Tahir On 'Star Trek XI'

Faran Tahir is of Middle Eastern descent, but his Captain is just another guy getting the job done.

As reported by The deadBolt.com, Tahir will be playing Captain Rabu in Star Trek XI. "Rabu is a new character," said Tahir. "He has never been seen in this saga." Tahir was cast by J.J. Abrams for the part after working with Abrams previously on Alias. "He cast me in literally four hours," said Tahir.

As with the others involved in the movie, Tahir understands and agrees with the need for secrecy. "Of course they're keeping Star Trek very, very secret and I have to respect that," he explained. "I think the idea is this, that it's such a known storyline that if we can reintroduce it with a fresher look, with a fresher approach, a lot of it is going to depend on how much surprise is in the actual movie. So, all that I can say about it is that my character is the captain of a ship."

Tahir did acknowledge that his character would not be a rogue Federation captain. "I'm a good guy. I'm one of the Federation captains, which is great for me because it came on the heels of doing 'Iron Man', playing a bad guy. So I'm not getting typecast as the bad guy, which can be an issue. He's a good guy and it's a nice heroic storyline of this character. He commands a ship, which has not been seen in the saga before."

Although he is an actor of Middle Eastern descent, Tahir feels that his ethnicity is not an issue in the movie, where he's just another person doing his job. "There have been other characters of Middle Eastern decent, but there has never been a captain," he said. "At least for me, personally, it's great because it is a context in which my ethnicity is not being discussed as an issue. To me, that’s great, about a character in a story who’s trying to get Task A, Task B, Task C done. And you're not dealing with the color of his skin or whatever, we're not dealing with all of that. We're working on a very even playing field and the blogs were also about that. It gives us hope, in a way, if you look at it as the realities of today hopefully will not be the realities of tomorrow."

Tahir, who admits to being "kind of a Trekkie", feels that fans will enjoy Star Trek XI. "I think J.J. [Abrams] knows what he's doing. He has a really great vision and a really great way of executing his vision. I think a lot of people will be very pleasantly surprised."

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