Tawny Newsome Interview: Star Trek Lower Decks Season 2
With Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2 arriving on Blu-ray and DVD on July 12, Tawny Newsome looks back at her character, Ensign Beckett Mariner's, tumultuous season. The Paramount+ Original Animated Comedy Series left off with a big season 2 cliffhanger where Mariner's mother, Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), is arrested by Starfleet.
Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2's Blu-ray and DVD contains all 10 episodes and is packed with over an hour of bonus features including the featurettes A Sound Foundation, Lower Decktionary: Season 2, Animatics, and Easter Eggs. The set also has Audio Commentaries for four episodes with executive producer Mike McMahan, the show's writers, and actors Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Gabrielle Ruiz, Paul Scheer, and Jonathan Frakes.
Screen Rant had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Tawny Newsome about her favorite Lower Decks season 2 memories, her real-life friendship with Jack Quaid, finally cosplaying in her Starfleet uniform, and hints at what's to come in Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3.
Screen Rant: Lower Decks season 2 was so great. Let’s start at the end with the season 2 cliffhanger. Mariner’s gotta save her mom, right?
Tawny Newsome: Yeah, it's pretty epic, right? It's not just "I gotta save my Captain" and it's not just "I gotta save my mom," it's "I gotta save both and I'm the person that's gotta do it!" Thankfully, she's got a good crew around her and all of the Lower Deckers seem game to do this. It's an intense way to end the season, that's for sure.
It was very much a TNG cliffhanger with the "To Be Continued" in blue font. It was perfect.
Tawny Newsome: For sure.
Season 2 was a tougher season for Mariner too. A lot of conflict with Captain Freeman and a lot of things didn’t go her way. She even failed in the Holodeck in “I, Excretus” while Boimler beat the Borg.
Tawny Newsome: Yeah, we definitely saw where Mariner's street smarts ran up against a bit of a wall. As is always the case with people who think they've got everything figured out. When they're up against something unfair, as we learned in that episode that the game was rigged, the most confident, street-smart person in the world is no match for something that's rigged.
It was such a great character development moment to see Mariner go, "Wait a minute! I'm great at this! Horses love me! What's happening here? This doesn't happen to me! I excel at everything." And then to find out that there was corruption happening. I can identify, you know? With the world. Trying to be good at everything, thinking you're in a fair fight, and realizing the game is rigged.
I love Mariner’s friendship with Boimler [Jack Quaid]. I think my favorite moment of the season was when they carved their names in the bar next to Kirk and Spock.
Tawny Newsome: Yeah, I loved that moment too. That bar was modeled after a really special bar in Chicago that Mike McMahan and I both have a history with. He had some homages to it visually and with the feel of it. That scene is really special to me.
That's awesome. What a cool tidbit. What were your favorite moments from season 2?
Tawny Newsome: You named one with the carving our names in the bar. And Jennifer Lewis playing the voice of that bartender. I mean, if you told me one day that I would be in a Star Trek show acting opposite, even however briefly, opposite Jennifer Lewis, I would be like, "Shut up and get out of my house. You're a witch. You do not speak the truth. Get out of here!" (laughs)
So seeing that all come together, I was like, "Wait what? We're doing this in this bar that has special meaning to me and we're carving our names next to Kirk and Spock, and it's Jennifer Lewis? Wait what?" It was pretty mind-exploding for me. I really love that whole episode.
I interviewed Jack last year and he said you and he really have become great friends like Mariner and Boimler.
Tawny Newsome: Oh yeah. I treasure Jack. I was having a rough day yesterday and we did a podcast together. Afterward, he had such a busy day. He's been doing press for The Boys and he's been doing late night shows and running around, and he took the time to take me to get a little snack and listen to me complain. You know, we haven't known each other that long. I have some long, long friendships that I think of as close as this one with Jack has become.
I think part of it is a testament to Mike McMahan and the writers writing our characters with such a unique bond that it just can't help but come to life in real life. We have just become so close and I just love it.
That's so awesome. I saw you guys at Star Trek: Mission Chicago with Noel Wells, Jerry O'Connell, and Mike, and you guys finally got to wear your Starfleet uniforms. What was that like?
Tawny Newsome: That was so cool. I'd never worn a Starfleet uniform before. I've never cosplayed and never done any of that stuff. I think it's because I'm an actor and I have to dress up for a living, I don't want to put effort into dressing up in my time off. It just felt like too much. But I love looking at people's cosplays, it's so cool.
So to get to do it in a semi-official kind of way was so cool. But it was really funny because of the other Star Trek actors. I'm also a fan and this was my first in-person con. So this was my first time meeting, literally, some of my heroes. Alexander Siddig, Nana Visitor, Kate Mulgrew. I'm meeting my heroes for the first time and I'm dressed as a cosplayer. So I don't know if they understood what I was doing there. I don't think they knew I was in a Star Trek property. They were just like, "Who's this weird volunteer at the event who's dressed in cosplay backstage?"
