INTERVIEW: Robert Picardo on his ‘Trek’ back to NY theater
Photo: Enter Laughing stars, from left, Robert Picardo and Ray DeMattis. Photo courtesy of Carol Rosegg / Provided by Richard Hillman PR with permission.
Time to ‘Laugh’
Robert Picardo, the celebrated actor, has crafted an impressive career with many worthy bullet points on his résumé. For many people, his most beloved role is The Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager, which ran for seven seasons and continues to be much admired by genre fans. There’s also his early Broadway turns, including one opposite Jack Lemmon.
Now, the actor has come full circle, returning to the New York stage after an ever-so-quick 42-year hiatus. Picardo is currently appearing in Enter Laughing at the York Theatre Company. The musical, with a book by Joseph Stein and music and lyrics by Stan Daniels, is a theatrical memoir based on the early years of comedian Carl Reiner. Stuart Ross provided additional material for this adaptation, and he also directs the show, which recently saw its limited engagement extend to June 16.
“Stuart Ross, who directs it, is just a terrific person to work with,” Picardo said in a recent phone interview about his motivation for joining the company. “I guess the first time I worked with him, he asked me to be in a benefit performance with a lot of other wonderful actors, a fundraising benefit many years ago. We just know each other’s work. I had seen Forever Plaid, and I know he’s a successful theater and TV director. I just got a call from my agents to audition for Enter Laughing when it was done in L.A. a little over four years ago, and I just thought it was funny. I’ve always admired Carl Reiner. I thought the source material was funny.”
It didn’t hurt that Picardo has some bonafide musical chops. TV fans will likely remember his many operatic turns on Star Trek, and he has performed in a number of L.A.-based musicals over the past 20 years. He fondly remembers A Class Act, a show that Lonny Price wrote and performed in on Broadway. When it came time to mount the musical in Los Angeles, Price tapped Picardo for the main role.
“I’ve done probably five or six other musicals over the intervening years, either in L.A. or sometimes regional theaters,” he said. “I love to sing. I thought the material was funny. It’s not a very big role, [but] I was asked to do it again here since I’ve recently relocated back to New York after all those years out in the sunshine. I just wanted an opportunity to reintroduce myself to the theater community here and have people come and say, ‘Oh, that guy. He’s still alive. He’s moving around, and he’s singing a song. And he hasn’t keeled over.’ So then you go into the back of everybody’s mental Rolodex hopefully. My dream, having done two leads on Broadway in my early 20s, I always assumed I would come back to New York. I waited a good long time, but I would like to do a Broadway musical before I’m on the wrong side of the grass. That’s my personal goal.”
Enter Laughing is set in post-Depression New York City. The lead character, played by Chris Dwan, is based off the real-life Reiner, known for The Jerk, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Comic. This central role is a young man from a nice, working-class, Jewish family. Picardo plays his father, who is a tailor and maker of hats.
“The kid comes home with this crazy notion that he wants to be an actor, and that just does not fit in with our family plan for him,” Picardo said. “My wife and I want him to go to pharmacy school and become a druggist and have a good, solid profession — you get married and be a good Jewish husband. So we have our own vision of what our son is going to do. He just explodes all that with coming home and announcing he wants to be an actor.”
Picardo added: “What’s really fun about the material is there’s the classic scene of his first time on stage where he’s not prepared and has no experience, and anything and everything that can go wrong in live theater goes wrong because of it. It’s a wildly funny scene. The role of the father and the parents are supporting characters in the show. Most of the comedy is carried by our terrific young leads, especially Chris Dwan, who plays our son, David Kolowitz. He’s the heart and soul of the show, and he’s a terrific performer, tremendous charisma, great comedy, terrific voice, moves great, does it all. He’s the reason to see the show. The rest of us are just some very accomplished window dressing.”
Performing in Enter Laughing is somewhat of an unusual experience for Picardo because he is recreating a role he has already performed with another company. In fact, he’s not even the only person in the cast with a similar behind-the-scenes tale.
Another motivation for signing up again for the father role is because Picardo has the chance of performing a wonderful duet with the character who employs his son in the show. The song is the actor’s favorite moment from the musical.
“My son works as an assistant and a delivery boy for a tool-and-machine repair shop for his boss, Mr. Foreman,” he said. “Because my kid has been screwing up at work, and he’s also acting irresponsibly at home, I drop by to meet his boss because I’m afraid that he’s going to fire my son, and in commiserating over the sort of worthlessness of present-day youth, we have a great song together. It’s kind of a what’s-the-matter-with-kids-today number, but in complaining about how kids only want to have fun, we discover how much fun it is to have fun. It’s a really sweet and upbeat moment, and I get to work with Ray DeMattis, who has done the role before when it was last done at the York Theatre 11 years ago. So he and I have each done our respective roles with an entirely different company, so he and I are the only two returnees from separate productions of the show, both directed by Stuart.”
