Posted in: CBS, Preview, Star Trek, streaming, TV | Tagged: exclusive, interview, Lt. Erica Ortegas, Melissa Navia, paramount, star trek, strange new worlds

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Star Melissa Navia Talks Lt. Ortegas

Melissa Navia has a lot riding on her shoulders as the new helmsman of the U.S.S. Enterprise playing Lieutenant Erica Ortegas in the upcoming Paramount+ series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which premieres on May 5. While she isn't playing a legacy character, the actress is very aware of the responsibility of being part of such a cultural zeitgeist in the franchise since the premiere of The Original Series in 1966. Strange New Worlds acts as the direct prequel to the original NBC series. I spoke to Navia about her audition during the pandemic and fan anticipation.

Bleeding Cool: When you heard about the opportunity for "Strange New Worlds," what went through your mind?

Melissa Navia: It was around October 2020 when I auditioned. So we were coming off of the [height of the] pandemic, kind of all the craziness when in our industry everything had turned to self-taping. So this audition comes through for a series regular on a new Star Trek show. I didn't think too much about it because you don't want to amp yourself up too much. You kind of just have to go with it, but what did get me excited was the character breakdown for Lt. Ortegas. Basically, everything they described in terms of her being a pilot, helmsman, combat veteran, being funny, as well as being able to handle a phaser, could crack a joke when needed, and she was also Latina.

So there was just a lot about the character that to me rang true with myself, which I think is important as an actor to be able to relate to the character. That got me very excited and then from there, I did the audition as best I could and pieced together who this person was. Knowing that this was a huge franchise I was stepping into, I already knew that I had some Trekkies in my family. My partner, he knew a lot about Star Trek. He was watching actually a lot of 'Deep Space Nine', right about when I was going to find out if I booked the role or not. Like I would keep hearing the Deep Space Nine theme in the background. It was driving me crazy and I was trying to watch other TV shows to not think about Star Trek, but it's such a part of our cultural lexicon that it's in everything. When I found out I booked it, I was like, 'Wow!' It was also interesting because I kept thinking I was so unique and the character description was so unique that I felt like 'If they want me, I will book this role'. So there was no tension there because I was just like, 'If it's meant to be, it'll be fun to be the actor we are."

BC: How did the showrunners tell you to approach your character? Grounded or fast and loose?

Navia: Because we were shooting still well into the pandemic, everything kind of was happening via Zoom. So meeting the showrunners, producers, writers, directors, everything firsthand was off of Zoom. So we got to have these great conversations and they gave us all of the main cast members that gave us such freedom to infuse our own personalities with the characters, even those of the legacy characters, like Spock, Uhura, Chapel, and M'Benga. With me, I felt like one thing that really kind of grounded everything was knowing that we had Anson [Mount], Rebecca [Romijn], and Ethan [Peck], who the fans loved so much in 'Discovery' [season two]. That really felt like we were coming on board a ship with leaders who were already kind of embedded. That felt that made the whole experience very comfortable. Then Henry [Alonso Myers] and Akiva [Goldsman] are showrunners. They spoke to me about who I was, what my background was, and they could see all sorts of things that translated to Ortegas. That's some of those things you're going to see in season one. She is a combat veteran, with a fighting background that is going to play later in the season. That kind of gels with my martial arts background and my training, which is cool, but everyone just made it so welcoming and we became such a tight family because everything in Toronto was in lockdown pretty much until I want to say like July.

Star Trek really was our world. It was our life. In terms of fast and loose, they were like, 'Make it your own', but at all times they were just like, 'Ask us if you have questions.' As the helmsman, I became very kind of particular about how exactly to fly a starship. I was given access to all these wonderful people in the world of Star Trek who gave me help learning what makes up the Enterprise and what have pilots done in the past. I was also able to look at that history. We have 'The Original Series' I was watching a lot of and I grew up on 'The Next Generation'. All of that kind of informed the development of my character.

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