Star Trek: Picard's Ed Speleers Auditioned For A Different Star Trek Role
As Jack Crusher, the son of Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and the clandestine son of Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), stakes are high for franchise newcomer Ed Speleers. Introduced in the third season of "Star Trek: Picard," the revelation that Picard had a son throws the "Next Generation" captain into emotional turmoil alongside a collision with major enemies in season 3, all centering around the son he never knew. The rich emotional backstory he adds to two of the franchise's greatest characters makes Speleers' Jack Crusher automatically part of a distinguished Trek legacy.
In an interview with SFX Magazine, Speleers reveals he was once eyed for an entirely different role in a different series before landing the role of Jack Crusher. That audition may have not gone the way Speleers had hoped, but clearly he nonetheless found a meaty point of entry into the future of Trek. While he can't reveal exactly who he'd have been playing following that other audition, it may have brought him one step closer to the captain's chair — possibly as Captain James T. Kirk himself.
He Khaaaaaaan't say for certain who the role was, but...
Speleers' original audition for the "Star Trek" universe didn't go entirely as planned. As he revealed in the interview, "Initially I was actually asked to go up for a different part in a different Trek series," he said. "I think it was 'Strange New Worlds." At the time, it didn't end up going his way. "I did a tape and nothing came of it," he said. "I was a bit disgruntled, if I remember correctly!"
The audition involved dialogue excerpts, referred to as "sides," which are often fake and written specifically for auditioning purposes, so he couldn't fully know what role he was actually auditioning for at the time. But Speleers has a hypothesis, and it would have been a pretty important role in Trek history. "This would be completely hazarding a guess," he stated, "[but] I'm assuming based on what I've seen of 'Strange New Worlds' that it's the Kirk character that Paul Wesley played." Stepping into Kirk's shoes would certainly have been a notch up in the Star Trek chain of command, were that indeed the role that got away. "Maybe I'm backing myself far too much there. But I feel that that's right, judging by the sides that I had at the time," he clarified.
Putting that exact role and whoever else it went to aside, Speleers had a chance to become a different great rogue of "Star Trek" history. But he certainly made his mark on "Picard," and there's always the possibility he pops up elsewhere in the universe down the line.