Keating Recalls 'Enterprise' Casting

Dominic Keating never felt that he was entirely right for the part of Enterprise armoury officer Malcolm Reed, but he was determined to give it his best shot.

"I might not be exactly what they thought they were looking for," he told Star Trek Monthly's Paul Simpson and Ruth Thomas (via Cyfy Pulse), "but I know I can give them something which will make them think, 'He fits the bill, he's going to look great on the ship with the other people'."

After the actor's first audition, the producers asked him to make some changes to his performance. "They'd asked me to make him 'a bit more blue collar'," Keating said, "because I'd gone in there talking rather like my mother would have wanted me to talk - a little clipped and slightly Army-ish - because Reed is actually a gun man, a munitions officer on a starship."

In an attempt to covey what the producers wanted, Keating envisioned the character as "Sergant Majorish, like a Northern Councilman who's really good at his job and gets it done, but could never quite aspire to be a Captain."

As it turned out, the new accent didn't go down too well at Paramount. "Merri Howard, the supervising producer, went, 'was that a Scottish accent?'" Keating said. "Her friend next to her said, 'Merri, don't be stupid, that was Welsh!' The other one said, 'was that not Cornwall-ish?' I'm thinking, 'oh no, what have I done? What was I thinking? Bringing a Northern Councilman into their offices!' I regrouped, and looked at Rick Berman, and said, 'just forget that - you know what Rick? Can I do him in my own voice?' And he went, 'that's a great idea Dominic,' and I managed to pluck my voice out of the nether regions of a performance."

Keating was also recently interviewed by California affiliate UPN 44 about the tone of the series. "I know that Rick Berman said that there would be - I don't want to say 'more sex' - but more, as I say again, more accent on us being humans than us being humans looking at aliens," he said. "I'm sure there'll be episodes where the aliens are the stars of the show, but I think that our cast and the ship will be the stars of this show rather than 'which aliens are we going to meet this week?'"

The full interview with Keating is available in the current issue of Star Trek Monthly, out now in the United Kingdom. Alternatively, a transcript is available here at CyfyPulse. The video interview can be found on the UPN 44 web site, which also features comments from Jolene Blalock (T'Pol) and Connor Trinneer ('Trip' Tucker). Thanks to TrekWeb for pointing the way!

Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
 Add TrekToday RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!