 |
| Trading places? |
Nichelle Nichols - Lt. Uhura from the original "Star Trek" series - recently told The Huffington Post about her audition:
"They gave me a three-page script to read from that had three characters named Bones, Kirk and somebody called Spock, and they asked me if I would read for the role of Spock. When I looked at this great text, I said to myself, 'I'll take any one of these roles,' but I found the Spock character to be very interesting, and I asked them to tell me what she [Spock] was like."Nichelle Nichols in pointed ears? Why not?
Leonard Nimoy in that little red dress? On the other hand ...
I'm not sure what Nichelle Nichols is getting at but when she auditioned for Star Trek, she was auditioning for the second pilot, "Where No Man has Gone Before," in early 1965. At that time, Spock was already played by Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek's first pilot, "The Cage," which filmed in December of 1964. The original pilot starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike did not contain the characters of Kirk or Bones, but Spock was there and was the only character to be brought over to the second pilot and was played by Leonard Nimoy the whole time. According to Nimoy, Gene Roddenberry first approached him about the playing Spock in 1964 when Nimoy starred in a Roddenberry produce show, "The Lieutenant." Then through a series of meetings over the next few months, Nimoy and Roddenberry developed the character of Spock together. So, Nichelle Nichols may have read for Spock for some reason but the character of Spock was definitely not originally supposed to be a woman as the character of Spock was already cast as a man, Leonard Nimoy, a year before Nichols was ever involved in Star Trek. Clearly more investigation needs to be done to determine why Nichols read for Spock but the conclusions reached by this article are clearly false.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they were just testing her acting skills by reading other parts. I also can't imagine she was up for one of these parts. Like you say, Spock would have already been cast. Had we heard this story before? Seems odd to not hear about it until now...
ReplyDelete