Star Trek: Picard and Devs’ Alison Pill on playing mysterious scientists and why Star Trek: The Next Generation was “ballsy”
Alison Pill as Katie in FX’s Devs
Star Trek: Picard’s Alison Pill (no relation) isn’t just Star Trek: Picard’s Alison Pill. She’s also Alison Pill from Devs, a new mini-series out from FX on Hulu. And in a new interview with Vulture, she discussed her new role, why she’s got the market on mysterious scientists cornered, and why Star Trek: The Next Generation was a “ballsy” show.
Devs is a new limited, 8-episode series from writer and director Alex Garland, who you may remember from films such as Ex Machina and Annihilation. The show stars Nick Offerman as the CEO of Amaya, a mysterious tech company that Sonoya Mizuno’s “Lily Chan” believes is responsible for her boyfriend’s death. Pill plays “Katie”, a gifted physicist and second in command at the company.
Vulture asked Pill how it felt to play two similar roles, in Katie and in Picard’s Dr. Agnes Jurati. She replied, “I do feel like the slightly mysterious scientist market is mine. I don’t know that anyone else is gonna take that one over this year.”
Pill actually said that after shooting Devs, she was after a role with a little less excitement. Until Picard came along. “We had just gotten home in March [after shooting Devs],” she said, “and I was like, please just give me a job where I don’t have to move. Then in May, I got a call about possibly doing Star Trek and I was like, ‘Heck yeah! Patrick Stewart’s coming back? Sign me up!’”
Joining Star Trek wasn’t just gas-and-go for Pill, though, who wasn’t a huge Trek fan before. But the show’s producers had her do her homework. Kirsten Beyer, Picard writer and keeper of lore on the series, gave Pill a list of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes to review. “It was crazy to remember how important it was,” Pill said. “I didn’t watch every episode, but it was really helpful to go back and see it. It was such a ballsy show for that time. To open with Q!”
You can watch Alison Pill in her role on Devs, now streaming on Hulu. And of course, you can also see her as Dr. Agnes Jurati in Star Trek: Picard episode 8, “Broken Pieces”, now streaming on CBS All Access.
