap... eh
Picard and, and on that horse shoe, and I said "Look, I mean I don't have anything to say. Just
do a mock-up of my legs, and just stick 'em there, it will look like I'm there", and they
were going "Oh Denise don't be silly", "Oh no no I'm really serious, you know you could do that",
and uhm, but they didn't take me up on it. I didn't even have a chair to sit in, I was dying.
Denise Crosby and Marina Sirtis came in & read for the roles of Tasha and the role of...
ehhh... Tasha Yar... and ha haha. You get these names suddenly start slipping
out of your eh out of your head. Eh Marina played, of Counsellor Troi,
and, but they read for the roles in the opposite direction, and when we brought them to Roddenberry
he said "I like both of them, but let's have the dark haired English one play Troi,
and let's have the other one eh play Tasha Yar".
They didn't make any Troi action figures at first.
No! There were
no Troi action figures in the first uhm... That's the saddest thing I ever heard. *Laughter*
Because I was gonna be gone, they weren't gonna need 'em.
Oh my God. Oh yeah
it's a whole thing that happened that first season. You see I was like,
I was just like 'mm don't say anything maybe it'll go away you know'. Yeah.
And now I have the privilege of introducing eh Sir Patrick Stewart. *Applause*
Gene would come down to the set mm 2 or 3 times during the week and he would sit in
the director's chair and watch what we were doing, and
occasionally I would catch him looking at me
and I know, I know that he was thinking 'What the
Hell is this guy doing in my show?'
Captain Jean Luc Picard I wish I could say you've been like a father to me,
but I'm gonna die if I'm standing on this you know, br... up on this console and just watching
Patrick's bald head. *Laughter* You know, and going, you know, aye aye Captain.
I struggled with the whole writing of my character of Tasha Yar. I mean I,
I think that they had a great idea that they didn't really uhm know what to do with it.
Yeah I mean you know I, my experience for the most part was just, you know how tight
can they make my uniform look *Laughter* and how great my tits looked, you know I mean, that
that was basically the, the *Laughter* Those words were actually said to me. (God) So uhm I found it,
you know not a great place to be for me in that, in that environment,
but you know that's Hollywood, it's, I'm certainly not the only actress.
First season of Star Trek I was like oh my God what was I thinking. Unwatchable, unwatchable. Uhm
I was amazed I still had a job after the pilot. I watched Encounter at Farpoint and I thought how do
I still have a job? It was like Star Trek meets Sophie's Choice. It was awful. Way too dramatic.
Worf was not gonna be, he was gonna be. Uhm, and then he was like on my
shoulder. (yeah) Like who are you? and I'm security, but who are you?
When they hired him I think it was just eh basically to see how it would turn out. Eh
but once he, they saw him on film, and they saw how, how I was portraying him, they probably
discovered that boy the character is wide open, you know, he can, he can do just about anything,
and eh his presence is, is felt immediately. Immediately you're drawn to the size,
you're drawn to the makeup, you know the whole, the whole 9 yards.
You know the original concept for Counsellor Troi was very much
a kind of Icelandic uhm co... eh cool,
mysterious kind of unemotional character, and was descriptively tailored more for,
you know how I looked and how I could, would, would play her. The the description for Tasha
Yar was uhm eh like a little fire plug, you know dark and uhm eh, you know tough, and kind of I
think based more around the, the, the character of uhm eh Vasquez I think her name. Aliens.
As a matter of fact, truth be told, what was going to happen was they were gonna let Marina
go at the end of first season, and they let Gates go, so I essentially was gonna be the only one,
and then I left, and then they were like "Oh God, OK now what do we do?"
So it changed, and that's from Marina telling me, I did not know that.
One of the great eh scenes that I ever read sadly was never filmed, and that was my audition
scene for Tasha Yar. It was a scene in which she was, she was uhm sent to counsellor Troi for
actual counselling. She was very eh upset, and she was struggling with her position on the bridge,
she felt unentitled to it, and undeserving. Perhaps yes it would've, it would've changed
to my you know benefit eh but, but who, who, who could've possibly have seen that?
