Actress Lee Meriwether shared her memories of playing the holographic image of the doomed Losira in the original series episode That Which Survives.
After so many years, Meriwether has forgotten some aspects of that time, but remembers how she felt playing the character.
“I have no idea at all [about how I got the role],” she said. “I have thought and thought about this, and I think I was offered the role. I had to have been. I didn’t read for it, I know that, because I would have been terribly nervous.”
But Meriwether did remember the character she played. “It was extremely difficult to play Losira because she was a computerized image, but she had a soul,” Meriwether said. “She had been, when she was alive, really a wonderful, compassionate commander of the Kalandans and cared for her people so much, which you found out at the very end of the episode.”
Playing Losira in the distant past has helped Meriwether today. “She was so conflicted and I can tell you, even all these years later, having played Losira on Star Trek is helping me now in doing Long Day’s Journey into Night, which we’ll be performing at a theater near me in Studio City,” said Meriwether. “Literally, you have to divide your mind for Long Day’s Journey, and that’s what I had to do for the first time when we did Star Trek. I had to kill, but not want to kill, but couldn’t be over-dramatic. You can’t telegraph that kind of thing or it will look false. So, playing Losira was a great challenge.”
Meriwether is currently involved in theater.
Source: StarTrek.com
