Exploring Reality: What ‘Lower Decks’ Would Look Like in the Real World

Beyond these live-action offerings, Paramount+ has ventured into the animated realm with “Star Trek: Lower Decks.” This series takes a unique approach by focusing not on the high-ranking officers typically seen on the bridge, but on the everyday crew members who keep the rest of the ship running. “Lower Decks” posed an intriguing question that had long been left unasked: What if someone in a red shirt managed to survive?

Actors who have participated in any “Star Trek” media often enjoy a dedicated following that trails them to conventions and beyond. However, the cast of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” finds themselves in an unusual position. As voice actors for animated characters, their faces are not as easily recognized by fans scanning convention brochures. Fortunately, many of these actors are also known for their live-action roles, making them familiar figures to audiences outside of animation.

Tawny Newsome, for instance, voices one of the central characters on “Lower Decks,” Ensign Beckett Mariner. Mariner is a spirited rule-breaker who often finds herself at odds with her mother, the captain of the USS Cerritos. During a Comic-Con panel, Newsome described Mariner as highly proficient in all things Starfleet but lacking the ambition to climb the ranks due to her carefree, rebellious nature. “She’s just kind of like a weirdo rock-and-roll party queen who just wants to ride her skateboard and eat her piece of pizza in peace, man,” Newsome shared with attendees (via TrekMovie.com).

One of the main characters on “Lower Decks” is Ensign Beckett Mariner, a spunky rulebreaker who frequently runs afoul of her mother, who happens to be the captain of the USS Cerritos. Mariner was voiced by Tawny Newsome, who told a Comic-Con panel (via TrekMovie.com), “She is very good at all things Starfleet, she just doesn’t care. She has been demoted a ton of times. She should be way further in the ranks than she is. She is just kind of like a weirdo rock-and-roll party queen who just wants to ride her skateboard and eat her piece of pizza in peace, man.”

If Newsome looks familiar, you might be recognizing her from another space-themed show. She starred as Captain Angela Ali on Steve Carell’s ill-fated Netflix sitcom “Space Force,” acting opposite the “Despicable Me” star in a live-action comedy about people who just have to follow orders sometimes. Acting as a live-action astronaut is a different thing than a vocal performance, and Newsome told Brief Take that she worked with an advisor. “He taught me everything from how to stand, how to speak to generals and their rank, [to] how certain people should address me,” she said.

She’s also a podcaster, perhaps best known for her show “Yo, Is This Racist?” If you’re a Trekkie, you likely already know that she also co-hosts “Star Trek: The Pod Directive,” an official podcast put out by the producers of all things “Trek.”

If “Star Trek: Lower Decks” star Noël Wells were playing Ensign D’vana Tendi in real life, the role would likely mean hours in the makeup chair each morning. After all, Tendi is an Orion — a race of green aliens — and back during the filming of “The Original Series,” Yvonne Craig’s “Star Trek” makeup almost became a huge health hazard. It’s risky to be an Orion. Thankfully, Wells only had to voice Tendi, a character that creator Mike McMahan told “Comic Con” (via TrekMovie.com) was a newbie to the world of Starfleet. “Being on the ship, every day just blows her mind,” he said, considering Tendi the stand-in for how excited he would be if he got to fly on a “Star Trek” ship.

Wells is probably best known as a former “Saturday Night Live” cast member, and she told Looper sister site Slashfilm that there was actually a lot of overlap between her improv background and her “Star Trek” voice work. “I think so much of comedy is supporting the other person,” she said. “Otherwise, you’re going to be on an island on yourself, so you want everybody to win. This is a cast of people that love to make each other look good.”

Fans may also recognize the real-life Wells from roles like Rachel on “Master of None,” or Emily in the film “Mr. Roosevelt,” which she also wrote and directed.

Jack Quaid played Ensign Bradward Boimler on “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” and while Mariner is a scoundrel, Boimler loves playing by the rules. “He really wants to be a captain. He is very booksmart but constantly getting in his own way. He gets very in his head,” Quaid told Comic Con (via TrekMovie.com). “I always say he would nail the written portion of the driving test with flying colors but once it actually got to him being in the car, it would be a complete and total disaster.”

In the years since his debut in “The Hunger Games,” Quaid has racked up an impressive resume of credits likely to be familiar to fans of “Star Trek: Lower Decks.” In addition to roles in films like “Novocaine,” “Companion,” the 2022 “Scream” reboot, and “Oppenheimer,” genre fans are likely to know Quaid as Hughie from Amazon Prime Video’s darkly satirical superhero show “The Boys.” 

Quaid excels at bookish characters who are fearful of too much straying outside the lines … until, of course, they learn how. He told Nerdist that he loved portraying Hughie’s growth, reflecting, “I love that he went from a guy who wanted revenge for his dead girlfriend in season one to a character who says some pretty sobering stuff.”

