Christina Chong, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Jan Thijs/Paramount+
[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, “Once La’an a Time.”]
“Once La’an a Time,” the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ fourth season, offered a lion’s share — or perhaps “dragon’s hoard” is more accurate — of payoffs for Trek fans, but particularly for Christina Chong‘s La’an Noonien-Singh, whose increasingly volatile internal conflict between her external dutiful Starfleet persona and her internal genetically augmented conqueror side has been gradually percolating to a full boil since late in Season 3.
There were certainly an abundance of treats large and small served up for Trek fans of all stripes. For those who’ve only been watching since SNW‘s kickoff, there was the surprise reintroduction of the Enterprise crew’s fairy tale doppelgangers from the Season 1 episode “The Elysian Kingdom,” as well as the triumphant reappearance of Runa Ewok, Chong’s real-life dog and a beloved guest at many a sci-fi convention, from the show’s first season.
And Deep Space Nine fans’ eyes certainly widened when it was revealed that Benny Russell, the struggling 1950s science fiction writer whose life was overtaken by Benjamin Sisko in the all-timer episode “Far Beyond the Stars,” is the author behind The Elysian Kingdom storybook; while admirers of all-around pop culture excellence will appreciate the nod to the great, late director Rob Reiner‘s film comedy The Princess Bride, which provides both direct inspiration for the episode and not-so-subtle connective tissue via Carol Kane, who appears in both Bride and SNW, and Pelia’s apparent dalliance with a miraculous man named Max, who bears a strong resemblance to an aged Billy Crystal.
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But the spotlight belongs decidedly to La’an, and to Chong, who again gets to play both the increasingly shame-ridden and barely controlled security officer and Thalia, the sunnier, girly-girlier lookalike princess — but this time literally crossing swords with one another as La’an’s slow-simmering arc reaches a crucial culmination.
The actress joined TV Guide to reveal some of the enchanted secrets behind making “Once La’an a Time,” La’an’s singular place in Trek’s romantic firmament, and her own personal journey with the character — oh, yes, and lest we forget the starship’s newest crew member: ALL THINGS RUNA EWOK!
Tell me that first gut reaction when you found out, “Oh, this is going to be the resolution to this arc that I’ve been crafting all season.”
Christina Chong: So excited! So excited because it’s a return to the fantasy episode that we did in Season 1, and I absolutely loved playing Thalia. And so to go back to her, because I think I only did two or three scenes with Thalia in Season 1, to go back to her and to have all this fun with all the other characters — and then to bring Paul Wesley into it as Prince Dashing, I was like, “This is genius.” And also it gave me a lot to play with and a challenge that I’d always wanted to do, to play two characters playing opposite each other. And then to do that as a fight as well, I was like, “Wow, thank you so much!”
That is such a classic Star Trek setup too, the doppelgangers fighting. Tell me a little bit about playing that, working the details of that out on set. That must have been an interesting day.
Chong: Well, the fight especially, because it was back-to-back-to-back for me. There was no respite. It was literally from whatever time we started in the morning, let’s say nine o’clock or whatever, all day just working on that fight. And we first of all did Thalia’s side of the fight, because it was the hardest side. She was on the attack, and with the anger that I had to drum up as well I was like, “Let’s start with the hard part first,” and that took until 3 a.m. in the morning. And then we switched over at 3 a.m. in the morning to La’an and I was just like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know how I’m going to do this. It’s 3 a.m. in the morning. I’m absolutely exhausted. I now have to flip my brain into the other choreography and the other character, and I don’t know if I can do this.”
So I did the first take of La’an and people were giving me notes. I had notes from the choreographer and acting notes, technical notes, and I just kind of slumped to the floor and put my hands over my head and I just had a moment. And I heard two voices, “You can’t do this. Just tell them you need to go home. I’m going to pick you up tomorrow,” and “You just stand up and keep going. Stand up and keep going. You can do this. Stand up and keep going.”
And everyone was silent, deathly silent on the set. And I was like, “Oh God.” And then somebody came over and was like, “Are you OK?” [Laughs] I was like, “I just need two minutes.” And then I just stood up after two minutes of crying and feeling like I couldn’t do it, and I just carried on. And thank God we finished it. It was light outside by the time we finished. But so grateful for the challenge.
Well, you can be forgiven for needing a moment because two characters, two choreographies, and two different corsets, which must have made it even more challenging.