Talking about the many productions of Enter Laughing can be confusing, even for those who know their theater history. The project started out as a memoir/novel, first published in 1959. At the time, Picardo relayed, Reiner was working with Stein and Sid Caesar, and Stein showed interest in adapting the book for a play. That production went on to be a successful Broadway show, and then a movie adaptation came in 1967 starring Shelley Winters, Elaine May, Don Rickles and José Ferrer.
There’s more.
An unsuccessful musical adaptation followed and flopped, and then the material languished for a bit. Then, more than a decade ago, Ross added more material and crafted a new musical.
“It was quite successful this production at the York, and that’s why the York I believe has asked us to have it be the kickoff production of their 50th anniversary season,” Picardo said.
The Long Trek
In the 1990s, Picardo was faced with an interesting and perhaps welcome challenge for his career: the opportunity to join the Star Trek franchise. He characterized the choice as a classic blessing-and-curse consideration when an actor is about to take on what promises to be a “signature role.”
“There was a time I felt that the industry kind of looked down a little bit if you’re celebrity as an actor was attached to that kind of material,” he admitted. “I think in my particular case I had already established a career in theater. I had played a major role in a drama called China Beach, so I felt like I had somewhat of a track record as an actor before Star Trek came along. I guess my point is if Star Trek is your first job as an actor in your early 20s, then it might be perhaps a slightly tougher mold to break out of. That’s the downside I guess of being identified with a franchise like Star Trek and genre-type material. The upside is that your work is constantly viewed and reviewed in a way that’s not the case, especially with television work.”
Television, Picardo added, can be disposable entertainment. One watches a show, and then one moves on in life. There’s not much going back to the material to rewatch an episode. That is not the case with Star Trek.
Picardo’s inclusion as The Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager has shaped his life, both personally and professionally, and it continues to do so, even though the series hasn’t produced a new episode in almost two decades. He regularly appears at Star Trek conventions, including the biggest soiree of the year, the Official Star Trek convention in Las Vegas put on by Creation Entertainment. He signs autographs, poses for photos and relives memories of his seven years on the landmark series.
“You don’t see any L.A. Law conventions where people are going to see the L.A. Law stars live,” he said. “You don’t even see The West Wing, a wildly popular show. They don’t have conventions, but you have Star Trek conventions because of the special place that the franchise has in the hearts of those who love it. … I meet 8 and 9-year-olds at conventions who have just watched all 164 hours or however many hours of Voyager we made, so to these young people, they’re new fans. They were born after the show went off the air in its original run, but I’m very present in their minds and imaginations. In their development at that point in their lives, I am an important part of their interests at that moment. That feels good. It’s nice that the work continues to live on and attract a new audience.”
So to answer that age-old question of whether a “signature role” is a curse or blessing, Picardo is squarely in the blessing category. There are so many perks to being The Doctor. For one, he likes to travel, and the convention circuit brings him around the world on a regular basis.
“I get to go all over the world and meet the faithful, the faithful being people that enjoy Gene Roddenberry’s positive vision of the future,” he said. “I remember my daughter did a thesis paper for her film major when she graduated about post-9/11 horror movies and how 9/11 impacted that particular film genre, and it certainly has impacted science fiction as well. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that since 9/11 so much of science fiction is much darker and less optimistic than Gene Roddenberry’s vision for Star Trek because in his vision, technology doesn’t destroy man. It empowers man and ennobles him in the sense that it gives him this reach all the way from our home planet, Earth, out into the cosmos to explore and learn for exploration’s sake and for learning’s sake. Yes, we always needed to get the dilithium crystals so we could continue to explore, but we weren’t out there as an arm of a major corporation looking for mining rights in the Delta Quadrant. We were out there to learn about the universe and therefore learn about ourselves and our place in it.”
Perhaps it is this vision of the future, this prime directive, that continues to attract new viewers to the franchise, which has so many opportunities for an entry point: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery and the forthcoming Star Trek: Picard.
“I like optimistic science fiction,” Picardo said. “I like to think that we will develop better ways of getting along rather than killing each other in the future, and that different kinds of people, not simply different races here on Earth, but in Star Trek’s vision people from different planets and different alien races can cooperate and work together, guided by moral principle, the prime directive, which is do no harm when you encounter another planet and another culture. Your first responsibility is to do no harm, the Hippocratic oath of space exploration.”
When Picardo was on the show, he felt he had creative license to suggest different character arcs for The Doctor, who was an artificial intelligence holographic program. He respected the writers, but also felt comfortable offering his opinions.
“The Star Trek writers are very smart, and when they conceive a new show, they really have a strong idea of what they want to do,” he said. “And they have a bible, and they have a layout. But having said that, they also write to the strengths of the various actors that they hire. … Somebody sent me a link to a podcast where a couple of our Star Trek writers were talking about Voyager, and they spoke highly of me saying whenever they gave me something I turned it into more than they had imagined, whether it was a humorous moment or slightly funny. And I would bring more to the table than they had envisioned. When you’re in a long-running TV series, and I had been on China Beach for four years, I sort of witnessed and watched the process of being in a serialized television drama. You realize that you’re partially the architect of your own happiness in that situation. You take what they give you, and you do your very best work.”
