‘Star Trek: Picard’: Ed Speleers & EP Talk Major Reveal About Jack
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 2 “Disengage.”]
Congratulations, it’s a boy! Oh, and he’s a wanted man.
It’s at the end of Episode 2 of Star Trek: Picard‘s final season that we get confirmation of the father of Dr. Beverly Crusher’s (Gates McFadden) son Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers): Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), of course. And that comes out during a high-pressure situation — as Titan Captain Shaw (Todd Stashwick) wants to hand him over to the season’s villain (Amanda Plummer), per her demands — after Picard spends the episode ignoring what’s right in front of him, even as Riker (Jonathan Frakes) pushes him to acknowledge it.
Casting Jack was “tremendously difficult” and took “months and months of scouring the universe for the right role,” showrunner Terry Matalas tells TV Insider. “Ed was really our only choice. It was quite difficult to find someone who had both Gates McFadden’s and Patrick Stewart’s DNA and had his own kind of roguish charm. We wanted to find somebody who could carry on the legacy of both those characters, but be something of their own, a new kind of hero, and have a charm, have a bit of danger, have a bit of villain in there too, like an uncertainty. And Ed was perfect from the very beginning, and so [we were] very lucky. The season would not have worked without Ed.”
For Speleers, “it was a huge honor to be playing the son of such iconic sci-fi characters,” he says, being sure to give Matalas credit for the “well thought out” character. “It’s his brainchild that created this human. I was spoiled with what was presented to me, and knowing very early on what that character’s journey was going to be just filled me with excitement. Just thinking back fills me with excitement because I just had such a great time playing him.”
To say the family dynamics are complicated is an understatement. After all, Picard just learned he has a son. “It was important that you understood why Beverly did what she did,” Matalas explains. “I always thought it was fascinating in Star Trek: The Next Generation that she let her child Wesley [Wil Wheaton] go off into the universe and become a traveler, and then it’s never really explored what that might do to a mother. And Picard never sought to settle down, never sought family. It made a lot of sense that this might be a story that was possible. And there’s something beautiful about these two characters late in life coming together and finding a new family and through this tremendously dramatic adventure with serious science fiction overtones happening underneath, as you’ll see as the season continues, and exploring legacy, too, and the complications of fathers and sons in general.”
Father and son here have a lot to catch up on, not that either had made much of an effort to this point (though that’s before the truth of Jack’s parentage was spoken at the end of the episode). So far, we’ve seen Picard trying to convince Jack to defend himself and the younger man calling his father out on no one being the person he knew them as in the past.
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“It’s a work in progress,” Speleers says of Jack and Picard’s relationship. “I think he’s deeply hurt. He puts on a bravado, and he puts on this thick skin of trying to think that he doesn’t need his father and doesn’t need that connection, but I think deep down that’s what he’s looking for because I believe in one way or another, that’s what we’re all looking for.”
But that’s easier said than done for these two men. “It’s baby steps. Sometimes he feels like they’ve made a breakthrough with one another, and then something comes in and unfolds that,” Speleers continues. “We’re trying to work out how each other have come into to their lives, what the other person is about, and they seem and feel like they come from very different mindsets, although they are interwoven. There is a real link between them, but I feel that they’re convinced that they’re not.”
On the other hand, we know how much Jack and Beverly care for each other; we meet them trying to save each other. There’s “a real understanding of one another,” according to Speleers. “Beverly made a choice to take Jack away from everything that she knew, sacrificed — I mean, she still maintained a very strong career as a doctor but sacrificed everything that she was on track for to take this boy off and protect him.” That led to a “very special bond” between the two.
“I feel that she has been his everything growing up, but she also allowed him to own his own space — no pun intended — develop his own interests, make his own mistakes. I think that’s what she’s been very good at as a mother, is allowing him the space to grow properly,” he explains.
With everything going on (like the aforementioned villain who wants Jack), it’s not like they can get family time. “They’re embroiled in such destruction around them, and there’s such a fast-paced story unraveling that I don’t think they’ve had the chance to sit down as a family and have a cup of tea and work out exactly how they work,” he points out.
Trae Patton/Paramount+
Speleers raved about working with Stewart and McFadden. “They’re both big theater fans — being part of it, watching it, directing it, all of that — and I feel that that comes through in how they want to break down scenes and how they want to do their work. They are two of the utmost professionals I’ve ever worked with, and they are still striving for the best day and day out,” he shares. “They brought me into their world and encouraged me and have supported me and allowed me to take on this role headfirst.”
Coming up for Jack are some great scenes with Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). “That’s a real lovely [relationship], and I think maybe it flies under the radar sometimes, but I feel that there’s a kindred spirit amongst those two,” Speleers enthuses. “They both have this roguish quality, they’re both outsiders, but the scenes that we got to play together, Jeri and I had real fun because there were moments of levity amongst everything that was going on around.”
You’ll want to keep an eye on Jack not just for who his parents are but also for the “huge voyage of discovery” he has coming up this season. “There is something that is going on within him that he doesn’t quite fully understand and that nobody else does around him, and he is desperately trying to work out what that is and why it’s so deep rooted in him. There is trauma deep within him,” Speleers teases.
In addition to the stunt scenes, “there are some scenes that happen in the back end of the season that I relished reading in the script. They were the moments that you go, ‘OK, that’s something to look forward to.’ There were things that stretched me in a way I didn’t necessarily think was possible and still trying to find a way to ground it in amongst this high concept world,” he reveals. “There’s some emotion in there. The stakes become higher and higher and higher for Jack, and they do not let up. It was interesting trying to maintain the energy that could match those stakes and match the writing that was being presented to me.”
From what we’ve seen so far, he more than delivers. But is it too much to hope that Picard, Beverly, and Jack do get to sit down for some (earl grey) tea or perhaps wine from the vineyard?
Star Trek: Picard, Thursdays, Paramount+
