And ten days later, I had a final audition with Rick Berman and Michael Piller. I auditioned for a room of suits at Paramount with my good friend Max Grodenchik. Six weeks later, my agent called and said I had a callback. But eventually, I assumed it wasn't going to happen, and I was heartbroken. A good six weeks went by, and I heard nothing. I was one of the earliest actors to audition for Quark. When I first found out about the role, I browbeat my agent to get me auditions. I auditioned for the role three times, and I went through a lot of angst. I assumed, wrongly, that because you already played a Ferengi in The Next Generation, the Deep Space Nine role as Quark was more or less locked up. I remember one person-I can't remember who-came up to me and said, "Armin, you know about this. And for the first year, other members of the cast would come up to me and ask me questions. As a young man, I would rush home to make sure I caught every episode. I watched the original show (1966) when it aired. Given that you were so passionate about righting this wrong, were you a Star Trek fan even before appearing on the shows? It was my personal agenda to rectify the mistake I made-to take a one-dimensional character and make him a three-dimensional character. All of my work on Deep Space Nine, for the first four seasons, was me trying to eradicate that original performance from everyone's mind. I didn't put it behind me for years it was like sword of Damocles hanging over my head. And no one one bears the brunt of that mistake more than I do.Īre you able to put a disappointment like that behind you after it's finished? But I met him briefly-maybe no more than 30 seconds-when he looked at my makeup and looked at my costume. By that point, he was rather sick, and he was not on set. My final performance was not at all what Gene Roddenberry wanted. And unfortunately, they hired me to play one of the lead Ferengi, and I failed miserably. They were never meant to be a comical race they were meant to be ferocious and menacing. The Ferengi were going to be the new Klingons. What were you told about the Ferengi at the time?Īrmin Shimerman: Well, what we were told about the Ferengi and what we ended up with were like night and day. Gamespot: The first time you played a Ferengi was not on Deep Space Nine, but on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Last Outpost" in 1987. Shimerman will reprise the role of Quark for "Victory is Life," the upcoming Star Trek Online expansion due out this June. In an interview with GameSpot, the actor behind Quark, Armin Shimerman, reflected on the show's legacy and the character's place in Star Trek history. The bar was a center for gossip, illicit dealings, and backroom negotiations, which in turn drove the show's larger plot points. Quark was a Ferengi-a money-hungry scoundrel with a heart of gold-who ran a bar/casino on Deep Space Nine's promenade. The characters were deeper and more nuanced than in previous Treks, and the writers dug down on a handful of issues, rather than superficially exploring a wide range of them.Īnd the funniest, unlikeliest breakout star of the show was Quark. Multiple episodes formed massive plot arcs. The crew members were not seeking out adventure more often, the adventure found them. They had several preoccupying, persistent concerns over a period of years, from the rebuilding of war-torn Bajor to the guardianship of an Alpha Quadrant to Gamma Quadrant wormhole. Captain Sisko's crew members manned a space station, not an exploration vessel like the Enterprise. When Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered in 1993, it was unlike any other Star Trek show up to that point.
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