Scottish actor James McAvoy is one of those avowed Star Trek fans who has expressed keen interest interest in appearing in the franchise, which is why it’s surprising to hear him talk about why he turned down a role in one of the Kelvin Universe feature films produced by J.J. Abrams.
Why McAvoy said no to J.J.
McAvoy was a guest on the Happy Sad Confused podcast when host Josh Horowitz brought up their shared love of Star Trek, and after talking a bit about their favorite shows and movies, McAvoy was asked how was it he never made it into final frontier. The BAFTA-winning actor then revealed he “came close” to landing a role in one of the recent Star Trek movies. McAvoy didn’t want to get specific about which role he was offered, but talked about how he tried to make it work:
“I got offered something. I didn’t want to do that. I suggested I can do something else. They wanted to camera test me and I was like, ‘Do you know what, it’s alright, don’t worry about it.’ Not because I wouldn’t, because I just didn’t think I was right.”
McAvoy went on to say that he thought Abrams eventually cast the right actor for the role:
“What I said to J.J. about what I thought the role should be and the kind of actor that should be, they absolutely got. I’m not saying that he got that because I said that. But the kind of person I thought that I’m not is exactly the person who got it. And it’s brilliant. And I love the new ones. I love J.J.’s films. They are excellent.”
It’s not clear what role McAvoy was offered (and requested), or even which of the three Abrams-produced films he’s referring to. Rumors that McAvoy was approached to play Scotty for Abrams’ first Star Trek movie start rumbling back in early 2007, several months before Simon Pegg was cast in the role. After initial denials, McAvoy became more evasive about whether he was in the running for the role of the USS Enterprise’s engineer. It’s unlikely he would have turned down such an iconic role as Scotty, so he was probably offered some other character.
You can see McAvoy talk Trek below.
McAvoy’s Trek dream
Even though he “came close” to that one role, over recent years McAvoy has made it clear he very much wants to get into Star Trek. When Star Trek: Picard was in development, he volunteered his services on more than one occasion to play a young Jean-Luc Picard, noting he was uniquely qualified as he had played a young Charles Xavier (originally played by Patrick Stewart) in 3 X-Men movies. He is such a big Trek fan that he used his time during the pandemic to create his own Trek fan film called “Star Force: Sci-Fisolation.”
More recently, McAvoy noted that as he gets into his mid-40s, he may be aging out of playing a young Picard but still hopes for a Trek role. There are currently two active Star Trek feature film projects at Paramount Pictures (the “origin story” and “Star Trek 4”), so maybe he will still have his chance. And of course, there could always be a role in the new Starfleet Academy show, which cast Trek fan Paul Giamatti, or maybe even the fourth season of Strange New Worlds. There are always… possibilities.
James McAvoy in homemade “Star Force” in 2020
Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
Let’s see, I’ll be under 30 kilos of makeup?
No, thank you.
Idris Elba sould have delined Beyond for that reason alone …
That’s the first thing I thought of as well.
LOL So true
Considering that most fans wanted Elba to play a Klingon when he was first announced, I’m not sure why anyone gripes that he was under heavy makeup.
Fans often complain when directors and studios constantly have a character’s a mask coming off to make sure the audience can see the famous actor (ala Spider-Man), so again, not sure why this is the complaint.
Now if you believe Elba’s makeup hindered his performance, that’s fine I suppose. But Elba being in makeup really wasn’t an issue, it’s not like anyone couldn’t tell it was him.
hiding a popular actor like elba under make up hurt the box office for ‘beyond’ as well as the messy reveal/rationale for his villain’s actions
But Alba also played the Maco WITHOUT make up.
he should have done that from the start, a human, garth/tracy style renegade leading an alien attack on the enterprise.
Khaaaaaan!
This was my first thought… they talked to him about Khan, and only a real fan would look at themselves and say ‘me playing Montalban? Not no, but hell no’. lol. I’m surprised if it was Scotty, because if I was in his shoes, I would have jumped at that. But I can certainly see where he figured Pegg was the right choice for that after the fact. No shade toward Cumberbatch here… but their whole concept for the role of Khan was just wrong, and I can see why they’d talk to him about it. He’s a helluva great actor, for sure.
Yeah, making Khan a white British dude was just super bizarre. I’m sure it was done for secrecy reasons, as JJ is way to obsessed with such things, but it really just amounted to white washing a great character and turning him into something he’s not.
they were more interested in casting that big star from ‘sherlock’ than in it being a plausible way to go with the character
It’s SO INSULTING! THe British ruled Hindustan (India + Pakistan) for more years than I can count and THAT is the person Abrams picks to play an Indian? SO RACIST!
