{"id":8895,"date":"2010-04-16T14:22:16","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T21:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=8895"},"modified":"2010-04-16T14:22:16","modified_gmt":"2010-04-16T21:22:16","slug":"what-drew-goldberg-to-star-trek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2010\/04\/what-drew-goldberg-to-star-trek\/","title":{"rendered":"What Drew Goldberg To Star Trek"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Whoopi Goldberg<\/strong> found something in <em>Star Trek<\/em> to which she could personally relate.<\/p>\n<p>When watching the original series, Goldberg found it had something that other science fiction shows of the time were missing.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Whoopi041610.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8896\" title=\"Whoopi041610\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Whoopi041610.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"184\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Goldberg, best known to Trek fans as Guinan on <em>Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/em>, couldn&#8217;t identify with other science fiction shows because they were missing something important, people of color. &#8220;I am a big fan of <em>Star Trek<\/em> because before <em>Star Trek<\/em> there was no other sci-fi that had people of color in the future,&#8221; she explained. &#8220;I always thought that was really depressing. Along came <em>Star Trek <\/em>with a beautiful black woman and people from all over the world. They seem to be happening in the future. I said I would like to do that in the future at some point.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But those in charge of <em>The Next Generation<\/em> weren&#8217;t keen initially on having her at first. &#8220;When I got the opportunity, I asked to be part of it. But they were like ugh, they don&#8217;t wanna &#8230; The person I asked was <strong>LeVar Burton<\/strong> because he was doing it. I said, &#8216;Tell them I wanted to do it very much,&#8217; and told them all the reasons. He said OK.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But it took a while before Goldberg got her chance. &#8220;A year went by and nothing happened. When I saw [Burton] next I said, &#8216;What happened?&#8217; &#8216;They didn\u2019t believe me.&#8217; I said, &#8216;Give me the phone number,&#8217; and I called them. We had a meeting with <strong>Gene Roddenberry<\/strong> who asked me the same question you just did (what drew her to <em>Star Trek<\/em>). I told them the same thing I told you. I never thought about it that way. So he wrote the last character that he wrote for me, and that&#8217;s how it happened.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whoopi Goldberg found something in Star Trek to which she could personally relate. When watching&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2413,2442],"tags":[2451,3170],"class_list":["post-8895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cast-crew","category-star-trek-tng","tag-burton","tag-goldberg"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","newsphere-slider-full":"","newsphere-featured":"","newsphere-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"T&#39;Bonz","author_link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/author\/tbonz\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/cast-crew\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Cast &amp; Crew<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/star-trek-tng\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Star Trek: TNG<\/a>","tag_info":"Star Trek: TNG","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8897,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8895\/revisions\/8897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}