Sirtis Hopes To Appear on BSG and Play Callas

Marina Sirtis (Troi) conversed with fans on such disparate subjects as her desire to appear on Battlestar Galactica, a script she is writing with former co-star Michael Dorn (Worf) and how unimpressed she was with the way William Shatner (Kirk) treated fans at an event the two of them attended.

In a chat room at her official site, Sirtis thanked fans for gifts, said that she would soon be visiting Greece to see her brother and explained that she was sorry to miss the Las Vegas Star Trek convention, but she wanted to see her family and it was the only time for a reunion. She added that she was not planning to dress up for Halloween - "I dressed up for work, so I don't dress up in life" - and that she never celebrated Halloween when she was in school because it's not a big holiday in England.

Sirtis remains close to several of her Next Generation co-stars, joking that she needed to call Patrick Stewart (Picard) to tease him about having a bus named after him, but she sees Dorn particularly often, since the two are writing a screenplay together. "Dornie and I are working on a script about Maria Callas right now," she explained. "I've always wanted to play Maria Callas, and I had tried to pitch it to people, but then I realised if I wanted to do it, I'd have to do it myself." She finds many similarities between her own life and that of opera star Callas, "and of course we're both Greek, and I kind of look like her."

Sirtis also revealed that she hoped to appear on the revival of Battlestar Galactica in the current season, saying, "My agent called Ron Moore and he said he'd look out for something for me next year." Her work on the television production of Grendel with Chris Bruno and Ben Cross is finished, she added, but post-production on the project is not yet complete. "There's alot of CGI," she explained. "When I looped Grendel I saw some of the scenes and it does look amazing."

Sirtis laughed about the fact that Shatner gets paid more than she does for conventions, but said that she felt Shatner should have been more polite to fans at a recent European convention, "since he was charging $40/70p per autograph." Many actors forget that their roles are what made them famous, she pointed out, saying, "I'm sure everyone has their own Shatner horror stories." She watched his roast on Comedy Central, but felt that some of the guests were "a little too cruel especially to the other guests like [George Takei (Sulu)]."

As for her own experiences with celebrities, Sirtis said that when she met the Star Wars and Indiana Jones star, "I only said two words to Harrison Ford because I was really nervous. I'm as starstruck as the next person when it comes to my favorites."

The full chat transcript is here.

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