'Enterprise' Cast Talk Fame & Fandom

Scott Bakula (Jonathan Archer) may be a seasoned genre TV veteran, but some of the younger members of the Enterprise cast are just learning what it's like to have millions hanging on your every word.

"I think you really can't think about it - the weight of all that, either expectation or fandom, that just gets too much," Connor Trinneer (Charles 'Trip' Tucker) said in an Extra video interview. "Otherwise it would be too big of a deal. But you've just got to go to work and do your thing."

Trinneer wasn't prepared for the large amount of web sites that featured him. "If you want to go on the Internet and see how many times your name hits - it's absurd," he said. "I've gone and done it, and I went - 'What? God!' I went on last week - this is the first time I went on there and I hit my name through some search engine - there were 833. I was like 'I haven't even done anything yet!' They weren't necessarily web sites for me, but I was in these web sites, that was a little bit like, 'okay. All right, I'm not doing this again.' Better left unsaid, I don't want to know exactly."

But the Internet was nothing compared to Enterprise's exposure in the print media. "There's TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly - that's like 'Damn, they're going to see this at home,'" Trinneer said. "They're going to get that and go 'Holy, Connor's on.' And then to have people call up - you know, friends from home or whatever, family members even - it does hit you then a bit more. They're so happy for you, and they're so jazzed about what you're doing. The day to day thing of going through here, they supplement that by going 'Gee, this is so cool!' And it is. It's phenomenally cool."

Anthony Montgomery (Travis Mayweather) had a few friends go wild when they heard he had scored a role on Star Trek. "Apparently, friends of theirs, that I don't know, are major Trekkies," he said. "They're not just fans - they're Trekkies. They're apparently insistent and obsessive about getting a picture - getting something from me, you know, a finger nail clipping. I'm like 'What?' And he's like, 'They were for real.'"

The actor says that his new-found fame hasn't changed him. "For the most part, everybody knows me - what you see, is who I am," Montgomery said. "I'll talk to you, or not. I'm the person who I am. I just happen to have a really, really cool job."

As for Scott Bakula, he's been taking everything in his stride. Nevertheless, the seasoned actor is acutely aware of the pressure of working on a long-running franchise. "Because the fan base is so strong, and so excited, you want to deliver," he said. "You want them, and I think it's happening, to be excited as we are, because if you're going to run for a long time, you still want to be doing something that's great, [so that] people are going 'this is really cool.' The fans of the show have been very supportive already."

The complete video interviews, as well as a tour of the set with Bakula, are available here at Extra. Thanks to Section 31 for the link!

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