Posted in: Paramount+, TV | Tagged: star trek, Starfleet Academy

Starfleet Academy: Dorn Talks Mentoring Diané on Klingon Experience

Star Trek legend & actor Michael Dorn on sharing his Klingon experiences as Worf with Starfleet Academy star Karim Diané (Jay-Den Kraag).

There probably isn't a more qualified mentor in terms of the Klingon experience than Michael Dorn, who played fan favorite Worf across three Star Trek shows and four feature films, a journey that began on the franchise's first live-action spinoff series, The Next Generation, in 1987. The actor would appear in all seven seasons and four films of TNG, four seasons of Deep Space Nine (over 100 episodes), and the final season of Paramount+'s Picard. As part of the new crop of cadets on Starfleet Academy, Karim Diané plays Jay-Den Kraag, the first Klingon member of Starfleet and featured as part of the cast since Dorn in a Star Trek series and co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman devised the perfect way to acclimate the young actor by pairing him up with the veteran about sharing the Klingon experience as the duo spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the experience.

Starfleet Academy Star Karim Diané on Learning from Star Trek Legend Michael Dorn About His Klingon Experiences

"To think that you were gonna be doing something like this was kind of unheard of. I don't know about anything that's happened like this before in the business," Dorn told EW. "Thirty or 40 years later, you're talking to the next generation, basically. It just doesn't happen. So I wasn't prepared for it, but I was happy to be part of it." Diané told Dorn, "I obviously Googled the crap out of you beforehand and watched every single video that you have ever posted on the internet about the prosthetics process, so I felt mentored by you before I even got the chance to talk to you for the first time. There's a couple podcasts where you're just brutally honest about how challenging this experience is, and so I felt guided by you."

Diané was prominently featured in the recent Starfleet Academy episode "Vox in Excelso" when Jay-Den discovers he's not very accustomed to public speaking, which gets in the way of debating among his classmates. Complicating matters is a tragedy involving his Klingon kin and the constant struggle between his family's more isolationist ways and its embrace of the Federation's values, which are often at odds lately, given the post-Burn galaxy of the 32nd century. As Jay-Den learns to compose himself, he can not only make decisions for himself as a Klingon in Starfleet, but he also empathizes with his peers about preserving identity in their decisions. During the debate, he stresses that it's more important that the collective free will of Klingons decides their fates rather than the Federation decides on their behalf, if it means undermining their core values of preservation.

For more on how Diané channeled his background into his character, filming the series, comparing the makeup process to become Klingon now to Dorn's time on TNG, and encountering their respective generation's toxic fanbase that includes Dorn dealing with toxic The Original Series fans who wouldn't embrace TNG, you can check out the entire interview. New episodes of Starfleet Academy stream on Thursdays on Paramount+.

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