Like several of the voice actors on “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” Eugene Cordero has quite the extensive comedy background. His character, Ensign Samanthan Rutherford, has a brand-new cyborg implant when “Lower Decks” begins, and there’s a bit of a learning curve for the character … which lends itself well to that aforementioned comedic timing. “He is learning and sometimes science is about learning stuff and making mistakes,” creator Mike McMahan told Comic Con (via TrekMovie.com). “He has this cyborg implant on his head that he just got and it’s like when you get a new phone and they got rid of the button, do I swipe now?”

In addition to a prolific voice-acting career that includes recurring roles on shows like “The Great North,” “Kiff,” “Krapopolis,” and “Jurassic World: Chaos Theory,” Cordero has an impressive live-action resumé too. He may look familiar because he played Casey on “Loki,” Andy on “Tacoma FD,” DJ Rosedragon on “Bajillion Dollar Propertie$,” and Pillboi on “The Good Place.” He’s also been on “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” “Key & Peele,” “The Kroll Show,” and lots more.

In fact, Cordero’s time on stage meant coming up in the scene alongside his “Lower Decks” co-star Noël Wells, so it’s fitting that Rutherford and Tendi were often paired up on the show. “My contract says that I’m only doing scenes with Noël,” he joked to TrekMovie.com, “because that’s the only one I want to do.”

Though “Star Trek: Lower Decks” focused mostly on the people who populated the — well — lower decks of the Cerritos, Mariner’s mother, Captain Carol Freedman (Dawnn Lewis), appeared on every episode of the show. Lewis told CinemaBlend that she was especially excited to join the “Star Trek” universe because she understood the power of diversity that has been part of “Star Trek’s” core since the beginning. “I saw myself in the show in Nichelle Nichols,” she said, “and saw the possibility of all kinds of different people from all kinds of different places working together, respecting each other, collaborating with each other.”

Lewis has been an important voice for diversity in live-action, too. She famously played Jaleesa on “A Different World,” the iconic spinoff of “The Cosby Show,” and she left that sitcom to join another nineties classic, “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper.” Lewis also appeared as Marcia Langdon on the 2019 revival of “Veronica Mars,” which filmed while she was also starring on stage. “As a performer, you love to be loved. You love to be wanted,” she told AZ Foothills Magazine. “We spent a lot of time jumping through this job, for other jobs, for an audition, an interview, whatever it is.” Lewis was already loved, but now that she’s part of “Star Trek,” that goes double.

Any “Star Trek” captain needs a solid first officer, and for most of “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” Captain Freedman’s second-in-command was Jack Ransom. “He is kind of like [“Star Trek: The Next Generation” fan favorite William T.] Riker if you gave him a little bit of speed and a little less shame,” creator Mike McMahan explained at Comic Con (via TrekMovie.com). Unlike Riker, who seemed to actively avoid promotion in Starfleet, Jack Ransom does indeed eventually earn the call of duty, taking over for Carol.

Jack Ransom is a reliable source for laughs, but the show sometimes used him sparingly. In the final season, however, an episode called “Upper Decks” gave actor Jerry O’Connell the starring moment he’d always wanted for his character. He told TrekMovie.com, “On the surface, he is this sort of alpha leader: ‘Follow me, lower deckers, I’ll show you the way.’ But at the same time, he’s a humble servant of Starfleet. So it’s one of the deepest characters that I’ve ever gotten to play. And it’s been an honor.”

In real life, O’Connell has been a prolific actor ever since he was young. He played Vern Tessio in “Stand By Me,” led the cast of “Sliders” for much of the nineties, cemented his stardom among millennials with “Scream 2” and “Kangaroo Jack,” and more. He’s also a personality in his own right, hosting shows like “The Talk,” “Pictionary,” and even one 2025 episode of “Big Brother.”

Though “Star Trek: Lower Decks” didn’t focus too much on the officers who ran the Cerritos, they occasionally popped in for a storyline here and there. That includes Lieutenant Shaxs, a battle-hardened Bajoran with a scar over his eye. Creator Mike McMahan explained to Comic Con (via TrekMovie.com), “[He’s] a big, muscly Bajoran who wants to eject the warp core all the time.” That tells you everything you need to know.

Actor Fred Tatasciore loved playing Shaxs, and he told BleedingCool that he was disappointed when the show ended after five seasons, insisting that the writers had two years’ worth of scripts ready to go. Still, he was happy to take the memories he could from his experience. “I pinch myself to know I got to be on … a star and regular on a ‘Star Trek’ show,” he marveled. “It just blows my mind.”

Unlike most of his co-stars, Tatasciore actually may not be all that recognizable in real life; most of his most famous roles have been voice acting. He’s voiced far too many characters to name, ranging from shows like “Teen Titans Go!,” “Family Guy,” and “Archer” to “American Dad,” “Looney Tunes Cartoons,” and the 2021 reboot of “Rugrats.” He even voiced Samuel L. Jackson in “Team America: World Police.” That’s a role we have to imagine would not be cast the same way today.

