Patrick Stewart Said He’d Only Reprise Captain Picard If The Story Was ‘So Different’

Alex Kurtzman spoke with The Hollywood Reporter and discussed the upcoming Captain Picard Star Trek series starring Patrick Stewart. Kurtzman told the outlet that he had always wanted to do a Picard show, feeling he is the greatest Star Trek captain, but didn’t know if Stewart would be interested. Some highlights from the piece are below:

On Stewart’s condition for returning to the role: “He threw down an amazing gauntlet and said, ‘If we do this, I want it to be so different, I want it to be both what people remember but also not what they’re expecting at all, otherwise why do it?'”

On the pitch they made to Stewart about the show: “What we tried to convey in that meeting was how desperately we loved him and the character and how much we wanted to see what happened to Picard.”

On being asked by Stewart to prepare a three-page outline of their idea: “It turned into a 34-page document — with no way to shorten it. We were going on all in and he was going to read it or not read it, love it or hate it. It was our best attempt at trying to get him to say yes…He walked into the room and he had a huge smile on his face and said, ‘This is wonderful.’ What he understood at that point … was that he was with people who desperately wanted to collaborate with him, that we weren’t trying to exploit him. He knew if he was going to go back to Picard, it needed to be for the greatest reason ever.”

On how Picard has changed since we last saw him: “Picard’s life was radically altered by the dissolution of the Romulan Empire.”