It was a little bizarre trying to tell people who I was but also trying to soak up being with my Star Trek heroes and not just talk about myself. I'm sure it was confusing all around. It was surreal.
Well, that was a long time coming, your cast getting to wear the uniforms. Were you a little jealous of the live-action Star Trek casts getting to wear the uniforms and act on the sets?
Tawny Newsome: Oh yeah! Oh my gosh, especially with how beautiful the sets are. There's so much Star Trek now and there are so many different sets. I would die to just touch any of the things in Engineering on Strange New Worlds. Any button, any slider, I just wanna go and press it, and push it, and see what's real and what's CGI. I love it.
I want to live in Pike's quarters. That's like a multimillion-dollar apartment with the fireplace and everything.
Tawny Newsome: Truly! They made my dream. Everyone used to say the Don Draper apartment in Mad Men was like the dream but I don't know, that place always felt really cold. If Mad Men had had Pike's quarters the whole time, I would have been obsessed with that. That show and that look. That's like the dream of perfect modernism, but in space. I love it.
The Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2 Blu-ray comes out July 12. You did an audio commentary for episode 7. How fun was that?
Tawny Newsome: Oh it was super fun! I did it with our great writer Garrick Bernard and my good buddy Paul Scheer. Garrick is an excellent Trekkie, a great comedy writer, and an actor himself, so [he's] a wonderful person to talk Star Trek with. And then Paul and I have known each other for a few years now, just doing comedy podcast stuff. It's so fun when you get two podcasters on a Zoom like that.
It was just like us hanging out doing one of the many comedy pod things we've done over the years. It just felt so comfortable. I felt like I could talk to them forever. I could do the whole season with these two. They didn't want that. No one asked us to do that but I would have.
Well, that's crazy. They should have asked.
Tawny Newsome: Yeah! They should've asked us to do ALL of the episodes!
Are you bringing back your Star Trek podcast, The Pod Directive?
Tawny Newsome: Okay, so I just talked about this with the fan podcast The SyFy Sistas that I did last month. The reason I've been cagey about it, and people tweet at me and ask me about it, but I can't put this into a tweet. So, this is the real deal:
We did the second season and then our entire production team that did the podcast - basically, everyone except me and Paul [F. Thompkins], the host, and the engineer who cuts the episodes - changed jobs. We had one person leave Secret Hideout entirely for a better position somewhere else. So we lost the entire infrastructure of people who do the podcast.
And since Paul and I aren't going to produce, edit, and release it ourselves because we're far too busy, we've just been waiting for Secret Hideout to reassemble a new team. I don't understand how giant corporations work in terms of hiring. It takes forever. But trust me, as much as people pester me online to bring the podcast back, I am pestering those lovely producers at Secret Hideout.
It's now to the point where if I go to the booth to record or if I go to any Trek event, a producer comes up to me first and goes, "I know! The Pod Directive!" They get in front of it first because they are sick of me hounding them. So to the listeners, trust me, I am with you, I'm doing my best.
With Strange New Worlds ending, that means Lower Decks season 3 is coming very soon. What can you tell us?
Tawny Newsome: I can give you the tiniest tidbit that there will be some revelations in episode 1 about Boimler's heritage back on Earth. It's responsible for one of my favorite small throwaway jokes that will kind of redefine how you look at Boimler. It's a small joke but when you think about it in terms of him and in terms of the way we treat human characters, it's just so delightful to me.
That's when our show is best. I love when we can take a small joke that actually has pretty big character implications, and thus, implications for all of Star Trek. That's our weird little Inception trick that we're able to do on our show. So we'll see a little bit about Boimler's... upbringing, you could say.
That's amazing. I know Boimler's from Modesto, California, which is where George Lucas is from. I love that joke.
Tawny Newsome: That's because one of our producers, Brad Winters, is from Modesto, so that's a direct nod to him. I have a bunch of family in Modesto. It's just a real wild Central Valley town.
Are there any big guest stars in season 3 that you're excited about?
Tawny Newsome: Yes. There are. That I'm hugely excited about. The End. You're gonna get me in trouble.
From within Star Trek or without? Let's do that.
Tawny Newsome: Oh! There are actually both. So I'm really excited about some of the friends and folks I know, the actors I know, who are doing small roles and cameos, and bigger roles. They're so good at grabbing talent. But then there are also some folks from within the Star Trek universe that I am very excited about.
Check out our previous interviews with Star Trek: Lower Decks star Jack Quaid and writer Mike McMahan.
Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2 arrives on Blu-ray and DVD July 12.
Source: Screenrant
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