NYCC Interview: Marina Sirtis

By Teresa Jusino

It was my pleasure to have a chance to meet Marina Sirtis, best known for playing Counselor Deanna Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation, when I was at New York Comic Con.  She greeted me with a compliment, saying that I had the “real Troi hair” and revealing Troi’s long, curly locks were actually wigs! I wanted to keep the girly conversation going, so I asked her for an interview.  Not only is she one of the most ridiculously photogenic people ever, but she was super sweet.  Here’s our conversation:

TERESA JUSINO: What was your favorite look as Deanna Troi?

MARINA SIRTIS: My favorite Troi look was when they finally put her in the regulation spacesuit.

TJ: Really?

MS: I know!  It sounds so boring…but I really felt like finally she was really one of the crew, you know?  And the one I hated, really, and it’s one of the most popular ones with the fans, was the dress.  I hated the dress!  Because no one else was wearing a dress, you know.  And I just liked that look.  I wanted to be like one of the guys, and so I was happy when I got a spacesuit.

TJ: Was there anything about Troi that you thought could have been explored more, or that you wanted to delve into?

MS: Well, to be honest, we really didn’t know, even at the end of 180-whatever episodes it was, what she did in her spare time, who she was when she wasn’t working.  I mean, we know she worked out but, you know, big deal.

TJ: (laughs) Yeah, like she did a couple of pilates classes with Crusher and that was it….

MS: Yeah, you know, really.  But we never actually found out her likes or dislikes, we didn’t know much about her family apart from her mother, we never really delved into her past history, and I just felt that when the show was over she was probably the least explored character of all of them, and that kind of made me a little sad.

TJ: Speaking of things that you’d want to do differently or that you’d like to explore, what kind of roles would you like to play now?

MS: Well, when I was in drama school in England, I never imagined in a million years that I was going to end up on TV, because what I wanted to be was the great theatrical actress – I wanted to play Medea, and Nora in A Doll’s House, and Hedda Gabbler, and that’s what I wanted to do.  And there’s still a part of me that that’s what I yearn for – to be in the thea-tah.  I mean, I’m not dissing anything that I’ve done because I’ve been so blessed in my life, but the theater is my first love, and I would like to play those parts.  I mean, I’m too old for some of them now, but there are some left that I can play!

TJ: On Pink Raygun, we recently wrote about Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s passing.  Can you tell us a little about what it was like to work with her?

MS: Well, Majel was amazing.  When we first found out that she was going to be my mom on the show, we were all a little nervous, because we were very, very badly behaved on the set.  We had way too much fun.  And the Boss’ Wife was coming, you know?  But we soon found out that she was nuttier than the rest of us, really!  And she really fit in with this madcap atmosphere on the set.  She was a delight.  And actually what really made me happy was that as she did more and more episodes, especially toward the end of Next Gen and when she went on to DS9, they gave her episodes where you could really see what a great actress she was.  She wasn’t just the Auntie Mame of the galaxy, you know?  She really was a gifted actress, and I was so happy that she got the opportunity to show that.

And personally – really the Roddenberrys kind of adopted me when I came to the States.  I mean I was literally fresh of the boat when I got Star Trek, and they made sure that I had somewhere to go on the holidays, and that I wasn’t sitting on my own in my apartment at Christmas.  So…I actually used to call her ‘Mom.’   And when my own mother died, and I saw Majel soon after, I said to her “You know, you have to take care of yourself, because you’re the only mom I’ve got left now…”  So, it was very sad when I lost my other mom, too.

TJ:  The last question for you – I was curious how you thought the role of women in the Star Trek franchise has changed since you started with Troi – for actors as well as producers and writers?

MS: Well, I think you have to bear in mind that although we were shooting a show about the 24th Century, we were actually shooting it in the 20th Century, and TV is a mirror of society.  So, if you think back to Majel actually being Number One in the original pilot and the studio saying ‘No, no, no.  We can’t have a woman in the second lead’, we had progressed a lot by Next Gen.  But after Denise (Crosby, who played Tasha Yar on ST: TNG) left, Gates (McFadden, who played Dr. Beverly Crusher) and I, although we had good positions, we were still in the nurturing kind of professions.  So, I was quite happy to see that after we were done, when they got on to DS9 and Voyager, we actually had women in much more powerful positions – I mean, in Voyager, we had a woman captain – so I was very happy about that.  Star Trek always pushed the envelope, and I was really happy to see that we were giving women more power.

I mean, now there are a lot of shows that have women in the lead.  I’m thinking…10-15 years ago that really wasn’t the case apart from Golden Girls, you know?   So, I think things are changing.  But at the end of the day, it’s still a man’s world unfortunately, show business.  There are a few very powerful women, but it’s generally run by the boys.

TJ:  And you see that in the production side as well?

MS: Oh, yeah.  If you look at the crew…we had one female writer, which was great – Jeri Taylor.  But when you look at the crew there’s hardly any women that do the “boys’ work.  We had one woman director in all the time, a British lady called Gabrielle Beaumont.  And then Gates directed one episode in the last season.  But yeah, it’s going to take a while.   Roxann (Dawson – B’elanna Torres on Voyager, who’s also a successful TV director) is so great!  She’s a beacon for women right now, so I’m very proud of Roxann.  It’ll gradually change.  I don’t know if it’ll ever be 50-50, but it’s getting there.

TJ: I’d be happy with 70-30 at the moment.

MS: I’d be happy with 70-30, too!

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TERESA JUSINO was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so.  As a writer, her work has appeared in Elmont Life newspaper, and on the sadly defunct website, CentralBooking.com. She has recently become a comic reviewer for PopMatters.com, and is currently at work on several fiction projects, including a collection of short stories and a comic. As a geek, Teresa loves Star Trek, Lost, comics, and anything Joss Whedon ever touched. She has a fangirl *squee-ing* crush on Brian K. Vaughan, which beat up her Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man crush in a fight proving once again that writing skill trumps gadget skill even when that gadget skill is attached to bulging biceps.  Teresa is also an aspiring fangbanger.  Visit her in The Red Room.

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