Ethan Peck was one of the guests of honor at last weekend’s Trekonderoga - the yearly event centered around the Official Star Trek Set Tour in Ticonderoga, New York. During the weekend, Peck gave a Q&A session to attendees, and TrekNews.net was there.

During the Q&A, Peck related his Spock makeup to a compelling reason why Pike, Spock and Number One deserve their own series. He said, “They had to completely block out my eyebrows because of a contractual situation for me. [...] So they had me episode-by-episode and [shaving my eyebrows] would really take me out of other work opportunities. So, hopefully… Anson [Mount], Rebecca [Romijn] and I are all hoping to have a spinoff of our own and we can do all this proper.”

Peck also talked about his beard. He said that as soon as Alex Kurtzman, Discovery’s showrunner, asked him not to shave, he knew he would face criticism from fans, which he did. But he took the criticism in his stride, saying, “People are going to think what they’re going to think, and I can’t control that. So I just do my best.”

Peck even revealed that it was early in the process that Kurtzman decided that shaving the beard would be a plot point. “I remember we were at dinner in New York for New York Comic Con,” he said, “when he told me about Michael [Burnham] leaving and putting a nice little bow on her non-existence for canon, and he told me I would walk out shaven and we would be on our way [aboard the Enterprise].”

Peck also explained that he’s conscious of his privilege to have had his career so far. “I’m really lucky. I’m insanely lucky,” he said. “I come from this incredible acting family. My grandfather [Gregory Peck] was an actor… I survived a crazy motorcycle crash about ten years ago, and then I got cast as Spock after I almost quit acting. That’s just layer upon layer of unusual living. The older I get the more I’m feeling like I’m living in a dream. I feel very very grateful.”

You can watch Peck’s turn as Spock for yourself in Star Trek: Discovery season two. Available for streaming now, and on disc from November of this year.

This article was written for the podcast Daily Star Trek News.

Alison Pitt is the writer, producer, and host of Daily Star Trek News, on the Roddenberry Podcast Network. A veteran Star Trek podcaster, she started her career on the weekly show Priority One: A Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast in 2015. She has appeared on panels at Star Trek Las Vegas, WonderCon, and San Diego Comic Con.