Chong: Oh, true! True. I’d forgotten about the corsets. And heels. Two lots of heels as well. But I had amazing support from the whole team. There were four La’ans. There was one actress, Isabelle, who came in to act opposite me, and she was also switching characters. So when I was playing La’an, she would be Thalia and vice versa. And then I had two stunt ladies, one playing the La’an side of the fight and one playing the Thalia side of the fight. So they stayed in their costumes and me and Isabella would switch and it’s a whole makeup and hair change.
Because it was a whole season-long storyline, what was the joy for you of having that ongoing tension raging inside of La’an?
Chong: It’s always fun as an actor to play something with high emotion, and then have to cover it at times and repress it. That’s kind of been mostly La’an’s journey through Season 1, Season 2. And then Season 3, she had a bit of an opening, a lightening up, and then we’re kind of back to that La’an as we knew her. And yeah, the joy, for me, was how it ends. How it resolves in Episode 9 was just a real gift as an actor, and a challenge that I had actually wanted to try. And I didn’t realize that I’d get it through Star Trek.
I was very caught off guard that they chose to resolve that story with this whimsical return to the Elysian Kingdom. I was expecting something much darker and bloodier, and it was quite the opposite. Did you see it coming? Did you know? Or was that a surprise when the script landed in your hands?
Chong: No, it was a surprise. And because we don’t get all the scripts, the arc was only kind of slowly revealed to me. But yeah, I think it’s kind of nice to do the opposite of what people expect. I’ve heard from many people that they’re expecting La’an to go full on Khan. [Teasingly] But maybe she will.
I was expecting something much more Tarantino.
Chong: Yeah, yeah. That would’ve been cool. That’s a good genre, the Tarantino genre. But I don’t know if it’s too violent, though, for Trek.
What do you enjoy most about playing Thalia?
Chong: Oh, the dress-up, the hair, the makeup — all of it. And it’s more playful. There’s a playfulness that can come out that I can’t really allow with La’an.
There’s an important point in this episode that gets really hammered home at the end, which is that I think you may be playing the only character who has been romantically entangled with both Kirk and Spock.
Chong: Isn’t that insane? The two most iconic characters of Star Trek. That’s insane, yeah.
Did that sneak up on you, that unique distinction? And what’s cool about owning that little badge of honor?
Chong: I mean, I didn’t realize it, I don’t think, until somebody told me and I was like, “Oh, right — Yeah, of course.” And I think it’s great because La’an, obviously her personal story will have had an effect on Kirk and Spock as we will know them in The Original Series — well, as people do know them in The Original Series, to know that La’an has had a small part in their development as people is really cool.
Paul Wesley and Christina Chong, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Jan Thijs/Paramount+
Give me the distinction between developing your chemistry with Paul Wesley and developing your chemistry with Ethan Peck.
Chong: So Ethan and Paul are two very different people. Paul is like my annoying brother. So our chemistry is more sibling-orientated and poking fun at each other and just laughing all the time. Where I guess with Ethan, he’s more serious and grounded and depth-ful emotionally. Not that Paul isn’t, but I’m just saying that Ethan is more. So I think the connection with Ethan is more grounded and the chemistry is based on friendship over the last four years of working together. And I think he’s very good at being present and really making you feel what he’s feeling, and hopefully I return that to him. So it’s very easy to get into a scene with him, especially an emotional scene.
Of your castmates in this episode, whose performance as their doppelganger constantly cracked you up?
Chong: Oh, OK! Well, it’s different: There’s one when I’m watching it as an audience viewer, because I didn’t work with everyone, everyone’s doppelganger, but on set, I would say probably Paul’s character. And then when I watch it as a viewer, Spock. Spock is so funny in his episode. He has some great lines.
Give me your favorite behind-the-scenes story with your dog Runa on this episode.
Chong: Oh my God! On this episode — probably her first day on set, which was the dungeon scene where we first see Thalia and Runa has to come from behind the stone at the back and come out on her own. And she did it right first time. First time, she nailed it. I was like, “Wow, Runa!” I was so proud, but I obviously couldn’t see what she was doing because I was behind the rock. So I was just kind of listening. And as a dog mom, I’m like, “Oh my God, I hope she does it. I hope she does it.” So I’m half preparing to play Thalia, half being a dog mom, and thank God she did it.
And realizing that she absolutely loves acting. She loves learning these new tricks. She had to hit marks. We had to teach her how to hit marks. We had to teach her how to do a lot of other things, which we won’t see until the next season, but it was all kind of happening around the same time. And yeah, it was just a dream to be working with my little dog.
