Star Trek’s Tawny Newsome Kept Breaking The Enterprise Because She Thought It Was Real
Next week, Star Trek is going to give us a crossover that we never thought possible: Ensigns Boimler and Mariner from the animated show Lower Decks will be crossing over into the Strange New Worlds, with voice actors Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome playing their characters in live action for the first time.
Jack Quaid sold out Tawny Newsome by sharing a story about how she kept breaking the set by fiddling with knobs and levers.
It’s a dream come true for two Trek geeks turned Trek actors for many reasons, including that they got to visit the sets for the USS Enterprise. However, Entertainment Weekly reports Newsome kept accidentally breaking parts of the set because she thought they were real.
The hilarious truth of this came out during an interview with the two actors, and Quaid wasted no time selling Newsome out. According to him, “She’s been a Star Trek fan since she was a kid, so that was insane for her to actually be on the Enterprise,” and this led her to naturally want to touch the various parts of the ship whenever she encountered them. “Tawny broke a lot of buttons and knobs and little things on the ship because she just couldn’t stop touching things,” he said.
At first, Newsome pretended to be shocked and offended that her Star Trek costar tattled on her, especially because she was spending her time during the interview “just saying glowing things about my friends.” Soon, though, she owned up to the truth of what Quaid was saying: “I broke so many things.” One example she gives is that on the first day of shooting, she was in the background of a scene and “leaned on a panel and put my elbow through it.”
“She’s been a Star Trek fan since she was a kid, so that was insane for her to actually be on the Enterprise. Tawny broke a lot of buttons and knobs and little things on the ship because she just couldn’t stop touching things.”
Jack Quaid on his Strange New Worlds co-star Tawny Newsome
She seemed a tad embarrassed that right after that, “a props person had to come up and fix it.” However, she doesn’t make any apology for her unadulterated joy at being able to visit the set of the famous Star Trek starship that she grew up dreaming about. “I think that the Enterprise is a real place, and I thought that every button was there for me to push,” she said.
While we can only imagine that the prop person she mentioned probably thought she was a menace, it’s hard to fault her for wanting to touch all the cool props and panels she had previously seen onscreen. When fans get a chance to visit replicated sets (like The Original Series sets at Neutral Zone Studios), the first thing they normally do is reach out to touch the various buttons on Captain Kirk’s chair.
Given the chance to visit the set for a current Star Trek show, can any fans honestly claim they wouldn’t be touching everything that looked cool, just like Newsome did?
“I think that the Enterprise is a real place, and I thought that every button was there for me to push.”
Tawny Newsome admits she’s just like us
And in a roundabout way (not to be confused with a runabout way), Newsome’s destructive visit to the set of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds effectively serves as a compliment to the prop and set designers who work so hard to bring the show to life.
It’s an open secret that Strange New Worlds is the most beautiful of the NuTrek shows, and Newsome’s temporary confusion is a testament to the fact that the sets and props look just as captivating up close. Everything felt real to her because it looked real to her, and we can’t help but empathize with her geeky excitement.
Speaking of geeky excitement, we’re excited to see how the crossover between Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds actually goes down. Will this be a one-off stunt, or are we seeing the groundwork for more Trek crossovers in the future?
To discover these answers and maybe find out which parts of the set had Tawny Newsome so excited, we’ll be eagerly watching this Strange New Worlds episode when it drops Thursday, July 27, on Paramount+.
