TVLINE | We know Kirk still carries some guilt from that episode last season when he destroyed a scavenger ship that had thousands of lives onboard. Did that guilt influence the way he approached the conflict with Reeger this week?
That’s interesting. I’m going to be very honest: I thought about it a little bit, but I didn’t apply it as much to the performance. It was more kind of sensing something was off about this guy, Reeger. Because, as Pike said, sometimes you make decisions and they may not be the right decisions, but you just have to trust your gut, and you have to live with them, and that’s something that, unfortunately, is a byproduct of being a captain and in charge. It’s war, right? Sometimes in war, there are casualties, as painful as they are. For this one, it was more that something was off about this guy, and he started thinking like, “Something’s not clicking.” Kirk is a very instinctive person, and he was just like, “My Spidey-sense is sensing something.” And then I think subconsciously in the back of his mind, he doesn’t know anything about his father. It’s kind of this mystery. He knows a little bit, but there are so many blanks to be filled, and I think part of that was also one of the main catalysts of him questioning things, because he wanted to uncover the truth about his dad. But again, it comes back to Kirk’s instinct, really.
TVLINE | Yeah, Reeger worked alongside Kirk’s dad George and tells Kirk that his dad was kind of a coward, essentially, that he avoided combat. How does that line up with what Kirk knows about his dad?
I think he certainly didn’t view his father as a coward, but he sort of felt like his dad never achieved what Kirk assumed he would. I think in many ways, if Kirk wants to be an eventual captain, he has to believe in himself, and he has to feel like he has it inside of him, almost like in his blood or in his genes, right? In some capacity. We can certainly defy our parents and be better or worse than them, but I think he looked at his dad and he goes, “I don’t know if I can do this if my dad couldn’t do it.” So I think this gave him a closure and also a sense of confidence in, “Well, my father is actually a hero. He’s an unsung hero, but he’s a hero. So maybe I can be a hero. Maybe I can be a leader.” So I think that was a big one. You know, the big arc with this character is: How does he become the “TOS” [“The Original Series”] Shatner Captain Kirk that we know, with such a bravado and such a confidence and such a way of moving where everyone’s just like, “Whatever this guy says, we’re gonna do”? And I think he just isn’t there yet, and these are all small steps that sort of get him to that place.