Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Paul Wesley Compares Kirk's Sibling Dynamic To TVD's Salvatore Brothers
The following contains spoilers from Thursday's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Proceed accordingly.
After a series of misdirects, we finally got to meet the real Kirk in this week's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
The Farragut lieutenant beamed aboard the Enterprise as part of a complicated operation to extract fuel from a nebula filled with newbie stars. Paul Wesley, who portrays the future Starfleet captain, previously appeared as Kirk from an alternate timeline in the Season 1 finale, as well as Kirk from a different alternate timeline in the Season 2 episode "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow." (Note: He also briefly popped up as the real Kirk in a video call with La'an at the end of that Season 2 episode.)
Wesley shares that while he found it intimidating to play the iconic character, it was less daunting to portray the true version of Kirk compared to those alternate timeline counterparts.
"You are playing within a somewhat defined field [as the real Kirk], and I think the alt-universe Kirk is a little more open to interpretation [and] vague, and there's no right or wrong," Wesley tells TVLine.
With the alternate Kirk, you have "an abundance of choices that creates... more of an intimidation," whereas the Kirk we see in Episode 6 is destined to become the beloved captain from the original Star Trek series.
"I was relieved, frankly," the actor notes, "and I was like, 'OK, great. Finally, we get primetime Kirk.'"
The episode, titled "Lost in Translation," planted the seeds of who this younger Kirk will grow into through his amusing interactions with both Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) and his older brother Sam (The Bold Type's Dan Jeannotte).
Kirk's initial introduction to Uhura wasn't warmly received, and the young cadet brushed off what she perceived to be his romantic advances. Their meeting makes sense, given that at this point, they hadn't yet established that intrinsic faith in each other which came to define their relationship much later.
"Uhura and Kirk have this iconic relationship built on trust and communication. [In Strange New Words], I think it's the exact opposite," he explains. "'Who's this idiot drinking at a bar kind of hitting on me?' I think they have to build to that trust... Uhura and Kirk [are] obviously nonromantic. It's a great friendship."
By the end of the episode, they're "really intimate in terms of their feelings towards one another, and their friendship."
Meanwhile, the Starfleet officer's interactions with Sam were noticeably more pointed. For Vampire Diaries fans, watching Sam and Kirk's antagonistic exchange over whiskey might dredge up core memories of those hunky Salvatore brothers, who quarreled as frequently as they risked their lives for each other.
Wesley, who played Stefan in the dearly departed CW series, is happy to portray the less uptight brother this time around in Strange New Worlds.
"In Vampire Diaries, I was the sort of logical good guy, and Damon was the rogue who got the girl," he recalls. "Now I get to be the cowboy who does things the nonlinear way, and Sam does things the linear way, and yet, somehow, I get ahead. So I was pretty excited that I got to play this kind of character."
But was that the last of Kirk for now? "You will get to see him again this season," Wesley teases.
Note: This interview took place before SAG-AFTRA officially announced a strike on July 13.