Marina Sirtis Kicks off Edmonton Expo Weekend

The Edmonton Expo, has a tradition. It holds a Thursday media event, with a mystery guest, in order to ramp up the hype ahead of the weekend’s celebration of comics, movies, televisions, games and, well, fandom.

This year’s Edmonton Expo opens to the public on Friday and runs through the weekend. But, last night, media who gathered at the Telus World of Science were treated to a visit by Marina Sirtis, famous for the years she spent portraying Counsellor Deanna Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s a role she’ll be reprising in the highly anticipated Picard series.

With a full-in north London accent and a Tottenham Hotspur tattoo emblazoned on her shoulder (a 57th birthday present to herself), Sirtis dished a bit about the new show and why she and her castmates don’t get tired of doing the convention circuit.

“We’re actually quite privileged to see the people who kept us on TV for seven years and went to see three and a half movies.”

She’s come a long way from the actress who admits that she didn’t attend the launch party to celebrate Star Trek: TNG‘s first episode, because she was so embarrassed by her performance and what she felt was an over-the-top-script. For the fans out there, her favourite episode is “Measure of a Man,” where a tribunal is held to determine if the ship’s android officer, Commander Data, was indeed a machine or deserved the same rights a sentient being would have.

Of course, the audience wanted to hear about Picard, and she said her and her on-screen husband Commander Riker (played by Jonathan Frakes) will be back. At first she wasn’t sure about going back to a character she played 20 years ago, or that she’d be able to find the accent and inflections again. And she had fun referring to Sir Patrick Stewart as “old baldy.”

“I was excited about working with my old chums again.”

She said they can infuriate directors because they’re all such good friends, they laugh and joke with each other right up to the point where “action!” is called. And when they go on the convention circuit together, they are “a bit cliquey,” but she admitted that Edmonton’s own Nathan Fillion has become an honorary member of their group, though he isn’t really a part of the Star Trek universe.

But Michael Dorn, who played Klingon officer Commander Worf, is a vegan, and the rest of the cast loves going out to lavish steak houses when he’s in tow.

As mentioned, she has a Tottenham tattoo (for her beloved London soccer team) and is a giant sports fan outside of, well, hockey. So much so, that, when she goes home from the set, she doesn’t go back and reflect on her own performances. She’s too busy being worked up about Spurs star Harry Kane and the rest of his team.

“I show up, I record, I go home and then I don’t watch it,” she says of her work.

Check the Edmonton Expo schedule for Sirtis’s appearance times.