Interview: ‘Lower Decks’ Cast Talks Character Growth, Season 5 Finale, And Not Saying Goodbye To Star Trek

During New York Comic Con, TrekMovie spoke with the cast of Star Trek: Lower Decks in a roundtable interview with other media outlets, where Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Noël Wells, and Eugene Cordero spoke about the fifth and final season, offered insights into their characters, and discussed their hopes to continue their stories into the future.

What will you all miss most about cultivating your characters? And how did it help elevate your craft?

Eugene Cordero: I will miss the positivity that Rutherford has in every moment. I think that ownership of the things that you love and the things that you have worked really hard to get and still being kind of fanboy of his own work is something that I would like to keep taking forward after this is done. But I don’t see this ending. I think it’s open-ended for all of these characters. And hopefully this is just a moment that we get to take a second to kind of look at what has been awesome over the last five seasons and what we can bring moving forward.

Jack Quaid: I’m a very anxious person, and I feel like Boimler kind of reflects my inner anxiety. And what I love about the character is that he’s kind of learned to manage that over the seasons and gain more confidence. So I’m gonna miss that. He holds a really, really special place in my heart. And yeah, like Eugene says, we were trying to think of this as more of a pause and less of a goodbye, because we just love playing these characters. We’ll do it till we’re dead. And that’s a promise.

Tawny Newsome: I’ll do it after I’m dead.

Eugene Cordero: Yeah, just pre-record me for season 6. I’ll just make noises.

Tawny Newsome: Pry Mariner from my cold, dead hands. [laughs] What will I miss the most? I will miss the way the show can surprise me and make me laugh out loud, even when I’ve read the script, I know the joke, I even recorded the joke, but then when I see the animatic or I see the episode, something will still surprise me to the point where I’m bursting out laughing. I’ve done a lot of comedies in my life and that does not always happen. You have to be surprised in order to laugh, and if you already know what’s going to happen, that can be hard. And this show consistently does it.

Noël Wells: For Tendi, I feel like she got to play a lot of levels in terms of she starts off really sweet and chirpy, but through the course of the show, she has to take on more of her badass leadership capabilities. And I liked finding all of those levels and being able to turn the knob really high and then really low. And in terms of taking that into the world, just learning how to control my loudness and quietness is very fun, but also for the character, finding all those different nuances and having those different facets to something, I’m going to try to bring into anything I do… including any future Lower Decks that may happen.

Eugene Cordero: We’re going to miss this!

Jack Quaid: Yeah, this is great.

Jack Quaid as Boimler, Tawny Newsome as Beckett Mariner, Noël Wells as DíVana Tendi, Eugene Cordero as Rutherford, and Gabrielle Ruiz as T’Lyn in episode 2 of season 5 of Lower Decks (Paramount+)

Tawny, there is a big emphasis on character growth this season for all the characters, including tying up some loose ends with Mariner. Did you approach it in a different way, possibly even looking for closure? Or was this approached as just another season?

Tawny Newsome: Well, we didn’t know that we were going to be tying anything up. So I definitely didn’t approach it like the final season. No, I was just like doing Mariner, experiencing the growth that’s written in for the season. But definitely in the final episode, that went through a lot of rewrites. And there is more of a button placed on everyone in the story so it can be a nice, healthy pause. I say pause pause because who knows what could happen in the future. But no, if you’re asking if I did anything special to prep for this season, the answer always is no. [laughs]

Jack and Tawny, coming back from doing the live-action Strange New Worlds crossover, what was it like returning to voicing the characters for season 5?

Jack Quaid: I feel like Boimler is just like, way more in my body now. I got to voice him for years, but that was really just my voice. And then when we did the crossover, I tried look at what the animators did for the character of Boimler on Lower Decks and try to copy some of those mannerisms. And now that’s just kind of in me when I record. So it’s just been this weird relationship… and in life.

Tawny Newsome: Yeah, I’ve seen the [Boimler] moves bleed into your life. Which is very…

Jack Quaid: Yeah, I don’t know where I end and where Boimler begins.

Tawny Newsome: I love it. I feel that wig that was on me just bouncing back and forth. Now, when I’m in the booth, that little ponytail, it really does a lot for the voice acting. I don’t know if you hear ponytail?

Jack Quaid: I hear the ponytail.

Eugene Cordero: And we [pointing to himself and Noël] would like the opportunity to answer that question at one point. Very much. We would love to be able to answer that one in the future.

Tawny Newsome as Mariner and Jack Quaid as Boimler in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount+)

For Noël, what have you learned about yourself playing Tendi?

Noël Wells: Oh, gosh. Okay, so Tendi is so optimistic and so voraciously embracing her life and her passions. And everybody likes her, for the most part. And for me, I have found that that is a deep part of my personality, but it’s been kind of repressed or it’s oftentimes met with people who are pretty cynical. And so it’s allowed me to embrace those parts of myself and not hide them as much. And so Tendi has taught me that my enthusiasm and unbridled curiosity about how life works can actually be an asset in the world. [Laughs] This makes me sound so sad, [mockingly] “No one liked me before Tendi.”