Picardo admitted that TV writing is difficult. These writers have to juggle a number of key characters and develop 25 stories per season. That means they are usually open to well-thought-out suggestions that are character-based.
“If it’s really a well-thought-out idea and not simply just, hey, I’d like more to do on this show, which is a useless suggestion to any writer, I found that they really listened,” he said. “I did make a number of suggestions on Star Trek, specifically that The Doctor was an opera fan. I made the suggestion that turned into my four-year arc with Seven of Nine, [which] was probably the best one I ever made. When they added Jeri Ryan’s character to the show, I said to the producer, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if The Doctor being an artificial intelligence if he thought he was a better teacher of how to be human than any of the humans on the ship?’ In other words, he took it upon himself to help our Borg character who had been human and then had been assimilated by the Borg Collective and was therefore part machine, mostly mind-controlled machine. If I taught her how to become human again, specifically with role-playing exercises that taught her appropriate behavior under different circumstances, and that suggestion turned into four years of terrific scenes with Jeri Ryan. So sometimes if you give them an idea that they like, then it helps guide the arc of your character.”
Picardo finds that The Doctor was different from previous doctors on Star Trek because he had freedom as an A.I. holographic program. He didn’t have to follow conventional wisdom or past precedent.
“I did not have to obey any of the rules that a Starfleet officer did because I was a new technology,” Picardo said. “I was supposed to have these primitive algorithms, emotional algorithms that would give me a bedside manner, that would give me empathy for my patients, but they didn’t quite work. So most of The Doctor’s feelings were focused inward on himself and how he felt that he wasn’t being accorded the respect he deserved, so I got to go from being a blank slate with virtually no personality, I got to grow into a fully realized human being. But early on what was fun about the characters I had all these negative qualities. I was a windbag, I was arrogant, I was a coward when I was in a situation that was outside of my expertise. I had all these negative qualities that the audience wasn’t used to seeing someone in a Starfleet uniform behaving badly, and I think that’s what made the character fun. He would behave badly, and then he would rise to his better self. That made him a little more surprising and a little more amusing because I had that freedom.”
Out of this world
Perhaps one of the greatest takeaways from his time on Star Trek is his participation in The Planetary Society, a nonprofit that promotes space exploration. The partnership between Picardo and the organization continues to this day, with the actor serving on the board of directors. Bill Nye currently serves as CEO.
“It’s a nonprofit cofounded by Carl Sagan in 1980,” he said. “Presently our CEO is Bill Nye the Science Guy. It’s a space advocacy group. Basically our mission is to keep the public engaged and inspired and interested in the status of space, science and exploration, support NASA’s budgets, etc.”
Picardo’s interest in all things planetary started in college when he began his academic career as a biology major. He may have moved on to become an acting major, but he kept that lifelong interest in science, primarily life science.
“During my tenure on Star Trek: Voyager, when we were on the air, I want to say something like our second or third season, I was contacted by two of the surviving founders [of The Planetary Society],” he said. “Along with Carl Sagan, the Planetary Society was cofounded with Lou Friedman and Bruce Murray, who both worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other places. Bruce Murray is the guy that first suggested we put a camera on a space mission. Seems sort of obvious now, but someone had to say, ‘Hey, let’s mount a camera on this thing before it takes off.’ Anyway, those gentlemen called me in about ‘97 I guess and asked me to participate in a fundraiser. The occasion was the 70th birthday of Ray Bradbury, and it was held at the historic Pasadena Playhouse. And they wanted a group of actors to read some of Bradbury’s famous words, mostly Martian Chronicles but other writings as well. So they had Charlton Heston, John Rhys-Davies and three or four of my Star Trek colleagues, John de Lancie, myself, Tim Russ and a handful of other people. … I think they already had Mr. Davies on the advisory council, and they asked me to be on the advisory council. So I said yes.”
His early service for the society was focused on educational challenges for young people. This was right around the time the Sojourner Mars rover landed. The actor remembers a Lego-sponsored competition that saw high school students building their own model Mars rovers.
Another highlight? “I got the first public service announcement ever shot on a Star Trek set for something that we were partnered in called the Mars Millennium Project,” he said. “I guess it would have been 1999, so I was involved on the advisory council for many years, and then they honored me by asking me to join the executive board about three years ago. My first decision was to do a little monthly newsletter geared at lay people like me, maybe science-fiction fans rather than real scientists, about something cool that was going on in the space program that I was interested in and then ask regular, layperson-type questions of the real folks that were doing it.”
One of his interviews was with Alan Stern of the Pluto mission New Horizons.
“So it’s been great fun for me because I learn a lot, and I get to meet really cool people,” he said. “So I love my work with the society.”
Star Trek fans no doubt have learned a lot over the years from Picardo’s contributions in both the genre and planetary worlds. He’s an actor who shares his gifts in many unique ways.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Robert Picardo is currently appearing in Enter Laughing at the York Theatre Company in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
