Jeri Ryan was “freaking out” trying to find Seven of Nine’s voice for Picard

Attending the annual Star Trek Las Vegas fan convention, actor Jeri Ryan appeared on a panel about Picard, the upcoming CBS All Access show that will see Patrick Steward to the role he made famous in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Ryan is returning to the role of Seven of Nine after originating the part on Star Trek: Voyager well over a decade ago. Ryan was hesitant to come back as Seven, but ultimately decided to go for it. But then another problem loomed: Ryan didn’t know how Seven would speak after spending 20 years on Earth, which is where we’ll find her in Picard.

"She was a very specific character for four years on Voyager. There was a lot of growth, and all of that. She went from being a machine to learning to be human. But, particularly the way she moved and her voice, that was what I was really hung up on. Her voice didn’t change that much in four years. So, she had a stilted, very formal, very stylized way of speaking, at the end of Voyager. So, when I got the initial script, and from I knew from the original pitch with James [Duff] a year and a half ago, she is not the same Seven. She is much more human. She been on Earth for a long time, she has been through a lot. So, when I saw that initial script and as you saw “what the hell are you doing out here?” It’s a very, very different voice. And that is what was freaking me out."

Indeed, almost as surprising as seeing Seven in the Picard trailer at all was the more natural way she was speaking to Jean-Luc Picard. Seven spent the final four seasons of Voyager attempting to return to her human roots after life as a Borg drone. When it came time to find a more human voice for the character, it was another former Borg actor who helped Ryan find her way.

Minor SPOILERS follow below.

Also returning to the Star Trek universe for Picard is Hugh (Johnathan Del Arco), who after being disconnected from the Borg collective caused a bit of a rebellion by attempting to explore his free will. So it was to Del Arco that Ryan turned as she was attempting to find a way back in:

"…I was literally freaking out. I was bursting into tears: “I don’t know what her voice is! I can’t find her.” So, Johnny came over and we had lunch and read the script for like an hour and finally he just – I was so freaked out I couldn’t think clearly about it – he said after an hour: “just try this, what if…” The Borg have always been hated, they are universally hated because they were bad guys, they were tough. But, there’s other elements in this world with the Borg. And, what if she had to make the choice to be as human as possible, to survive, to sound as human and act as human as possible. Clearly, she is always going to look like a former Borg, because she has these implants that cant go away. So, what if she had to make that choice – a conscious choice – to sound as human as possible. And that’s all I needed. That’s what I needed! I just needed something for it to make sense as an actor as to why she would have that huge of a change. Then it made sense to me. I was still freaking out in my first scene."

Returning to a role after such a long time away is bound to cause some anxiety, and we’re happy to see that Ryan found a new angle on the character.

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Between Ryan, Del Arco, and the shattered Borg cube we see in the trailer, it looks like Picard will have a heavy dose of the Borg, an enemy Picard knows more intimately than anyone. Engage!

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h/t Gizmodo