Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn return to headline Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2. Mount portrays Captain Christopher Pike and Romijn plays Number One AKA Commander Una Chin-Riley in the Paramount+ original series set aboard the legendary USS Enterprise.
Strange New Worlds season 2 picks up on season 1's cliffhanger after Number One is arrested by Starfleet. Of course, Captain Pike will do whatever it takes to bring his First Officer back to the Starship Enterprise, so they can continue their five-year mission to explore the galaxy.
Screen Rant ed a roundtable interview with Anson Mount and Rebecca Romjin to discuss Pike and Una's loyalty, Strange New Worlds season 2's bold leaps in genre, and the highly anticipated crossover episode with Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Anson Mount & Rebecca Romijn Talk Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2
How much pressure was off for you guys in season 2? Season 1 was the opening ride, you wanted to impress people. How freeing is season 2?
Rebecca Romijn: Sometimes it's a little more pressure. As Anson mentioned before, we've seen shows where the second season doesn't compare to the first season. So we really wanted to make season 2 bigger and better than season 1. And we took some real chances, took some big swings genre-wise, and tried a lot of things. We're excited to share it with everyone.
Anson Mount: We really had the benefit of a network that had learned to trust our showrunners when they want to take big swings. And also their investment, as you can see, that we will continue to build out this ship. So just tremendous, tremendous from the network in that way.
For both of your characters, we got to see different sides of them and explore different parts of their past and their personalities. Was there a particular aspect of your character that you were excited to explore and portray in season 2?
Rebecca Romijn: Having worked on episode 2 and seeing how Una finally frees herself of having lived inauthentically for so many years, I think freeing herself from that and moving forward and letting her crew and everyone know who she really is like a great metamorphosis for the character. It's gonna be fun moving on from that.
How do you feel that leaders like Una Chin-Riley and Pike use the weaknesses and vulnerabilities we saw in season 1 to build their crew and their crew?
Anson Mount: Their weaknesses? I think that's a great question. We were just talking earlier about our [characters'] relationship [and] the corners you kind of write in yourself as an actor. [Pike and Una have] been friends since the Academy. And I believe that Una has become that friend and confidant for Pike that actually is able to show him those things that I'm always so critical about that are swirling around my head that I think are my weaknesses. When you turn those around, you can actually see those can be seen as strengths, as well. But you can't dwell on it, you've got to be active. And that's why she's so important to his being a Captain.
Rebecca Romijn: I think there's a level of family there also that bleeds down into the crew. I think that we've developed this family dynamic, and I guess we're the mom and dad in a way. But yeah, I think that there's been deep and a level of trust within their relationship that bleeds into the rest of the crew.
I'm wondering if you both can comment on what you feel viewers would be most surprised about in season 2, either with your characters or just the themes explored.
Rebecca Romijn: We've taken some very big swings genre-wise in season 2. And I know some of you have seen the first 6 episodes. We have a few episodes coming up after that are really out there. So we're very proud of them. We're very excited. Anson mentioned earlier that sometimes when you get to episode 9, which is almost at the end of the season, everyone's kind of tired. Everyone's sort of almost ready to go home. They brought us this episode that was so out there. And it required us to work on weekends. And we were also excited about it, it was like this extra wind behind our sails that we needed at that point in the season. So we're really excited to share all of these different genres we worked in.
Anson Mount: Yeah, I would agree with Rebecca. I would say that the brevity that the network has given us now that -- you know, we had a couple of episodes in that first season that they weren't too sure about. And both of those episodes are ones that popped for us. And so they kind they gave our showrunners a lot more freedom to play with, with genre. [Co-showrunner] Akiva [Goldsman]'s mantra continues to be 'Star Trek can be a lot of things'. So we're not just playing with the message that we can be told, but within the episodic structure, we can play with how we get there. And genre has been a fun way of us talking with the writers about what we haven't done that we would like to do. That makes everybody excited to be there. Which I think is often an undervalued currency in filmmaking, is the excitement level, especially in television.
I'm curious if more freedom and less pressure in season 2 allowed you to explore different aspects of the way that you play your character, or took some risks.?
Rebecca Romijn: I'll speak for myself, I think after episode 2, Una really gets freed up and is no longer hiding, is no longer sort of living in shame with this shameful secret that she's been hiding all these years. So I think moving forward, that's going to be very different for her.
Anson Mount: I would say in of the network, no. But there is this really great thing that happens around season 2 of a TV show when you're working with smart writers, like we are. You'll find them starting to come to you a bit. Because there is a sense of the character you have from the inside that they're trying to get to from the outside. And conversations about arcs can often lead really fruitful ideas. And they have been very proactive about doing that with us.
In season 1, Pike had a very specific arc about his future visions that culminated in meeting his alternate future self. So how does going through that change Pike and his perspective? And how did that change your performance going into season 2?
Anson Mount: That was the question that we had to deal with in episode 101. We had to deal with that, not to get past it, but to get Pike back on mission and through the existential crisis, for the most part. You don't want to entirely forget it, because then you're leaving behind a very important aspect of the character, which I think makes him brave in a different way than we've seen every other Captain. But you want to get kind of the navel-gazing out of the way. (laughs)
So we did that. And then, it's always been an aspect of the character that his challenge continues to be, and I want it to continue to be for a while, reminding himself that the journey is the destination. And not the other way around. And I think that the introduction of the relationship with Captain Batel has been a very important part of that.
Screen Rant: The crossover with Lower Decks is coming up. Jonathan Frakes effusively praised both of your comedic chops. What was it like doing comedy with Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid?
Rebecca Romijn: Ridiculously fun.
Anson Mount: Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen guest stars come with such ownership of the material before.
Rebecca Romijn: [Tawny and Jack] both have such great backgrounds in improv, and they never did the same thing twice. They did something different, they took it off the page, and played with it in every single take. It was so fun. And having Jonathan Frakes there was very important to massage the two worlds so that it was cohesive [because] they come from this animated show, and now they're on the Enterprise, which is a very, very different tone. It was really important that he was there to meld those tones.
Anson Mount: I don't think anybody else could have directed the episode. It was so much fun.
About Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 follows Captain Christopher Pike and the crew of the USS Enterprise in the 23rd century as they explore new worlds and carry out missions throughout the galaxy during the decade before Star Trek: The Original Series.
Check back soon for our interview with Ethan Peck & Paul Wesley as well.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 premieres June 15, on Paramount+.