Star Trek: Patrick Stewart Expects to Take More Risks in Picard Season 2

Patrick Stewart foresees more risk-taking in the second season of Star Trek: Picard. The first season of the series debuted earlier this year, bringing back Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard and teaming him with a brand new cast of co-stars. That cast — minus one, maybe — will return for the show’s sophomore outing, which is now in pre-production. CBS is pushing the show for Emmy Awards consideration. As part of that push, Stewart spoke to The Los Angeles Times alongside season one showrunner Michael Chabon. Stewart says the relationships and trust built between the members of the show’s cast throughout Season One will lead to more significant risks in Season Two.

“There was no socializing [between the actors] for the first five months — we were shooting,” Stewart says. “When we came to the end of the series, we had promotional activities to engage with and we were traveling together on airplanes and got to know one another so much better. This is going to be a new element in Season 2, that there is a lot of mutual respect everywhere. If you know you can take risks, and there is a network around you that if you crash land, they will catch you, it’s a wonderful feeling. That’s how I feel now. I feel safe.”

CBS All Access renewed Star Trek: Picard in January, ahead of the show’s debut. The producers intended for production to begin this summer, but the coronavirus pandemic caused a delay.

“We were not shooting,” Picard co-creator Akiva Goldsman said in May. “We were to start shooting in June, which I guarantee you we will not unless the world opens tomorrow. We had broken the season. We were about halfway through the writing of it. You know, we will start as soon as we can once the world opens, you know? Prep will have to resume, and then we’ll start. We know what it is, and it’s cool. And we’re excited by it, and I feel like we learned a lot from season one. Of the things I have in my life, it is the one that is most imminent when the world opens. It’s the one that feels like that’s the thing, at least in my life, that’s going to come back fastest.”

Despite that, the show’s writers are at work crafting the second season’s narrative. The first season of Star Trek: Picard is streaming now on CBS All Access.