It's been nearly a year since Season 3 of Star Trek: Picard hit Paramount+ and instantly became one of the most popular and beloved installments in the franchise. While there are still plenty of exciting Star Trek projects on the horizon, there's still no official word on whether we'll get the much desired spin-off series Star Trek: Legacy. However, Star Trek fans know that with this franchise anything can happen.

Star Trek and fan conventions go together like peanut butter and jelly, and this weekend, Picard alum Michelle Hurd took to the stage at MegaCon during the "Women of Sci-Fi" panel hosted by Collider's Maggie Lovitt. During the panel, Hurd took the time to answer some fan questions about the joys and challenges of playing such a complext character like Raffi over the course of the show's three seasons. She told the audience that "Raffi has been one of the most fulfilling characters I've gotten to play, to bring to life in my decades in this industry." She continued saying, "And it's because of all those things about the complexities, about the challenges. What I really loved in the beginning and, you know, like the producers and the writers and I talked about it and I really wanted to bring to life a character that was perfectly imperfect."

Hurd went on to express how important it was to her to tell a story that humanizes people who struggle with addiction. "I think in our society, addicts often get a really bad reputation, for some reason we think that if someone has an addiction, they are less than." Hurd went on to explain that this is the kind of story that everyone can relate to, and that it was important to show that, in spite of her flaws, Raffi never stopped trying. She said:

"Addiction is a real thing. It's a real disease. It's a demon on your shoulder and there's addictions to everything, anything and everything. There's so many things that we sometimes find ourselves obsessing over and find ourselves in a Pandora's box that we can't get out of. And I really wanted to show the struggle of somebody who's doing the best that she can. She's trying so hard, but she keeps stumbling and she keeps falling and failing. But every single day she picks herself up, and she tries to reach the [day] again because it's worth it, because life is a good thing and that we should be included in this story. So that was really important.

I also really wanted to tell the story of like Episode 5 of the first season where she goes and sees her son and she's like, ‘I’m, great. Everything's cool. Let's go, let's do this.’ And he's like, ‘No, you don't get to come back 10 years later, say you're fine and walk into my life.’ I wanted to empower the children to say ‘no, you don't get to just do that to, to blow up my life. And then when you feel ready to come back.’ And if you remember she wasn't ready, she went right back to the ship and got drunk, she wasn't ready. So all that was so important. And then I really wanted to sort of explore the vulnerability of that, you know, to be a strong woman, to be a proud person, but that vulnerability that it takes to be all of that. As an actor, it's just delicious, delicious to sort of dive into it.

You know, we can all relate to those sort of stories. You know, people can say, well, I've never had this addiction. That's fine. There's been things that you've wanted so hard that you've got tunnel vision that you were fighting by fighting that you didn't see anything else beside it because you were so focused on that one thing that's there, that's the journey, right?"

​​​​​Over the course of Picard's run on Paramount+, Hurd got to show off several different sides of Raffi. The show's third and final season saw Raffi thrust into the world of espionage, still recovering from her past as an adict, as she helped save the day alongside The Next Generation's Worf (Michael Dorn). Hurd was grateful to showrunner Terry Matalas for giving her "the opportunity to kick some ass too." She went on to say Matalas pitched her Season 3 arc by saying "I'm thinking Raffi, like in the Bourne Identity." Naturally, Hurd's response was, "I'm in." Of the show's final season, Hurd said, "I mean, so, so fun. So, and you know, and again, to be able to show the journey of somebody who maybe society might have written off in the first season actually comes to save the day. That's how valuable we all are."

While Hurd didn't indicate that any forward motion had been made on getting Legacy greenlit, she's not giving up hope, saying "God I hope we get to see more of Raffi...I do hope that there's more Raffi like Star Trek: Legacy." She ended by saying that "social media, unfortunately, really does" make a difference when it comes to making studios take note of what audiences want more of and encourged fans to continue being vocal about the potential spin-off.

How Nichelle Nichols Influenced the Character Design for Raffi in 'Star Trek: Picard'

At MegaCon, Lovitt opened the panel by asking Hurd, along with co-panelists Alex Kingston and Felicia Day — as they're all part of franchises that are often a young person's first introduction to sci-fi — what their original introduction to the genre was growing up. "Mine, of course, was Star Trek," said Hurd. Telling a familiar story about "watching the reruns of The Original Series." Growing up biracial, Hurd said, "my father knew the importance of representation, and he wanted to make sure that his three little brown girls saw themselves represented in entertainment. And so, as a family, we would sit around the television on Saturday nights and watch reruns of Star Trek."

Of course the representation she's referring to is the legendary Nichelle Nichols, who played communications officer Lt. Uhura and opened doors for women of color both in the entertainment industry and in STEM careers. Hurd shared high praise for Nichols and her legacy expressing gratitude for the lessons she taught her and the influence watching Star Trek had on her career. She said:

"I give it up to Nichelle Nichols too. And you know what I think is so interesting about that is that, I don't know if we knew it, if it was conscious or if it was subconscious or unconscious, but I absolutely believe that Nichelle Nichols gave me and my sisters the permission to be bold, and to be brave, and to be present, and to make sure that our voices are heard, and that we have an impact. Because that woman, on that bridge had a strength, had a competence, had a grace, and an elegance. And she said— she showed us, we weren't just maids, we weren't the concubine, we weren't just the girlfriend, the neighbor. We were important. We had a presence, we had a necessity to be there."

Hurd took that with her when she went to set to play Raffi in Season 1, taking that intentional representation into how she wanted the character to look. "It’s one of the reasons that when creating Raffi...I wanted to make sure that Raffi had the silhouette of a huge, unruly set of curly hair because I wanted all of our brown and black [kids] as well as all the people who have the curly hair to see themselves represented in 2400 to know that we're all still here." Nearly six decades after Nichols made history on Star Trek Hurd is carrying that torch alongside actors like Tawny Newsome and Sonequa Martin-Green. With Raffi, Hurd wanted audiences to see "that there's no need to be a homogenized kind of beauty, that we all have our own unique beauty and to own our individuality. So that's what sci-fi and seeing Star Trek did for me. And I want to do that for [other people]."

All three seasons of Star Trek: Picard are available on Paramount+. Don't miss the rest of our coverage from MegaCon, and stay tuned at Collider for more Star Trek news.

Star Trek: Picard

TV-MA

Sci-Fi

Follow-up series to Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) that centers on Jean-Luc Picard in the next chapter of his life.

Release Date

January 23, 2020

Cast

Patrick Stewart , Alison Pill , Michelle Hurd , Santiago Cabrera , Harry Treadaway

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

Seasons

3

Watch on Paramount+