Casting aside, it was a weird and stupid to try to make Khan JJ’s mystery box mcguffin. The way they wrote him was just as bad as how they changed his outward appearance. He was a totally different character. What a waste
Exactly. Star Trek Into Dumbness is an insanely badly written movie but typical for dumb action movies.
But the Khan thing was just beyond inexcusable. Nothing about it made a lick of sense. You put a white British guy in the role who has the most Indian sounding name was just weird and jarring. And they don’t bother to explain anything. Everything is just hand waved with zero introspection of who he is. It’s very odd how badly they wanted to use Khan just to ignore who he actually was.
He’s literally just Khan in name only because nothing about him resembles Khan in appearance, personality or background.
I’ve been referring it to him as KINO for awhile now. lol. I get the whole explanation, and have had arguments with people about it.. but I just go back to, if you’re going to change the character so drastically, particularly in the characterization and personality, you should just go with someone else entirely. he easily could have been another member of Khan’s crew, so they could bring Khan in later.
Not arguing that it was a good choice (it wasn’t) but the reasoning for it was that they had Benicio del Toro for Khan and he dropped out at the last minute and Cumberbatch was available so they re-wrote things and played up the “mystery” of who he was supposed to be. It just never worked. (And I love Cumberbatch as an actor.)
It was an appalling case of whitewashing, and I still can’t believe that happened in 2009.
it happened in 2012-13
Even worse.
Well said. Abrams should be banned from hollywood for this. If Cumberbatch was cast as Martin Luthor King everyone would have been rightly pissed. Khan? meh… Pathetic.
Just for the record, Ricardo Montalban was Mexican, not Indian, and was in fact of 100% European descent, as his parents were both Spanish immigrants. In other words, racially as similar to a South Asian as, well, Benedict Cumberbatch. (Of course, Cumberbatch is much paler than Montalban- he is in fact a natural redhead- but that shouldn’t make a difference.)
Don’t get me started on Khan. SUCH a racist take on the character and such an insult to Indians!!!! And No, I do not care that Montaban was not Indian.
casting an indian as a homicidal, genetically engineered tyrant might not be such a positive move…
TRue but that was the 1960s
Except of course the actor was Mexican.
If you don’t like the character was made Indian or feel he’s too problematic today than simply don’t use the character; problem solved.
Especially when the character didn’t remotely feel like Khan anyway.
I’d love to see McAvoy in the Star Trek franchise. I loved him in the X-men films!
Same! Fantastic actor. Interesting notes about Picard. I’d prefer he do something else though. Having him play a younger Picard after doing a younger Professor X just feels a little too cute. Too stunt casting. Cool that he was willing to consider it though.
mcavoy or stewart….?
Yes to both
ST4 (or the mythical Origins movie) – McAvoy as a mad man villain with SWMD (space weapon of mass destruction) out for revenge on the federation!
Shhh, don’t give them the same idea again! ;)
I always thought it would have been interesting to see him as a Kelvin version of Picard since he played an alt version of Stewart’s Xavier!
He’d be great at it, but I don’t think any actor with much self-respect would want to be known as the person who keeps playing the younger version of another actor in their famous roles.
True I never thought about it like that
Nero?
I could see that.
I was thinking Shinzon. A clone of Picard would make a lot of sense considering he has played a version of Stewart before.
How about an original character rather than a re-cast?
no need for the caginess imo – what’s the big deal in just saying what it was.
Seems more like it was the camera test that made him tap out – and what he’s not saying by doing this tap-dance is really more like:
“I was offended that they wanted to camera test me – me! A big star! How dare they? So I walked and said why don’t you hire somebody not as famous as I am if you want to camera test them”
Yeah, Beyond is eight years in the rear view mirror now, and Abram’s seems peripherally in the franchise at best, now. Just spill it ..
It’s a way to be respectful of the actors who actually played the roles he was mulling over. It’s not common knowledge what he was up for, so it’s a nice gesture to keep that to himself.
That was my take as well.
Nero would make a lot of sense.
Bana’s ‘casual contemporary american’ voice in that always bothered me (as does damn near everything in that movie.)
On a wholly unrelated note, fans of THE OUTER LIMITS’ DEMON WITH A GLASS HAND ep should take some solace from this news story: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/20/science/human-genome-crystal-intl-scli/index.html
I was speaking with a young friend about ’60s sf shows of note, and went on (with his ok) to basically tell him the whole story of Ellison’s DEMON WITH A GLASS HAND episode of OUTER LIMITS in detail, and he was a combination of flabbergasted and spellbound. (I still consider that one episode to be sf’s *best hour ever* on the ol’ tube. Now I need to dig out one of my extra copies of the DVD box set to give to this fella. It really does my heart good to do so, in fact. I could watch DEMON on a loop continuously, I love it so much! The only episode of *anything* I can say that about, before I have to go in next week for possible eye surgery. (If I can only watch one episode of anything for the rest of my days, DEMON would be it!)
