Masterson: Beyond Deep Space Nine
2 min read
Although Chase Masterson loved her role as Leeta and her time on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, she found it hard to get past the character.
“Leeta is one of those wonderful roles that turned out to be more than the sum of its parts, and I’m grateful that Leeta has had that enthusiastic following,” said Masterson. “…But the bottom line is yes, it can be extremely limited and extremely frustrating.”
Leeta was misunderstood, said Masterson, and because of Leeta’s character traits, people assumed that those same traits were Mastersons. “You could only go so deep into any one character, and [Leeta] was like the one on every sweeps week episode,” said Masterson. “She is the eye candy, she is loving and fun and comic relief. I do kind of resent it that [people think] that is how far Chase goes, because it’s definitely not. But I understand that people may think that, because the character was there. If you inhabit a character enough, people think you are it.”
Masterson did enjoy her time on Deep Space Nine, even if she wasn’t always happy with the lack of character development for Leeta. “The beautiful thing about Deep Space Nine is that we knew what we had when we had it,” she said. “We had a really close cast and crew. We were telling stories that changed lives and we were making history, partly because it’s Star Trek, and partly because its following is so pure and huge.”
Now working on a remake of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), Masterson will be playing the lead role of Sulla.
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Met her at the Las Vegas con last year – she is one of the friendliest people I’ve ever met – a true delight.
Loving and fun and comic relief? Huh? I thought Leeta was dumb, unfunny, and had horrible taste in men… But at least she got the eye candy part right.
Leeta was misunderstood… really? Because she had some massive subtext? She probably had as much subtext as Brannon Braga’s subtext for casting Jeri Ryan.
All that said, I don’t think it was Masterson’s fault that Leeta was perhaps the least dimensional character in the entire series.
Toward the end of the series, we did begin to see more dimensions to Leeta, and the character had a lot of potential. Masterson is right, though; she could have been much more.
Met Chase, several times, a beautiful spirit, a lovely lady and a friend for fans…Hope to hear for new projects…K’Hel