William Shatner’s Star Trek IV Behavior Forced Catherine Hicks To Stand Up For Herself

Catherine Hicks’ starring role opposite William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and their fellow co-stars on «Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home» was unique in that she knew nothing about the franchise before she auditioned to play Dr. Gillian Taylor. Luckily, Hicks’ director also happened to be one of the major faces in the «Star Trek» movies and TV series, and she said he was more than game to tutor the actor on-set to bring her into the know.

«At my audition, Nimoy would keep stopping me and explain things,» Hicks recalled for Star Trek.com. «I didn’t rent all the episodes or movies before we started shooting. I just used my natural ignorance of ‘Star Trek’ [during filming], and it worked. I was in Disneyland. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I didn’t know the ear jokes. I didn’t know what ‘beaming up’ meant. And I kept that.»

Hicks also noted that Nimoy helped her become aware that special effects would be rendered in postproduction and told her not to stop shooting her scenes if she didn’t feel the scene was playing out in her mind.

The film was a memorable experience for Hicks, as well as an accidental actor who mistakenly found her way onto the set. As such, «Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home» spawned an infamous extra story for fans about a one-time background artist, Layla Sarakalo, who ad-libbed a line during a brief scene with Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) and Walter Koenig (Chekov) on the streets of San Francisco.