Jeri Ryan Talks Star Trek: Nemesis

In an interview with the Nerdist Podcast, the gorgeous Jeri Ryan discussed some of her years with Star Trek (she played Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager) and provided a little background on her near role in Star Trek: Nemesis and why it didn't work out. Quotes below, via TrekMovie, but what it worked out too was a schedule conflict with her role on Boston Public, a desire to break out of the Star Trek stereotype, and simply that the role was forced into the film.

When I got off [Voyager] I was very very lucky to step right into a David Kelley show [Boston Public]. That was when they were shooting [Star Trek: Nemesis] Paramount called Rick Berman and said "put Jeri Ryan in the movie" which is very nice and flattering and Rick called and said "do you want to be in the movie?" And I was like "hmmmm." I just did four years in a catsuit and I just got on a David Kelley show, which was my one chance to break out of Star Trek, which was still frankly a fear that I wasn’t going to be able to escape that and do something else. You have very little outs in a TV series contract, so I didn’t want my first step once David Kelley made this role for me to be "hey, could you let off for a couple months to do Star Trek."

I told them if there was a reason for this character to appear in the story, then absolutely. If there was a good story reason, then absolutely, but she never interacted with any of the characters on [Star Trek: The Next Generation], she’s never met them. Why would she be there? They would be plugging her in just to plug her in. It was just odd. So it wasn’t the right thing to do…They understood, but then he was like "Do you want to do a cameo at the wedding?" And I was like "no, if I don’t want to be in the movie, why would I want to do a cameo."

In the end, a cameo apperance was provided by Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway) and sadly Nemesis went down as breaking the even-odds curse in the worse way possible.