Posted in: Paramount+, Preview, streaming, TV | Tagged: paramount, paul giamatti, preview, star trek, Starfleet Academy

Starfleet Academy: Paul Giamatti Set for Villainous Recurring Role

Alex Kurtzman & Noga Landau's Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has tapped Paul Giamatti (Billions) for a villainous recurring role on the series.

Less than a month after learning that Academy Award winner Holly Hunter was set to star as the captain and chancellor on Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau's upcoming original series Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, we have another impressive name to be added to the slowly-growing cast. Paul Giamatti (Billions) has joined the cast in a recurring role – and a not-so-nice one at that. Though details are being kept under wraps, Giamatti's "big bad" has an ominous past that's connected to one of Starfleet Academy's newest cadets. "Sometimes you're lucky enough to discover that one of the greatest actors alive is also a huge Star Trek fan, and meeting Paul was one of those miraculous moments for us. The sheer delight with which he dove in on 'Starfleet Academy' is only surpassed by the gratitude we feel about him joining our incredible cast," shared Kurtzman and Landau in a joint statement when the news was first announced.

Produced by CBS Studios and with production set to kick off this summer, the streaming series introduces viewers to a young group of cadets who come together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism. Under the watchful and demanding eyes of their instructors, they discover what it takes to become Starfleet officers as they navigate blossoming friendships, explosive rivalries, first loves – and a new enemy that threatens both the Academy and the Federation itself.

Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau serve as co-showrunners – with Kurtzman expected to direct the first two episodes – and will executive produce the series alongside executive producers Gaia Violo, Aaron Baiers, Jenny Lumet, Rod Roddenberry, Trevor Roth, Frank Siracusa, and John Weber. The series premiere episode is written by Violo, with Star Trek: Starfleet Academy produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment – and distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Thanks to an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kurtzman is offering some personal insights into the decision to have the series set in the 32nd Century – the future time period introduced in the recently wrapped Star Trek: Discovery. "There's a specific reason for [setting the series in the 32nd century]. As the father of a 17-year-old boy, I see what my son is feeling as he looks at the world and to his future. I see the uncertainty; I see all the things we took for granted as given are not certainties for him. I see him recognizing he's inheriting an enormous mess to clean up and it's going to be on his generation to figure out how to do that, and that's a lot to ask of a kid," he explained.

Kurtzman continued, "My thinking was, if we set "Starfleet Academy" in the halcyon days of the Federation, where everything was fine, it's not going to speak to what kids are going through right now. It'll be a nice fantasy, but it's not really going to be authentic. What'll be authentic is to set it in the timeline where this is the first class back after over 100 years, and they are coming into a world that is only beginning to recover from a cataclysm — which was the Burn, as established on 'Star Trek: Discovery,' where the Federation was greatly diminished."

"So they're the first who'll inherit, who'll re-inherit, the task of exploration as a primary goal because there just wasn't room for that during the Burn — everybody was playing defense. It's an incredibly optimistic show, an incredibly fun show, it's a very funny show, and it's a very emotional show. I think these kids, in different ways, are going to represent what a lot of kids are feeling now," Kurtzman added.

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