Jack Quaid: We love Noël. We love Tendi. Because just like Tendi, Noël was a murder pirate.

Noël Wells: Yeah, life was hard back then, but I found my people.

Noël Wells as D’Vana Tendi in episode 1 of season 5 of Lower Decks (Paramount+)

Knowing how deep you have all got into your characters, have you developed any head-canon for your characters beyond the screen?

Eugene Cordero: I have, but then I feel weird because I feel Mike McMahan has deleted it from my brain and taken it away. So I haven’t put anything thought into it and just enjoyed. And I think with this show, there’s so much going on and all five seasons have been so fun that I’m just excited for what the writers—who are great writers and creator—have made. So I don’t need to add anything. All the imagination is there for me, for Rutherford, at least.

Tawny Newsome: Same. There isn’t room. The fact that Mike managed to get in Mariner’s backstory in Episode 409 tying her back to Sito Jaxa in “The First Duty” from that TNG episode, that’s wild that he was able to pull that off in such an artful way that was still very funny. In 22 minutes, there’s no room for head-canon. Mike has jam-packed this thing in such a beautiful way that I spend my head-canon on other things.

Noël Wells: For me, Tendi kind of came out on her own, it just happened and then the writers and Mike made her even better. And they were following things that I accidentally did, and then fed them back to me. They’re like, “Could you do that thing you did that one time?” and I have no idea what you’re talking about. And then they’ll play it back and so that became part of the canon and her world. But if I tried to plan it, I don’t think it would be as—I don’t know, just as collaborative. I feel like she already existed somewhere in the universe and it was just happening. [laughs]

Jack Quaid: What I love about Boimler actually is he has the least amount of backstory exploration. But I think that that’s perfect for him, because I think all you really need is he grew up on a raisin vineyard, and he doesn’t want to be a raisin farmer. So he just wants to rank up in Starfleet. That’s all you need. I it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Mike crushed it… I do want to meet Boimler’s parents, because they’ve got to be weird. And I want to know if they all have purple hair, or if that is a choice.

Jack Quaid as Boimler, Eugene Cordero as Rutherford, and Tawny Newsome as Beckett Mariner n episode 1 of season 5 of Lower Decks (Paramount+)

What do you all think the legacy of the show will be?

Jack Quaid: Oh man, that’s a really good question… I just love that it has brought animation to the Star Trek franchise. I’m just such a fan of animation. And I love that we get to make a very silly cartoon canon to the Star Trek universe, even to the point where we’re crossing over into live action. And these characters exist and they’re around. They’re in this world. I don’t know. I love that they made a silly cartoon that wasn’t like a throwaway gag. It actually matters within the world. So, yeah, that’s one of the things I absolutely love about it.

Tawny Newsome: I think it really cemented the weirdness, like the weirdness that has always been present in Trek in little drips and drabs. When you have episodes like “Who Mourns for Morn?” or anything kind of tonally strange. I always think about Iggy Pop in “The Magnificent Ferengi.” Like that is the strangest guest performance in all of Star Trek. And people are like, “Oh yeah, Iggy Pop was in Star Trek.” And I’m like, “No, watch it again.” That is like an acid trip. And I feel like our show is just like a series of acid trips that we’ve just made canon. It’s a very purposeful weirdness that we’re going like, “No, no, no, this is part of the franchise, it always has been, but this is very intentionally here to stay.”

Eugene Cordero: What it has added to the world of Trek is has given you a different perspective of where you stand in the world. Like you can be a beginner—you can be just starting out—and that’s just as important and have a place here as much as anywhere else. You don’t have to be the captain. You can be the ensigns and have a story and have your voice heard. I think that’s something that the younger generation of Trek feel like they’re included in that way. And I think that that’s something that this has brought that’s different.

Noël Wells: I also think the fact that it’s animation, the storylines got to go anywhere and do anything. I feel like the imagination has really been opened up. I mean, it was always been that way, but you’re not constricted by… [Eugene interjects: “CGI and makeup.” Jack adds: “Real practical effects.”]… So it’s just gotten even bigger.

Noël Wells, Eugene Cordero, Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid and Mike McMahan attend the Lower Decks Reception during New York Comic Con at Bar Primi on October 19, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Santiago Felipe/Getty Images for Paramount+)

The fifth and final season of Lower Decks debuted on Thursday, October 24 on Paramount+ in the U.S. and internationally. New episodes of the 10-episode-long season will drop every Thursday on the service leading up to the series finale on Thursday, December 19.

For more, check out our NYCC interview with series creator and showrunner Mike McMahan.

Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.

NOTE: Interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.