SCI FI PI

For Star Trek fans, Jonathan Frakes needs no introduction. As the dashing Commander William T. Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation, he is still 'Number One' to legions of fans all over the world.

Appearing in all 178 episodes of TNG, he is also one of the very few actors to appear in all three other spinoffs from the original Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. He is also an accomplished director, helming numerous episodes in the world of Star Trek before branching out into features, directing (among others) two films in the Librarian franchise (starring Noah Wyle) and directing and producing TV's Roswell.

He has also directed two Star Trek films, Insurrection, and most notably, Star Trek: First Contact, which is considered by many to be the quintessential Trek film in the current canon, and grudgingly respected as either first equal or a very close run second to die-hard fans of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan!

Frakes is married to soap star Genie Francis, and has a son Jameson and a daughter Liza. He continues his career as a film director, but lives for the most part outside of the Hollywood hubbub. We managed to find a small niche in his busy schedule to sit down, face to face and have a chat about Trek, directing and of all things, funny walks!

THE STAR TREK LEGACY

Let's start with something at the most basic end of the spectrum, for people who may not know Star Trek, but also for those who've been affected by it in some meaningful way. Why should people watch Star Trek?
The vision of the future is probably the pat answer. I would think you should watch Star Trek because it’s great TV entertainment. It’s something where you can sit down with your entire family and proudly know that what you are about to see is not going to embarrass you or humiliate you and that the message and the way the message is related are morally, ethically and visually sound.





Your son has entered “Star Trek age”. Has he watched the old man at Warp Factor 10?
My son Jamieson watches the show with a bit of scepticism as does my daughter Liza. My wife is an actor also – Genie Francis. They watch and think it’s sort of cool but it’s not that cool. It’s much cooler to their friends that we’re on TV than it is to them. At some point I’m hoping that they’ll get it and start watching but it hasn’t happened yet.





How is Jonathan Frakes like Commander William T. Riker?
He’s tall. He walks funny. He’s losing his hair. He plays the trombone. He has, at least from the second season onward, a glint in his eye. I was told during the first season by the late, great Gene Rodenberry that he wanted Riker to have a Gary Cooper stance and presence and never to smile. It’s very hard for me not to smile so I spent the first season being very rigid – and you can see it in the show – Riker’s really stiff and rigid, trying desperately not to smile and finally I think Gene, and other people who leapt in, said maybe we should let a little more Frakes seep into Riker.

At that point we had a writer on the show named Maurice Hurley who was executive producing with Rick Berman and he was a big advocate of writing for the actors, so they put the trombone stuff in for Riker (because I play the trombone­), an appreciation of jazz and I think it was Maurice’s fantasty that Riker starts to hit on some alien women in the tradition of The Great Captain Kirk. There were interesting encounters with women with rubber glued to their heads.

LOVING THE ALIEN

Obviously you’ve learned to love many an alien. Is there a particular alien that you recall most passionately?
I think I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Will Riker’s infatuation with Klingon women. The character served on a Klingon ship and I gather there’s a great Klingon tradition that Klingon men are mated with Klingon women in pairs. On the Klingon ship two Klingon women – I believe it was L'Ursa and B'etor, I could be wrong – said to Commander Riker, in one of my favourite exchanges, “One maate?!” (Chuckles).


A lot of female fans of Star Trek suffer from a condition known as Riker Fever, which incorporates melting at the glint in the eye and the beard. Is there a cure for Riker Fever?
Owwh Good. I wasn’t aware of Riker Fever. I know there were people in certain households who suffered from Picard Fever after the first season of the show. I went home to visit my family in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and my mother had a life size picture of Patrick Stewart on the refridgerator – and it wasn’t the only picture of Patrick I’ve seen in friends’ homes! So I believe it’s more Picard Fever they react to and I think it’s that phony English accent of his.

WHY HE TILTS HIS HEAD LIKE THAT WHEN HE WALKS OUT OF THE READY ROOM

Let’s talk about your back. Everybody knows your back was hurt moving furniture but what I’d like to know is the full story.
People are interested in this?

