‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’: Christina Chong Explains That La’an & Kirk Ending

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds revisits the fairytale versions of its characters to humorous results — and with a couple Princess Bride references in there, perfect with Carol Kane in the episode. TV Insider spoke with Christina Chong, whose La’an is at the center of it, about what it meant for her character. Warning: Spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 8 ahead!

La’an finds herself having to pretend to be Princess Thalia with amnesia for part of the episode, encountering doppelgängers of her crewmates as well as Kirk (Paul Wesley) as Prince Dashing. She even ends up fighting the princess until the two realize they’re more than the sum of their parts — La’an’s anger and desire to kill all the time and Thalia’s love and emotions — and combine forces to stop the evil Queen/dragon (Celia Rose Gooding‘s Uhura’s doppelgänger). But it’s because of her experience that La’an opens herself up to Kirk once back on the ship, meeting with him for drinks and a dance.

Meanwhile, Pike (Anson Mount) and Spock’s (Ethan Peck) fairytale doppelgängers try to pose as the captain and science officer on the Enterprise, to hilarious results especially as they work on figuring out their speech patterns,

As for those Princess Bride references in relation to Carol Kane’s Pelia, she says that the chef, Max, is a “miracle worker” and she stays behind at the end after hooking up with him. In the film, Kane plays Valerie, wife to Billy Crystal‘s Miracle Max.

20th Century Fox Film Corp.

Below, Christina Chong unpacks La’an’s fairytale adventure.

A lot for La’an to deal with in this episode. Could she have ever imagined that she needed a fairy tale and to face a princess doppelganger to reconcile the parts of herself? And was it what she needed?

Christina Chong: Absolutely what she needed, but no, never in a million years did she think. She’s so shocked when she lands on the planet and annoyed. What are we wasting our time with? This is insane. And at the end, I think she’s very glad of the experience because it’s helped her to understand herself and that she needs to love all those parts that she has pushed away — the shame, the fear, the hurt, the anger, all of that, and the Khan of it all. And she now is in a great place where she can open her heart to Kirk again.

But is the weight completely off her shoulders? Because I feel like it might never really be completely off her shoulders, but it’s something that she can more so bear going forward.

Yeah. It’s about acceptance. It’s about acceptance. And that doesn’t mean those emotions don’t come up still. It just means that she can learn to fully embrace and feel that emotion rather than put it away because what you resist persists. So, when you push something away, it comes back to you even stronger. And I think she’s just learned to just allow it, allow it to happen. And that’s a self-loving thing to do.

Yet another version of Kirk, or at least a character played by Paul Wesley for La’an to deal with in this episode with Prince Dashing. And this was one that she found herself opening up to because he’s the first that she tells about the necklace from her father. Why was that? Why could she open up to him?

Well, number one, because he looked like Kirk. And I think it was Prince Dashing who helped her. He was essentially Kirk to her. And so I think it was just the way he reminded her of Kirk, and that’s why then after the mission, she was like, “OK, I need to see if this can also be real life and not just fantasy.”

Talk about filming those fairytale scenes though, both as La’an and as the princess.

Wow, so fun. Such a challenge that I absolutely loved. The fight was the hardest. I had so much rehearsal for that because I had to learn, I think it was like 70 something beats on each side of the fight. And I wanted the two characters to obviously fight very differently. So, there was a lot of tweaking hand positions and the sounds that I was going to make and all of that. And I didn’t realize that on the actual day it would be harder than what I thought it would be because there was no rest. It was literally, “OK, Christina, this is your closeup. This is your wide shot. This is your medium shot. And now you’ve got to go and get changed into La’an. OK, Christina, this is your La’an closeup. This is your medium, this is your wide shot.”

So, we had a whole day to shoot that fight and we only switched over from Thalia to La’an at 3:00 a.m. in the morning. So 3 in the morning, I had to split my brain and remember the La’an choreography and obviously emotions and all of that. And yeah, there was a moment where I thought I couldn’t do it, but gladly I did.

You talked about this a bit — we get her open to Kirk at the end because we see them going to get drinks, we see them dancing. It’s a step forward for them at that point because they have to figure out what this could be because he has his own life he needs to figure out. It’s not like he’s always on the ship. There’s all that stuff to figure out. But what can you say about how she feels about them starting over and what they could be? She’s hopeful, right?

Very hopeful. Very hopeful. And you think when you’ve gone through that experience of falling for somebody in “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” and then it not happening and then thinking, because it wasn’t real, and then thinking, oh my God, this could happen in real life and then it couldn’t — She’s been disappointed twice. So the third time, if she’s going in a third time and is ready, open to trying a third time, it’s got to be something real and a hope for a real connection and love.

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So what can you say about their future?

Nothing.

I also have to say, I love that La’an now has a dog — your dog.

How cool is that? My own dog is now my dog in the show. It’s insane.

And this is something that I don’t think La’an could have imagined even before this episode. That dog would’ve been off the ship, but it’s because of this.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. 100%. I had thought of that actually. Yeah. And I mean, she had so much fun. Runa had so much fun. She was coming to work — because she always comes to work with me and she just sits on set. But this time she knew she had a purpose. Her whole tail was [wagging], her body was moving. She was so excited because everyone was paying her more attention and she was learning new tricks. And it’s like she had a real purpose. She was born to do this kind of thing.

I’ve seen the photos. She’s enjoying herself at the conventions, too.

Oh yeah, she loves it. She met a llama the other day. She didn’t love the llama, but she loves meeting people and she gives her little paw-tographs for charity.

So what can you say about the La’an that we’re going to see in the final season?

Nothing. [Laughs]

After you wrapped Season 4, what was it that you really wanted to explore with La’an going forward?

To be honest with you, they’ve given her so much. I was kind of like, “Where do we go from here?” And there was something that I had suggested to the showrunners, I think even in Season 1, definitely from Season 2, I had a suggestion for La’an’s journey and they gave it to me. So I can’t tell you what that is, but it happens in Season 5, and it was something that I asked for from the beginning.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Thursdays, Paramount+