Like the actors who played various aliens with different-colored skin, Gillian Vigman would’ve had to spend quite a lot of time in the makeup chair had she played Dr. T’Ana in live action. After all, the ship’s medical officer is a Caitian, which is “Trek” for “she looks like a giant humanoid cat.” People have played live-action Caitians before, but there was a reason the race first appeared on “Star Trek: The Animated Series” (and showed up as an Easter egg you may have missed in “Star Trek: Prodigy”) for a reason — those prosthetics would’ve been rough.

Vigman, who has an impressive live-action resumé, wasn’t used to voice acting before she played T’Ana. Thankfully, she really took to the character’s most frequent hobby: cursing. Though she told TrekMovie.com that the writers literally wrote “Bleep” in her scripts, Vigman was allowed to improvise her own swear words in the booth. “So, by the time I’m done … I was so sweaty and so hyped up,” she recalled. “I felt like I was on cocaine.”

You might recognize Vigman from her roles in a number of iconic comedies, thanks to memorable appearances in films like “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” “Step Brothers,” and “The Hangover.” She’s also been all over television, from “Scrubs” to “According to Jim” and from “Parks and Recreation” to “New Girl,” “Mom,” “Goosebumps,” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Paul Scheer played Lieutenant Commander Andy Billups on 36 episodes of “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” which isn’t quite every episode of the show. Still, Billups certainly made his mark, and Scheer was happy to voice him for as many episodes as they would have him. After all, the comedian was a massive Trekkie before being cast, so he knew exactly what he was getting into by playing one of the universe’s engineers: they never get enough respect. “He’s a good boss, and I think that that was really kind of fun for me to show that,” Scheer told StarTrek.com. “I think you see these moments of, there were veneer cracks, and he can get really angry, but you get to see [this] other life.”

In real life, the trademark gap in Scheer’s teeth makes him a recognizable character actor who seems to pop up everywhere. (Speaking of archetypes that don’t get enough respect. We demand justice for character actors) He’s been a recurring presence on shows like “The League,” “Fresh Off The Boat,” “Black Monday,” “Veep,” and “Future Man,” and he is a celebrated improv comedian on stage, too. You may also know Scheer from his hit podcast “How Did This Get Made?,” where he and co-hosts June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas pick apart plenty of B-movies that are actually awesome with the right mindset.

T’Lyn was initially supposed to be a one-off “Star Trek: Lower Decks” character, someone who showed up in a Season 2 episode and then went away. The Vulcan turned out to be such a delight, however, that the writers brought her back. That’s sarcasm, for non-Trekkies. Vulcans are many things, but “delightful” isn’t one … and therein lies the reliability of the deadpan comedy of a character like T’Lyn. She was a regular part of the Cerritos crew in Season 4, to the delight of Gabrielle Ruiz, who provided her voice.

In fact, Ruiz told TrekMovie.com that she’d be happy to bring the character into the real world, insisting, “I’m already brunette, so we know I could rock that black bob wig with the headband. But I would absolutely love to be Vulcan live-action. I think it’s definitely a master class in itself, a lot of pressure, but I would be up for the challenge, just like a Vulcan would. It’s quite logical that I would do that.”

If Ruiz looks familiar, you may know her from her scene-stealing role as Valencia on “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” one of the best network TV shows it felt like no one was talking about when it was on the air. That show was a musical, so it’s safe to assume Ruiz was cast in part because of her Broadway stardom. She took the stage in “In The Heights,” “Evita,” and more before making the jump to television.

Lieutenant Kayshon wasn’t a major part of “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” but the security officer became a fast favorite. Trekkies love when the universe revives a little-seen race only to dive deep into their backstory, and Kayshon was the first Tamarian to join Starfleet. Tamarians had been introduced on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” with one of its best episodes, “Darmok,” where Picard (Patrick Stewart) and a Tamarian (Paul Winfield) must work together despite a tough language barriet. In animation — without worrying about those cumbersome prosthetics — “Lower Decks” got to bring Tamarians back for both deep lore and insightful comedy.

It helped to have a comedian like Carl Tart providing Kayshon’s voice, as the Tamarian language is complex and metaphorical. An actor who understands the importance of rhythm is crucial. But Tart revealed to Looper that he helped bring Tamarians back to “Star Trek” simply by trusting the writers. “I definitely had to study quite a bit,” he confessed. “And during the recording sessions, we had to drill certain words and certain things to make sure I got it correct, because [fans are] serious about it.”

Tart knows a thing or two about trusting writers, because in real life, he’s done a lot of writing himself. You may recognize him from “Grand Crew” or his stage career as an improv actor, but otherwise, Tart has written on shows like “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Sneakerheads,” the 2016 “MadTV” revival, and more. He joined the “Saturday Night Live” writing staff in 2024, and though he hasn’t been in front of their camera yet, there’s always time. Here’s hoping that Tart lives long and prospers.