Blalock: I Wanted To Be The Best Shaker!

When Jolene Blalock signed up for the role of Vulcan observer T'Pol on Enterprise, she had one objective - to be the best shaker on the set.

"I was so adamant in the beginning that I was going to be the best 'shaker' - you know, when the ship shakes?" she told Gregory L. Norris and Laura A. Van Vleet at Trek Galaxy. "Even before we started to go through our little training sessions where they showed us how to shake, I said, 'you know what, guys, I'm letting you know right now that I'm the best shaker!'"

However, the actress didn't realise that shaking wasn't really the Vulcan thing. "And then we get into it," Blalock continued, "and I'm shaking my little booty - when the director comes up to me and says, 'ahem, Vulcan's don't really shake.' So I've had to tone down my shaking. But I would have been really good at it! They all hold that over my head now. When I pass them on the set, they say, 'there goes the best shaker'."

Although T'Pol is a typically stoic Vulcan, Blalock noted that beneath the cold exterior she does have the crew's best interests at heart. "She's extremely diplomatic, and always comes from a very positive place, a place of integrity, which is the best for the most amount of people," she said. "She has best intentions for the greatest amount of people. It seems like she's got this chip on her shoulder, that she's got an attitude against humans. But that's not true at all. It's just the way she is. It's her demeanour. She actually does want the best for this crew. Unfortunately, she's just got the logical side of it, where they've also got the zealous, adventurous side of things, so they clash."

Blalock confirmed that an upcoming episode of the series would deal with her character's betrothal. "We're working on that episode right now," she said. "We're four days into it. Yeah, she's betrothed. And she's dealing with what to do, because obviously you can't have a relationship, emotional or not, in any species, and have a position on a starship. And that's the dilemma. She has to deal with that. Is the marriage going to be postponed, is T'Pol going to work it out, is she going to stay on the ship or what? I won't give it all away, but the episode is called 'Breaking the Ice'. It's our eighth episode."

The full interview, in which Blalock also talked about the Trek phenomenon and her hobbies, can be found here at Trek Galaxy.

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