Paul Giamatti & Holly Hunter Talk Facing off on ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ (VIDEO)

No one’s more thrilled than Paul Giamatti about going head-to-head with Holly Hunter — as, respectively, Klingon and Tellarite villain Nus Braka and the Starfleet Academy’s chancellor, Nahla Ake — in this stellar entry to the franchise. When he heard of her casting, “His eyes lit up and he screamed ‘Holly f**king Hunter?’ with such abandon and glee,” says exec producer Noga Landau.

Giamatti confirms his excitement in the video interview above with Hunter, Robert Picardo, Tig Notaro, Gina Yashere, Sandro Rosta, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins, Bella Shepard, Zoe Steiner, and Karim Diane ahead of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s series premiere on January 15 on Paramount+.

“I had heard that you were considering the part and that was very exciting to me because I thought it was a brilliant choice,” he says, turning to Hunter. “I thought this makes a lot of sense. It’s going to fit right, but it’s going to be different. And I don’t know what she’s going to do with it, but it’s going to be something great. So it was a big selling point for me.”

Hunter agrees. “I was immediately enthralled with reading it. I wanted to see what Paul was going to do next and could I do it with him? That was an unusual opportunity that was presented,” she shares.

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The two enjoy going head-to-head — the scenes in which they do so are electric — and knowing what they could do, with “two actors who are forces of nature like Paul and Holly, your job is just to stand back and let them do what they do naturally,” executive producer Alex Kurtzman explains. “Because they love each other so much, they ended up having so much fun together. And you can really feel that dynamic in the scenes.”

For Nus, when it comes to Nahla, “he sees somebody who is his equal mentally and in terms of kind of intellect and stuff like that,” says Paul Giamatti. “And so that’s enjoyable. He likes to fight. He likes aggression and fighting. And she gives back as good as he gives. He gets it back. And so that kind of thing’s exciting to him. I think he’s a little turned on by her, I’m not going to lie.”

Holly Hunter admits that she saw their scenes a bit different than what was on the page. “I thought of you as a bit of a co-conspirator,” she says, looking at Giamatti. “When I would think about the scenes, it would be like that, that in a way we were on the same side and we’re scheming together about this stuff, which was exactly the antithesis of the script of the scenes. But that’s how I liked somehow playing it.”

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy introduces a new class of cadets at the San Francisco campus — played by Sandro Rosta, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins, Bella Shepard, Zoe Steiner, and Karim Diane — and brings in legacy characters like Robert Picardo’s The Doctor, Tig Notaro’s Jett Reno, Mary Wiseman‘s Sylvia Tilly, and Oded Fehr‘s Admiral Vance.

Brooke Palmer/Paramount+

“You never want to bring in characters who don’t serve a purpose in the story. Every legacy character in the show was intentionally chosen because the story needed them,” explain the producers.

This is just the latest in a long history of Trek series. The others “are about people who have already chosen their path in life. This series is about future captains,” the producers note. “Unlike other shows, these characters are figuring out who they are. We get to live with their joys, sorrows, fears and struggles in ways that has never been done before in Star Trek.”

Watch the full video interview above for much more with the cast introducing their characters, talking about reprising their roles, character dynamics — including the relationship between Notaro’s Jett and Yashere’s Lura — and, of course, opera with Picardo.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Thursday, Jan. 15