Star Trek Strange New Worlds Actor Shares His Audition Tape (But It’s Not What You Expect)

Star Trek fans know Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. He embodies the role so well that it’s hard to imagine someone else portraying Pike, or Mount playing anyone in the Star Trek universe but Pike. But that’s almost what happened!

Mount first appeared as Captain Christopher Pike, the man who captained the original Enterprise before Captain James T. Kirk, in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery. Fans fell in love with Mount’s Pike, as well as Rebecca Romijn’s Number One, Una Chin-Riley, and soon after Discovery’s second season wrapped, the fandom started calling for a Discovery spinoff featuring Pike’s crew. Mount and Romijn returned for an episode of Short Treks, which heightened fans’ fervor for a Pike-centered series. In 2020, CBS All Access officially announced that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the spinoff the fans had been asking for, was headed into production. Since then, Trekkies have fallen even harder for Mount, and by extension, Captain Pike.

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But long before Mount started his journey to the Captain’s chair of the U.S.S. Enterprise, he actually took a shot at the Captain’s chair of the U.S.S. Discovery. In a recent post on Bluesky, Mount shared a clip from his audition tape, not for the role of Captain Pike, but for the role of Captain Gabriel Lorca.

Mount Bringing Lorca to Life

The one-minute clip shows a quick scene between Lorca and Michael Burnham, in which they’re meeting one-on-one for the first time. A mustachioed Mount brings all the same charisma to the role of Lorca in the scene as he does to the role of Pike in each of his appearances. From this clip, it’s actually quite easy to imagine Mount as the suave, charming version of Lorca that first presented himself to the crew of the Discovery.

As fans of the show know, the Lorca they met wasn’t who he appeared to be, though. He was the Mirror Universe Lorca pretending to be the Prime Universe Lorca, and his magnetic personality was all a cover for his real nature — a ruthless and cunning murderer. And it’s not easy to imagine Pike bringing that kind of villain to life. Not because he couldn’t, because he could, but because he’s just so good as the earnest “Boy Scout” Captain Pike.

When Not Getting the Role is a Good Thing

As Mount wrote in his post, he totally understood why the creative team behind Discovery chose Jason Isaacs for the role instead of him. Fans were quick to agree in the comments, saying that Isaacs was a better fit for Lorca, but more importantly, that Mount was a better fit for Pike.

By the time Isaacs auditioned for Lorca, he had extensive experience playing the villain. He’d brought Lucius Malfoy to life in the Harry Potter movies, portrayed the brutal British soldier Colonel William Tavington in The Patriot, and played the iconic villain Roman Castevet in a miniseries remake of Rosemary’s Baby. The hard edge these roles gave him made his turn from trusted commander to conniving villain in the second season of Discovery an even sharper betrayal. And once he was bad, he was deliciously bad, like Isaacs’ previous villains.

Again, Mount’s talent could have carried him through the role, but he probably wouldn’t have brought the same vicious edge as Isaacs. Everything about Mount says debonair, not diabolical, and that’s exactly the energy that carried Captain Pike from a regular guest appearance into his own spinoff.

If someone else had played Pike, fans might not have fallen so in love with Pike. They might not have begged for a series that followed Pike and his crew. And if that hadn’t happened, Star Trek fans would have the most true-to-Trek show of all the modern shows in the franchise.

So, honestly, it’s a really good thing Mount didn’t nail that first audition.

Release Date

September 24, 2017

Seasons

4

Creator

Bryan Fuller, Alex Kurtzman

Number of Episodes

55

Streaming Service(s)

Paramount+ , Paramount+ with Showtime , fuboTV , Spectrum

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Sources: Bluesky, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds