Jason Isaacs, the man known to an entire generation as the sinister Luscious Malfoy (Harry Potter), is ready to capture the imaginations of a new one through another huge franchise. Playing Captain Gabriel Lorca on Star Trek: Discovery, Isaacs joins an old and illustrious legacy shared by the likes of William Shatner (Star Trek: The Original Series) and Sir Patrick Stewart (Star Trek: The Next Generation).
But the 54-year-old actor is adamant that he will not be looking to them for inspiration. Not because he didn’t love them, but because he loved them too much. So he decided to make Lorca his own — a troubled, war-mongering military veteran, so focused on winning a war, he’s lost sight of his own humanity. “I played him Southern because he’s a military man, and it also adds to his charm. I definitely couldn’t have played him English because of Patrick Stewart, who came before me. I also asked them to get rid of the chair in my ready room [on the USS Discovery starship]. I wanted him to be standing because he’s a man of action,” said Isaacs, at a roundtable interview in a London hotel, sometime in November last year.
Despite being no stranger to the acting business, having been in the industry for nearly 30 years, Isaacs says it wasn’t easy to get used to the “science gobbledygook” that comes part and parcel with Trek storytelling.
But he claims he got the biggest tip from Star Trek veteran Jonathan Frakes, who played William Riker in The Next Generation and also directed one of the episodes on Discovery. “Jonathan Frakes had a top tip. He said ‘Are you having trouble with your hands?’ and I said ‘Yes I am! How the [expletive] did you know that?’. He then gave me the tip never to start a scene with my hands on my hips — you’ll never get them off! It was just brilliant advice.”
Excerpts from the interview follow:
In an earlier interview, you’d mentioned that you were opposed to the idea of joining Star Trek Discovery as captain? Why was that and what changed your mind?
I just didn’t want to be a pale shadow of the brilliance that’s gone before me. I grew up watching and worshipping Captain Kirk [played by Shatner]. And I’m not big on reboots or remakes of things. But then when they told me the story and I saw the script, I realised it was a completely new show, born of our troubled and difficult, divisive times and with something to say about the world we live in.
You did grow up as a fan of the series. What were the sort of specific elements that drew you to the show then?
Well, when I was a kid I just loved the stories. I guess, looking back, I probably was learning how to be a man, from the essential dichotomy of Kirk and Spock, the rational and the animalistic. But I just loved the stories. Now, I’m an adult. When I see those original episodes, I realise how powerful they were… They were political allegories and they were kind of moral conundrums and they had a lot for adults to engage with. But I didn’t realise any of that then, I just thought they were fabulously entertaining.
What can you tell us about your character [Captain Gabriel Lorca]?
Well, the great joy of our show is that it’s serialised. Meaning, its one 15-hour story, like a novel. And so the characters can’t be summed up because they are rich and their behaviour and incidents have consequences. Somebody dies and you’re upset, you’re still upset the week after. In the original series, everything reboots to zero.
So I can tell you he’s a guy who is trying to win the war. He’s not looking to make any friends. He’s surrounded by hippies and idiots. He thinks that people in charge of the Federation have no idea what they’re doing and only he sees the scale of the threat. Other people might find him to be tough and amoral and doing whatever is necessary by any means necessary… But as far as he’s concerned, he’s doing what needs to be done.
Yes, because by the end of episode six, we really see how troubled he is as a person. Do you enjoy playing that moral ambiguity?
The only thing that’s interesting to play, naturally, is complication. If you’re saying what you mean, you’re just serving the plot. There’s nothing to do as an actor. So, the camera loves secrets. The camera loves when the character is saying one thing and means another. And the ideal situation is when there’s a third thing going on that the character doesn’t understand about themselves but we get as an audience. And I think we have all that with Lorca.
What can audiences expect going forward [in the back-half of season one]?
We’ve been laying a lot of seeds and everything bears fruit and everything comes to a very dramatic head. You can build bigger drama if you tell a 15-hour story. There’s a lot of crazy fan theories out there… some of them are right, most of them are wrong. But the stakes get higher and I think the surprises get bigger.
Do you have a message for your Star Trek fans?
This is their legacy that they’ve protected for 50 years… What I really hope is there’s a whole new generation of people who’ve never heard of Star Trek, never seen it before, maybe even weren’t born when the last one was on. I just want people to have a good time watching it. Hopefully, its subliminal message of hope and not to judge people by the colour of their skin, or their sexuality or gender, will sink in and change the world because it’s a pretty bad place at the moment.
Don’t miss it!
Star Trek: Discovery returns to Netflin on January 8. The first nine episodes are now available to stream.