Absolutely. That walk! People have got to know.
Well the walk is stolen from an actor named John Cullum but I think it might be a direct result of the pulled muscles behind the scapula. When I went to New York City I was arguably the worst waiter in the history of New York – as a struggling actor being a waiter is part of your “coming of age”. I was working lunches at a fancy-schmancy French restaurant on the Upper West Side and I had unfortunately opened a bottle of red wine into a woman’s lap, which was messy at best, but some time during that period I said to the owner of the restaurant, “I need to work nights here because I’m an actor and I need to go out an pound the pavement. I’ve got to try to get a job.”

And he looked at me in the eye and frankly said, “You’re not good enough to work here at night."

So I became a moving man and I signed up with the unfortunately named moving company The Walk-Up King & His Trustworthy Stepbrothers. I was one of the Trustworthy Stepbrothers with my dear friend, a songwriter named Tom Skyler, who’s in Nashville, and at one point in a walk-up on the West Side we were moving a small piano, which is something stupid to move with two people, and I remember hearing Skyler’s usual baritone change to a voice that sounded something like this (pained high-pitched whisper), “ Jona… Jonathaaan?” and I knew there was trouble on that end of the piano. So I tried to take the weight on my end of the piano and hence now we have what is Riker’s walk. Now there is much more information than you need!

THE MAN BEHIND THE BEARD

What about Thomas Riker, the dark side? Do you ever feel like you could have been darker and let rip a bit more?
Let me tell you something about Thomas Riker. Thomas is William T. Riker’s doppelganger, or clone, curiously played by me in LeVar Burton’s directorial debut. Thomas Riker also appeared on Deep Space Nine – Nana Visitor’s character let him go to prison and never bailed him out. What I’ve always found interesting about Thomas is that he could have been more villainous and evil, I’m sure. It was a challenge.

I never really accomplished the division that Brent did with his split Data/Lore, those two wonderful Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde characters, but what I remember most about Thomas Riker was Marina Sirtis – who plays Counsellor Troi, my wonderful, favourite acting partner and TV and movie wife – said to me in all seriousness, “Jonathan, I think Thomas Riker is much cuter than Will Riker”. How she came to that conclusion I’m not sure. Why? I’m not sure. But she swears by it.

Were there any times when Genie might have been a bit perturbed by your on-screen chemistry with Marina Sirtis?
I don’t think Genie is ever perturbed by my on-screen chemistry. She and Marina are Frake-buds. What’s fun is to go out with the two of them and have people recognise how lucky I am to be with both of my wives. My wife has a relationship, a 25 year marriage to a character called Luke on the show General Hospital, so there’s a long history of our family being married to other people!

DIRECTING THE STAR TREK WAY

Goes beyond even a menage a Troi! In the directing course you teach, do you tell your students the first thing about directing is to get a job as an actor on a syndicated show at Paramount and then they let you do it later?

What I do tell actors and directors is that they should all find a straight job and only participate in this business if they are so driven that they can’t do something else. The failure rate and the injustice and the amount of unemployment in both the Screen Actors’ Guild and the Directors’ Guild is absurd – 90%... 95% sometimes. The idea that you can get into the business and make a living out of the business is naïve so I always start with that disclaimer.





And having been one of the lucky ones I teach this course in Maine and I have trouble explaining to them how the different parts of the project are put together because I was so fortunate that I started with a great cinematographer, a great person to light the set for me, then I had a great editor. So I don’t know how to do the equipment ­– I don’t know how to run the cameras – I first moved to digital on my The Librarian.

All the technology is a mystery to me and I’ve always felt that one is successful as a director if you cast your crew as well as you cast your cast.

If you get the right DP and the right production designer and the right shooter and the right editor and the right composer, all of a sudden you’re a much better director (chuckles)!

FIRST CONTACT

First Contact is one of the top Trek movies. Was there something that Jonathan Frakes brought to First Contact that nobody else could have?
I always thank Rick Berman and Paramount for letting me have the opportunity – they gave me “the keys to the car” with Star Trek. Another cliché that is really true is that if you have a good script it is your job to screw it up. The script that Ron Moore and Brannon Braga wrote is arguably as good a Star Trek movie has ever been written.