PS: How are your eyes, Kev?
I’ve got the beginning of one cataract, but it is years away from surgery. Christina is much worse, she can’t even read it is so bad, but because of the cancer and the chemo they didn’t want her having surgery, so that has gotten postponed a couple of times, though I think she’ll get the bad eye taken care of around the holidays. My major issues are weird bp spikes and a big weight gain (I had been my usual 185-190 for some time, but am around 240 right now and having a hard time carrying it.) Blood sugars are better than they’ve ever been since I was diagnosed back 1998, but there was a lot of damage along the way (I think I was diabetic in the late 80s, but Kaiser wouldn’t give me a test even though I pestered various doctors for years – it wasn’t till I was at Cinefex with BlueCross that I finally got tested and they saw I was HIGH on the sugars, above where the number value stops.)
We actually watched DEMON 6 or 8 weeks back, along with ARCHITECTS OF FEAR (you know I’m a big Culp guy.)
Still doing the freelancing in addition to day job, but down to only one outlet since the start of the pandemic, so income is WAY down. Then again, we may qualify for one of those apartments for limited income folk so it might work out.
Your remark about telling the guy about the show in detail reminded me of something from the 1970s, before we met. A friend from jr high, Dal Jeanis, turned up one day when I was in high school to give me a veritable ton of fireworks (to aid filmmaking.) I didn’t see much of him because he went to a different high school, but he told me he had seen TEENAGE CAVEMAN and then went on to describe the movie to me. He took 55 minutes! The whole damn flick is what, maybe 80?
4Even though it stars my one-time lookalike Napoleon Solo (isn’t it easy to believe Vaughn is Kyle McLachlan’s dad?), I still have never watched the movie in its entirety, probably because I will just be reminded of Dal’s massive oration (and this was years before he went into Scientology!) I don’t know if you ever met him, he flitted in and out of my life up til the early 90s, when he hinted that he could get financing for a feature length CRITICAL ORBIT and wasted about 20 months of my life. He was supposed to be the John Nelson part in the original shorter CRITICAL ORBIT that you helped me with in 83, but he abruptly fell out of sight back then too, so obviously I didn’t learn my lesson.
I think it was because even with all the flakiness, there was genuine intelligence (4.0 gpa, etc.), and I remember him hitting on a great notion about the death of Bond’s wife, that M. actually facilitated Blofeld getting a line on them, hoping she would get knocked off and Bond would stay in the service. That’s the kind of out-of-box thinking that often intrigues me — obviously as I’m remembering that from 30+ years back.
Scotty- of course, he didn’t want to play the jokey version we got, so he correctly suggested Simon Pegg.
Kelvin Scotty was a literal joke,
If you google “James Mcavoy” and “Scotty” articles show up saying that it was announced that he had been cast.
Considering that Scotty is pretty out of character (and went from doric to weegie), it makes sense that JA might have felt that he couldn’t make it work and they needed a more comedic actor.
He was offered the role of Scotty.
Translation: This movie will suck and I don’t want to be a part of it. Smart man.
Lol you said it as usual my friend. He may have been a great addition but those movies feel less relevant today for a reason because they just feel like slick big blockbuster action movies and little else. There is a reason why people barely talk about them today and probably why they can’t get another one made; because they probably think not enough people care anymore.
Just let JJ verse die already because most Trekkies wants stories in the prime universe anyway and the so-called new fans moved on after STID.
Exactly. Those movies were popcorn fun but had no relevance whatsoever in the way that Trek is supposed to and that is why they do not stand the test of time. JJ Abrams is all flash (literally) and no substance. The man does not deserve to have a job in hollywood. Certanly not after white washing Khan,
In my mind McAvoy didn’t miss anything besides a pay check and being invited to 30 Star Trek conventions. He probably would’ve did a great job but still part of pretty generic popcorn action movies with just Star Trek in the title basically. And he probably had more than one reason why he turned it down but just trying to be polite. Just my speculation.
At that time he was emerging as a lead actor (was the lead in 2008s Wanted with Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman) so to be 6th/7th down the list for Trek must’ve made him think ‘damn even though im a huge Trekkie and this is a big reboot of it and I’ll get to play opposite Leonard frickin Nimoy as Spock i do not want a supporting actor bit part!’ (and same for potential sequels).. when he got the XMen prequel/reboot a couple of years later he was co lead with Michael Fassbender, a far more enticing job prospect (and obviously ALOT more money too)
But had McAvoy played Scotty Pegg woukd never have taken over writing Beyond and we’d have probably got Orci’s (superior?) version of ST3
Not sure what one had to do with the other in terms of Orci getting fired since they rejected his script before they hired Pegg to write another one. That doesn’t make any sense.
