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Cut Star Trek 2009 Actor Still Annoyed Over Having To Learn Klingon
Cut Star Trek 2009 actor Victor Garber says it 'wasn't fun' learning to really speak Klingon at the behest of director J.J. Abrams.

Cut Star Trek 2009 Actor Still Annoyed Over Having To Learn Klingon

Cut Star Trek 2009 actor Victor Garber says it “wasn’t fun” learning Klingon for the movie. J.J. Abrams was the man tapped to resurrect the Star Trek movie franchise with his 2009 reboot film. Starring a new cast as the classic Enterprise crew, the film went on to gross $385 million at the worldwide box office.

Of course Star Trek fans well-remember the most controversial aspect of Abrams’ 2009 film: the introduction of the so-called Kelvin timeline. Indeed the reverberations of this divergent timeline are still being felt in Star Trek lore, and definitely set the stage for further canon alterations made by other Star Trek properties, including the franchise’s new slate of small-screen offerings. But as many changes as Abrams’ Star Trek was able to pull off, not all of the director’s potentially controversial ideas made it into the finished 2009 film. Indeed it was Abrams’ original intention to introduce newly-redesigned Klingons in the movie as well, but ultimately these Klingon scenes hit the cutting room floor. Abrams later showed fans his new Klingons in Star Trek: Into Darkness.

One person who was sad to see Star Trek 2009’s Klingons cut from the film was Garber, a long-time Abrams collaborator. As Garber explained recently to CinemaBlend, he put a lot of work into playing the movie’s Klingon bad guy, even learning real Klingon at Abrams’ behest. But ultimately his hard work was for nothing as his scene now only lives as a DVD extra. Nowadays Garber can laugh about the experience, though he still seems annoyed at being forced to learn Klingon for the movie:

Well, it didn’t destroy my relationship with J.J. [Abrams], but pretty close [laughs]. No, it was something where he said, ‘I got a fun idea,’ and whenever any director says that to you, [you go], ‘Fun for who, exactly,’ and then I had to learn Klingon. I was disappointed because it would’ve been fun to be a part of it, and it was hard work. And learning Klingon was something I’ll never, never do again. it wasn’t fun. It was a labor of love because I would do anything J.J. asked.

Garber of course first worked with Abrams on the show Alias, a project that apparently put the actor through some difficult paces as well, mostly because he didn’t fully understand the story and especially its mysterious Rambaldi arc. Though Garber didn’t get to be in Abrams’ Star Trek 2009, he did later get to star as Admiral Halsey in the Trek-inspired Seth MacFarlane show The Orville. And of course with Star Trek 4 seemingly in the works, there’s still a chance Garber could get to work in the franchise after all, though it seems like he would prefer not to play a Klingon.

The Klingons overall have obviously become somewhat problematic among Star Trek fans given the changes that have been made to the classic warrior species in various movies and shows over the past decade. By this point, the best move might actually be for Star Trek to leave Klingons behind entirely and focus on new alien races with empty backstories. But the place of Klingons in Trek lore probably guarantees that future Trek projects will want to revisit them. Hopefully future actors will have better experiences than Garber, who clearly did not enjoy having to immerse himself in Klingon culture for a Star Trek scene that ultimately didn’t even make it to screens.