Have you told the origin story of how you two met and fell in love with each other?
Chong: Me and Runa? In real life? I don’t know if I ever have, but during the pandemic, I knew that I wanted to get a dog. Because I have PTSD and was diagnosed during the pandemic, I was like, “I would love to have a dog that’s a service dog that I could take all around the world with me.” But obviously having any dog, not every dog can pass a service dog test. And in the U.K., it’s very strict. There’s a lot of training involved.
And so I found this breeder and I was like, “I’m not going to take a dog unless the universe can prove to me — I very much believe in universal energy — that she’s not going to be really barky, that she can travel really well and be on a set and be well behaved.” I was like, “Don’t let me take a dog from this litter unless it’s all these things,” and I said, “Make it very clear to me which dog it is.”
And so I went, she took the puppies out of the crate and she just placed them on the floor. All of them fell asleep apart from Runa. They just fell asleep exactly where they were. And Runa was making this noise and she walked — barely walked, she’d kind of just learnt to walk — and she walked all the way over to me and sat in my lap. I was like, “Well, it’s not that one because she’s going to be barky. She’s making noise. All the others are really quiet and she’s making noise.” So I put her back over to the crate and she did that twice more. She came, crawled onto me, onto my lap, and she was the most ugly one because she was the runt. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is my dog.”
And it turned out she’s a great traveler. She’s great on set and she passed her service dog test with flying colors and she’s now my dog in the show. I mean, thank you universe!
And now she’s stealing hearts across Star Trek fandom, which has been amazing to witness. I saw you with her at an event in Los Angeles the other day and she seems like such a perfectly behaved dog.
Chong: Oh my God, she’s amazing. She came as a very calm puppy. The vets were surprised that she wasn’t ill when I took her for checkups, and they were like, “Are you sure she’s OK? She seems very chill.” I was like, “That’s how she’s always been.” But obviously, she’s had a lot of training as well.
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What’s been fun, or maybe weird, about seeing Runa become a star in her own right?
Chong: Nothing weird about it. It’s just amazing. What gives me so much joy is that she loves it. She just became, she completely entered this whole like, “Oh my God, this is what I was born to do.” She would be extra happy coming to set because she knew she had a purpose and a task to achieve.
Have people reached out to you about Runa Ewok merchandising? Do they want to make toys, collectibles of her? Have you started to get wild endorsement offers?
Chong: No, not yet, because obviously, they haven’t seen her in this season yet. She’s only had one little episode. But she is a convention queen, and somebody recently made a 3D printing statue of Runa, meditating, as a gift. I get so many amazing Runa gifts. I love how many Runa gifts I get.
I’ll be the first to admit, when the character of La’an was first announced, I was dubious about what was going to happen with her.
Chong: Yeah, a lot of people were.
But the show has really found a great, interesting lane for her.
Chong: I felt like I realized that people weren’t really on board with her after Season 1. I was like, “Oh, they’re not crazy about her.” But it grew. I think it slowly grew. And then Season 2, people were like, “Oh, actually I like her.” “Oh, actually, she’s my favorite character.” I’d hear that. So yeah, I just play the truth of what’s on the page, and none of that is anything to do with me, to be honest.
What’s been your relationship with Ricardo Montalban‘s portrayal of Khan? Have you looked at that often or just glanced at it?
Chong: No, I glanced, but she doesn’t really have any tie to him with regards to how she is today, other than the shame of being one of his descendants, so that was the key thing, really, that I had to take away. But other than that, it was just nice to watch the episode he was in and the movie and everything.
We still have another season to see if La’an can maintain this sort of inner equilibrium that she’s discovered. I’m curious for you, having completed your Star Trek journey, at least for now, how did the experience change you? How have you come out changed on the other side?
Chong: Funny, it’s like I’ve really had a very similar journey to La’an. It’s like they knew what I was going through and wrote to that. So with regards to Episode 9 — well, during the whole of Season 4 actually, I was dealing with learning how to accept all of my ugly parts, like the pain and the shame and all of these things. And I was trying to find different ways to do it.
And then funnily enough, during Episode 9, it’s kind of like I figured it out. I was like, OK. It’s like La’an, I just have to feel these things, let them pass. What you resist persists. And I feel way much lighter as a person, thanks to her. She’s taught me so much. And also with her, when she was opening up to love and all of that, that was a similar journey for me. And now on the other side of it, I feel like I’ve grown so much.
New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds drop Thursdays on Paramount+.