No offense but you’re obsessed about that Orci movie. It might have been good or it really sucked. Since it was rejected the latter is possible and Trekkies may have hated him more by that point.
And I liked Beyond. It wasn’t TWOK or First Contact but decent enough. It at least felt like a real TOS movie. It’s the only one of those three I even liked.
I guess they wouldn’t have had the option to get Pegg to quickly bash out a new script over the weekend so would’ve just stuck with Orcis due to the time constraint..
I am obsessed with Orci’s ST3 , it came so close, but just missed. Id say out of all the ‘lost’ Trek movies (Planet of the Titans, Roddenberry’s JFK ST2, Bennetts SFA, Berman’s ST The Beginning etc) its the one that intrigues me the most and wish had happened.
Beyond to me was the ‘Kelvin’ equivalent of Insurrection, a bland inconsequential ‘2 part episode’ on the big screen (esp coming after JJs 2 extravaganzas with major shake ups for Trek lore/canon)
Or they could’ve just hired another writer? They hired about 12 for ST 4 in the last 8 years so that’s never been the problem lol. Didn’t they hired another one recently?
And you’re also forgetting that when they rejected Orci’s original script they got him to write another one to replace that one. They obviously thought that one sucked too and that’s when they went to Pegg. So that other script was never in the cards anymore. In fact now I wonder what was that second script about? Everyone has literally forgotten it was made.
Your issues with Beyond is understandable. And I agree I always said it was just another Insurrection, just with a much bigger budget and action. It’s probably another reason why it bombed because it didn’t look interesting enough to a lot of people, me included.
I had no plans to watch it in the theaters because how much I hated STID and the trailer for this one was awful too. So it’s not like I was remotely excited about it because I wasn’t. I only went after hearing people say it was at least better than the last one and I had a free ticket. I was originally saving that for Jason Bourne lol. But I still remember sitting in that IMAX theater on a Saturday night the second weekend it opened and there were maybe 50 people sitting there in a 300 seat theater. The same theater I watched the first two in and where it basically sold out the first two weekends.
I knew then this movie was going to be a turkey and the Kelvin movies were done.
And it didn’t help it used the exact same formula as the last two and people were basically over it by then.
If Orci did a second script maybe was just a revision of his first in light of Nimoys passing (therefore centring on Shatner Kirk)?
And yeah you could sort of tell Beyond was cooked when that first trailer hit (and in front of Force Awakens)..
Nope. He said it himself it was a completely different story and nothing to do with the first one. I actually remember reading the article about it here and he talked to others here too. I’m sure you can find it.
And that teaser trailer for Beyond definitely help kill the movie IMO, especially if you already hated STID like I did. I knew after it bombed there would be no more movies for awhile,; but I didn’t know it would over ten years either. 😂🙄
Interesting, so I presume the second script was nothing to do with the radical villain (potentially Bryan Cranston) wanting to revert the timeline back to Prime, with deaged Shatner Kirk helping kelvin Kirk & Spock?
Gearing up for ten years without a Trek movie.., I wouldn’t have ever thought it was possible to surpass the Nemesis-ST09 gap, yet here we are.. Still I guess there’s s31.. and Picard s3 was like a 10hr TNG movie (a great one at that)
Sybok in Strange New Worlds.
I would prefer him as a visiting Captain or scientist. I am not sure the show could afford him but who knows maybe he might be willing to take a pay cut.
I hope we get a re-casted and rebooted TNG movie with James McAvoy playing Picard.
I think I would have turned down any role once I had seen the script. A cadet become captain of Starfleet’s flagship inside 30 minutes? No thank you.
So so dumb. That’s a big reason why I can’t get onboard that it was some great movie. Yeah it looked great but the story was bad, that being the worst of it.
After that I couldn’t take JJ verse seriously. Star Trek has always done ridiculous things but they at least tried to present some reason or logic behind it. This just treated the audience like we were dumb sheep.
“Don’t look at this gaping plot hole–here, have an explosion or lens flare, instead!” Which incidentally was a major criticism of mine with Discovery. They counted on audiences having the attention span of fruit flies.
Don’t get me started on Discovery. A show that was always inconsistent with everything and mostly a mess for five seasons. All the other shows made after it felt like they looked what Discovery was doing and did the opposite of that.