Trinneer Post-Enterprise

For Connor Trinneer, post-Enterprise means guest roles on TV and a knee surgery with complications.

If the circumstances permitted, Trinneer would like to be back on a series. “Any out-of-work actor wants to work,” he said. “So, any time you’re not working, you want to be doing something. I think everybody who’s been on a show as a series regular would love to step back into that scenario, and I’m no different. I’d love for that to happen. It hasn’t at this point, but by no means am I discouraged. And I have had some nice work to do.”

That work included a recurring role on Stargate Atlantis, and a turn on the stage. “Stargate Atlantis (on which Trinneer played the recurring character Michael) went on for four years,” said Trinneer. “I did upwards of fifteen episodes. That was a great part. After that, it’s been catch as catch can. You take what’s out there and the rest takes care of itself. Would I like to work more? Yeah. If I didn’t want to work more, I’d be retired. But I think my most satisfying work since Enterprise has been on stage. I did a play here at the Geffen in L.A. called Equivocation, and that won Production of the Year at the Ovation Awards. That was one of those roles I got to play that was, for lack of a better way to put it, a bucket-list thing. I got to play several amazing characters in this play.”

Trinneer was reunited briefly with Star Trek: Enterprise‘s Phlox, John Billingsley on The Mentalist. “That was fun,” he said. “It was his episode and he was great in it. It was awesome to work with John again. Funny enough, I think I worked more with John on that one episode than I worked with him on (all of) Enterprise.”

These days, Trinneer is recuperating from a surgery that left him with a temporary problem. “I’m just sort of out of the woods recovering from having knee surgery and getting a blood clot as a result of it,” he said. “I pushed my surgery a couple of weeks because late spring/early summer is kind of a dead time here in Hollywood. So I did my surgery and, as luck would have it, I got a blood clot out of the deal. That kept me out of the action until basically now.”

In time, the issue with the blood clot should be resolved. “Blood clots are funny,” he said. “I don’t think it’s gone, but I’m on medication that thins it and ultimately dissolves it. But that can take up to a year. The knee was going to be the knee anyway, and it was going to be about now anyway before I was back chasing anybody. Long story short, I’m fine. I’m back in the gym exercising. I can’t run yet, but that was going to be the situation anyway.”