Park: Mirror Hoshi Led To Tougher Roles
2 min readWhen Linda Park began working on Star Trek: Enterprise in 2001, she was a young 23, but by the time the show ended, she was ready for roles that were more aggressive and tough than that of Hoshi Sato.
Although other actors lamented the early end of Enterprise, Park is not one of them. “Well, I guess I didn’t feel it ended to abruptly just because, personally, I’d never been on a show before (as a regular) and four years was an epically long time for a twenty-something,” she said. “So, personally I didn’t feel that it ended abruptly, and I felt that there was some circular movement in storylines, that we’d kind of gone over some things – maybe not quite finished them, but there wasn’t anything I was itching to finish, if that makes any sense.”
Park would have liked to have discovered more about Hoshi though, had the series continued. “I did feel, character-wise – and I think any actor feels this way, especially in an ensemble piece where you’re divvying up so many storylines and trying to get everyone covered – that there was so much more that I wanted to explore of Hoshi,” she said. “But at a certain point I realized that wasn’t the main thrust of the show and that you have to understand not just your own selfish needs, but also what the main storylines are and that you’re given out side dishes. There could be Hoshi episodes or Travis episodes or Malcolm episodes, but the main dishes where Archer (Scott Bakula), T’Pol (Jolene Blalock) and Trip (Connor Trinneer).”
The popular Mirror Universe episodes brought out a more aggressive Hoshi that Park was more than ready to play. “Mirror Hoshi was strong in the way that Medea is strong, in the way that Clytemnestra is strong, in this very archetypal, warrior-woman way,” said Park. “…I think at that point of my life I think I was really growing out of being a kid and wanted to grow and really stretch my legs as a woman, and that started with the Mirror Hoshi and continued with the two characters I played on TV after Enterprise. They were more aggressive and tough. I played a tough-girl cop. I played a cold-as-ice, cutthroat D.A. And it was great that by the end of Trek, when I wanted to get stronger as a woman in my roles, because I was becoming stronger as a woman myself, that I got that opportunity to do that. When I started Enterprise, I was using a lot of student-out-of-drama-school-going-into-the-real-world attitude, which was what was going on in my life. And by the end, I was starting to play a stronger woman, becoming a stronger woman, and wanting to do more of that.”
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