And you need a doctor and you need a security chief,
but you don't really need the psychologist, right. So I was the one that was being given
the old heave-ho, and Gene Roddenberry's wife Majel Barrett played my mother on the
show so she knew that if I was fired that was her job gone as well. Right.
But I did uhm court the fans because I was gonna be fired the first season. Right,
why? Uhm because Gene Roddenberry felt that there was 1 too many women on the show for an
action adventure show. OK. And you need a doctor and you need a security chief, but you don't
really need the psychologist. Right. So I was the one that was being given the old heave-ho, and
Gene Roddenberry's wife Majel Barrett played my
mother on the show so she knew that if I was fired that was her job gone as well. Right.
When the presenters are up here, and when the recipients are receiving their awards
don't stand at the back of the stage with your hands in your pockets
looking around as though you wished you were anywhere but here. Oh!
And fortunately we had Gene Roddenberry still with us, so eh and he was always available to
ask questions, and uhm he was you know, he gave us just a huge uhm uhm reign to
to do whatever we wanted, and make this uhm make this ours. So it worked out.
Have you been thinking about Tasha Yar all these 30 years? You have been haven't you.
The Roddenberry's kind of adopted me 'cause I was fresh of the boat. I had literally been in the
country, in America for 6 months to the day when I got cast on Star Trek. So they always made sure,
you know I was always invited to their house for thanksgiving and Christmas and Oscar parties and
everything, you know. They, 'cause that first year, you know, the only people really that
I knew in America was the cast, and Majel and Gene just included me in their family,
and actually Rod Roddenberry still calls me sis and I still call him bro, and uhm again
huge blessing that I got to know Gene not as the big bird of the galaxy, but as just regular Gene
Roddenberry who was a scamp. He was a bit of a scamp. Bit of a naughty boy, but uhm a genius.
Absolute genius. So I feel very honoured to be kind of included in the Roddenberry family. Yeah.
Yesterday's Enterprise opened the door
for me thinking about Sela, and I'm the one who came up with the idea of Sela,
because I uhm what my original idea was that Yar, and it Sela would be Yar and Castillo's child,
so that's the idea I pitched. Story arc would be that
she would eventually find out about her mother, and be maybe perhaps a bridge to peace
with the Romulans, so that's what I pitched to Rick Berman, and he kinda went "Interesting,
let me think about it and I'll get back to you", so I thought OK well you know typical Hollywood,
you'll never hear from him again, and then he, he called me up like months later and he
said "You know we're gonna go with that idea, but we're gonna change it a little bit so that
Tasha was you know captured by a Romulan General and, and has a child.
Gene Roddenberry had finally agreed to do another Star Trek series.
It was a project that had both hands tied behind it's back. Uhm it was science-fiction
and virtually no science-fiction was working on television at that point.
It was a sequel, sequels weren't working at that point, and it was going to be syndicated,
it was not going to be on the network. There was some contention
because the studio wanted a two hour pilot and Roddenberry only wanted to do a one hour pilot,
and s,since I was like the lowest ranked vice president
in the group, it was like let him, let him do it.
So I went to the first meeting. During the course of this meeting
both Gene and his trusted lawyer and companion, a guy named Leonard Maizlish eh
they spent a lot a time sort of glancing around the room, and whenever they glanced
at me I kind of, if, if, if one of my colleagues was being a little bit overly grumpy, or a little
bit overly eh definitive in what they wanted I would sort of raise an eyebrow a little bit.
The next day I got a call from Maizlish. Leonard said Gene and I would like you
to quit your job and come work for us. The studio people who I was working for
looked at it as oh this is great we'll have somebody on the inside.
I then joined the staff of what was going to become Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Eh there were two fellows who were producers under Gene, one named Bob Justman who stayed
for the first year and one named Eddie Milcus who had a some kind of an argument,
disagreement maybe would be a better word, with Roddenberry and left just
about the time that I, I came aboard. I didn't know anything about Star Trek.