{"id":9527,"date":"2010-06-23T14:33:55","date_gmt":"2010-06-23T21:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=9527"},"modified":"2010-06-23T14:33:55","modified_gmt":"2010-06-23T21:33:55","slug":"chase-masterson-more-than-leeta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2010\/06\/chase-masterson-more-than-leeta\/","title":{"rendered":"Chase Masterson: More Than Leeta"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the frustrations of acting is that sometimes, if one does a character well, that&#8217;s all that anyone else sees, which makes getting different roles in the future harder for an actress.<\/p>\n<p>Leeta was not just window-dressing, according to <strong>Chase Masterson<\/strong>. &#8220;&#8230;She was a study of opposites,&#8221; said Masterson. &#8220;As a Bajoran Dabo girl, she&#8217;s both fun and highly spiritual. She dresses sexily, but she&#8217;s smart enough to know how to approach Dr. Bashir. It wasn&#8217;t &#8216;hey, Baby&#8230;,&#8217; it was more coy, sweeter.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><a href=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/Masterson062310.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-9528\" title=\"Masterson062310\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/Masterson062310.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"190\" \/><\/a>But Masterson can face the facts as they were, namely that &#8220;Leeta was initially there for one reason. Eye candy is important in TV, and busty girls never fail to boost ratings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Leeta ended up being more than just a Dabo girl. &#8220;&#8230;it&#8217;s nice that Leeta went from being a lowly Dabo girl to marrying the underdog Ferengi brother,&#8221; said Masterson, &#8220;that move was very indicative of the &#8216;things aren&#8217;t what they initially seem&#8217; concepts in Trek.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While she was an employee who was fairly low on the totem pole,&#8221; said Masterson, &#8220;she was willing to risk everything to do the right thing and stick up for the Ferengi union. And while Leeta loved Rom with such commitment, she was no push-over. She stood up for what she believed was right in the pre-nuptial issues involving latinum and clothing as a Ferengi wife. And now she&#8217;s the wife of the Grand Nagus. Dabo-girl-turned-First Lady-of-the-Ferengi-Empire. There are worse jobs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Masterson doesn&#8217;t think that today&#8217;s audiences would go as much for the &#8220;farce comic relief&#8221; Leeta&#8217;s character brought to <em>Deep Space Nine<\/em>. &#8220;&#8230;stylistically, that would never fly on TV these days, now that audiences have developed a taste for grittier sci-fi, like <em>Battlestar<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Having done the character was both good and bad for Masterson. &#8220;I&#8217;ve found my role in Trek to be a double-edged sword,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I love being part of such a legacy. But it has also been limiting. Casting directors don&#8217;t generally realize that Leeta is only one of many roles I&#8217;ve played that have a huge range of diversity: a driven social worker, a bratty TV journalist, a risk-taking pilot, a grief-stricken Mom in the Emmy-winning episode of <em>ER<\/em>. And now a deeply empathic, mischievous torch singer in Y<em>esterday Was A Lie<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the frustrations of acting is that sometimes, if one does a character well,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2413,2406],"tags":[3286,3285],"class_list":["post-9527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cast-crew","category-star-trek-voy","tag-leeta","tag-masterson"],"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-voy\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Star Trek: VOY<\/a>","tag_info":"Star Trek: VOY","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9527","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=9527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9529,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9527\/revisions\/9529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}