Brent Spiner (Data) and Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi) almost weren’t part of Star Trek: Picard

The first season of Star Trek: Picard followed the former captain of the USS Enterprise as he searched the final frontier for the daughter of his synthetic pal, Data. Along the way, he picked up a new ship and crew, fought a shadowy splinter group of the Romulan secret police, saved the homeworld of the Synthetics, and was given a new lease on life.

Part of what made Picard so fun was the inclusion of several familiar faces from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Fan favorites like Data (Brent Spiner), William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) and Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco) all made appearances, alongside Voyager alum Jeri Ryan, who played Seven of Nine.

However, both Spiner and Sirtis almost passed on being part of the show. “I had no intention of being in the show, obviously,” Spiner said during a virtual Q&A for GalaxyCon. “Patrick had said that the season will have to do with Data. So, I was trying to come up with stuff.”

"I wanted to be on the show, but I didn’t want to play Data. I pitched an idea to Patrick about playing a different character. He took it back to the powers that be and they got back to him and said, “Well that is really interesting, but we don’t think we are going to go that way.” And I was like, “Okay, no big deal.”"

Knowing what we know now about how important he was to Picard’s journey, I can’t imagine Data not being in the show at all. CBS All Access must have agreed, because the streaming service sent the same team that convinced Stewart to reprise his role to speak with Spiner. “My manager got a phone call saying the guys who are putting the show together would like to meet,” Spiner recalled. “I said, ‘Fine,’ and went down and had a meeting. They were hugely impressive guys to meet. Alex [Kurtzman] and Akiva [Goldsman] and Michael Chabon, these are incredible writers. It is an incredible pedigree. Michael Chabon has won a Pulitzer.”

And Spiner ended up playing a different character as well as Data, so maybe that was part of the deal:

As for Sirtis, she initially said no to returning to the role of Troi because she had some scheduling problems. “When I did hear about it, I actually had to turn it down because I was doing a play in London. The dates clashed. But, the wonderful people over there at Picard basically fixed it so that we shot out of sequence.”

"I shot my stuff with Jonathan [Frakes] in the middle of a different episode. Everything is streaming now, so they can do that kind of stuff. It’s not like when we were shooting on actual film and shot a month in advance before the show was on the air, it was a very different time. So, it worked out and I am very happy it worked out."

Had Sirtis not agreed to join the show, we wouldn’t have had the incredibly heartwarming moments with Troi on the planet Nepenthe, where she was enjoying life with husband William Riker and their daughter Kestra.

As far as which cast members from The Next Generation might appear in season 2 of Picard, we know LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge) will be there, as will Whoopi Goldberg, who played Guinan. It’s shaping up to be quite the Next Generation reunion.

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h/t TrekMovie