Michael Chabon: Picard Writers Took Sir Patrick Stewart’s Advice “Like Gospel”
"Michael Chabon" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
From the early days of production on Star Trek: Picard, Sir Patrick Stewart was heavily involved. Even as he announced his return to the small screen, in August of 2018, Stewart acknowledged his role in the process, saying, “I look forward to working with our brilliant creative team as we endeavor to bring a fresh, unexpected and pertinent story to life once more.”
In the second of a two-part interview with StarTrek.com, Picard showrunner Michael Chabon confirmed Stewart’s influence. Reacting to an early picture of the writers’ room, from September of 2018, Chabon said, “That's such a great picture. And that was in such an early phase of all this. I feel like we were all such innocents then, you know, we didn't really quite know where we were going, what we were doing.” At that point in the process, Stewart’s input, about the things he was and wasn’t interested in doing, was “priceless”. Chabon said, “We took all of that so seriously, like gospel, the word of God really.”
He went on to explain that the writers tried hard to tailor the story to Stewart, and what it was that made the character of Picard interesting to him. A big part of that was making something relevant to us, now. Chabon said, “He very much let us know he wanted this story to resonate to our times. [...] I mean science fiction, people think it's about the future. It isn't. Science fiction is about the present. It always has been.”
The rest of the interview is worth a watch; Chabon gives a little flavor of what to expect from the tone of the different series directors. The video is available now on StarTrek.com.