It doesn’t hurt to have that company of actors we have. Then I was able to hire Alfre Woodard and Jamie Cromwell and the incredible Alice Krige, who played the Borg Queen. It was one of those situations where I was so nervous and so over-prepared that I was driven to make this as good as it could be and I frankly had the support of the acting company.

We’re all pretty close in our group that it’s a little Pollyanna, but we really are still a family. We keep in touch, we all stood at each other’s weddings and we’re all godparents to each other’s kids. So when I got the helm I had real emotion, physical, psychological support from the company. Rick Berman’s wife is the godmother of my son. So there’s a lot of blood connection in that particular project.






You have hive-mind, android zombies as your baddies. Would you say The Borg are the best monsters in the Star Trek universe or is there something else that scares you more?
No. I would say that The Borg are the greatest nemesis (no pun intended) of all things Star Trek and one of the reasons The Borg are so great is because of the Academy Award winning John Knowle who works for ILM. What he and his team, who did a lot of Star Trek movies, created to embellish Michael Westmore’s makeup really caught peoples’ eye.

It made Star Trek now not only an action-adventure movie but made it a horror movie as well. The scariest movies are the ones that get inside your head and the idea of being assimilated from the inside of the brain is terrifying for kids of all ages.

IS THAT LATEX ON YOUR FOREHEAD?

The makeup has always been a fascinating aspect of Star Trek. Your character has gone undercover on alien planets. What is it like to get a piece of rubber stuck to your head for eight hours a day?
I was always so thankful to be a human being on Star Trek. For a number of reasons. First of all, I didn’t have to show up to work until about 6.30 in the morning and I’d go waltzing into the trailer and get a cup of coffee. And poor Michael Dorn, Turtlehead, who plays Worf had been sitting in this chair for a couple of hours. Brent had been sitting in his chair getting that gold paint daubed onto his face for a couple of hours and the girls had been working on their hair. So Patrick and I used to waltz in there, they’d splash some stuff on us and send us out. So I was always very thankful. And the few times I did have to get made up and put some rubber on my face, I had a real appreciation for what these poor bastards went through every morning.

THE STAR TREK LEGACY

What is it about sci fi and Star Trek that enables it to have such a huge reaction from fans?
I’ve always thought that Star Trek resonates with the fans and has for 40 years because the late, great Gene Rodenberry created an arena on all the Enterprises and on all the shows where the people, who were the regulars on the show, were civil to each other. They followed the Prime Directive. They behaved in a way that was free of racism and free of sexism.

The future that Gene created – that Rick Berman and all the other writers after tried to maintain – was a future in which there was hope. There was a certain forward thinking that human beings and aliens had found a way to live together and that we had been good to the environment somehow. I mean, all the things we seem to be flying in the face of right now – going to hell in a handbasket – on this planet they have given us the responsibility to take care of.

Gene’s vision is that we as humans in the 24th Century did the right thing. We did take care of it, did take care of each other. I think that quality ­– particularly in light of how screwed up things are in Darfur, in Belize, in Northern Ireland – it’s a cliché I guess but it’s that vision of hope that has allowed Star Trek to be so popular for so long. Do you know what I mean?





Absolutely. It’s the idea that there’s the chance that we’re going to escape whatever problem or bad place we’re in at the moment. Also all the people who love Star Trek, however crappy their lives are at some point, feel that at least here there’s hope.
It also attracts people who need hope. It’s very powerful and it’s a great gift. It’s a great thing to be associated with as an actor and as a director and everything else. There are so many things we as actors audition for when we’re young and eager and trying to get jobs. To be lucky enough that this was “the one that landed” has defined all of us.

Patrick says the same thing. We should be so lucky to be as diplomatic as Picard and Riker are in the show and it’s a privilege to be associated with this particular show. God knows I’ve been on shows that you wouldn’t want to spend your life defending.





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