With crews as large as Star Trek has, you know they couldn’t get along all the time. According to Star Trek icon Jonathan Frakes, the cast of one of the Star Trek series was particularly bad at one point.
In an interview with Variety, Frakes reflected on directing Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘The Offspring’. “Our cast, as you probably know, is notoriously rambunctious,” he says. “I was, for better or for worse, one of the leaders of that kind of behavior on the set. Some directors really didn’t like coming to work with us because we were that bad. We would be yakking right up until action.”
While in the hot seat himself, Frakes realized the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast were harder to handle that he thought. “It happened to be a Data episode, which are always great, because Brent is a genius,” he says. “The sound department gave me a bullhorn. I had a lot of support, including from my acting company. But I realized what these other directors had gone through and what assholes we were. And I had not a leg to stand on in terms of asking them to behave.”
Oh dear. Thankfully, the episode didn’t suffer one iota, and Frakes became a regular director within the Star Trek franchise. He states that there was still a level of professionalism because of Patrick Stewart, who was a true Star Trek captain.
“Part of it was because we were so well prepared because Patrick had set his high bar from the moment he showed up, that when you come into the morning, you have done your homework, and you’re in good shape,” Frakes adds. “The smart ADs actually built time into days that were all on the Enterprise bridge, knowing that we’d all have to catch up because we hadn’t seen each other.”
Really, all of this just contributed to Star Trek: The Next Generation being not just one of the best sci-fi series ever, but one of the best TV series. The clear chemistry across the main actors across every season and all their Star Trek movies elevated what was already strong material (mostly) to even higher standards.
What a clickbaity headline. It makes it sound like there was some drama between him and the other cast members. But the article is just some stories of them goofing off on set. Regardless, it’s nice to know they all got along and had fun making the show
I was going to frame the title in my own words but did not. Should I have done so?
Respectfully to the other person that replied to you…No, what you did was correct. It’s important to keep the title the same as you are sharing not editorializing.
It depends. With important news I would agree, but this article is just a fluff piece. Changing it would harm nobody, and in fact be less harmful due to the misleading nature of the original headline. It would have been fine for OP to title the post something like “nice article about Jonathan Frakes having to put up with the cast goofing around when he directed a few TNG episodes”
We have hours of blooper content lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NOM-kLfDR8
Lol I love Frakes just dropping to the floor like a sack of potatoes when they flub. Also Data just slowly bonking his head after LeVar Burton says a line completely wrong. Very funny stuff!
Ryan’s Edits on youtube does a great series called Star Trek INtakes that edits those outtakes back into the original scenes.
So you’ll have stuff like Data rolling his eyes in mock horror during an otherwise serious scene. It’s honestly one of my favorite things on the internet.
I kind of love Frakes having to take what he’d previously dished out to the directors. That’s hilarious.
That second last paragraph… cuts in shows happen so fast but it’s weird to think that some weeks some of the people might never see each other at all
