posted
I'm probably too old to be legitimately espousing podcasts, but I do like Geeks On and this time 'round they interview Garrett Wang. In the interview he has some rather nasty things to say about Rick Berman, and gave some unflinchingly candid appraisals as to why later series were different than TOS. These comments seem to jibe with some of Robert Beltran's comments. Also he gives some firsthand, behind-the-scenes gossip about 7of9 and Janeway.
Even if you skip the other sections, Garrett Wang's interview (starting around 27:44) has a lot of interesting insight into becoming an actor and how he got the part and what it's like to be an Asian American actor in Hollywood.
posted
I'm at work right now... what are the highlights?
-------------------- "It speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow, it's not all going to be over with a big splash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans." -Gene Roddenberry about Star Trek
Registered: May 1999
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posted
Well after breaking down his career up to landing the Voyager role (which is much more entertaining and funny than it sounds), he talks about how rarely he saw Berman on set (and points out how odd this is given that Berman is the show-runner). Gives a couple choice instances of Berman coming off like a royal prick. Promotes a rumor of how Berman, unliked by Paramount execs, failed into ST, TPTB thinking it a doomed project. There are some annecdotes about Braga. How Berman, finding his star-writer, established a pattern for these shows and this single-minded, inflexible attitude stifled the creative spark of many performers (preferential treatment to alien emotional performances over human ones). Wang does a couple pretty funny impressions of cast-members and talks about the friction caused by the introduction of Jeri Ryan, particularly how frustrated Kate Mulgrew felt as a female role model and how this anger was (in his opinion) misdirected towards Two-Of-D (the inestimable Ms. Ryan). There's some stuff about conventions, the changing climate for actors in general in Hollywood given the proliferation of reality programming, some very enlightening tales about how he came to be involved in Trek and his feelings about same. He speaks briefly about the upcoming New Voyages independent production, but doesn't say a lot on that.
Mostly I was just impressed by how blunt he was about what he thinks about Mr. Berman.
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Mind you, this is the same Wang who, when denied a director's gig on Voyager, pulled the race card and declared it must have been because of that. He's a nice guy and all, but I think his lack of showbiz politico savvy peeks thorugh strongly when it shouldn't.
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