Star Trek: Picard: Patrick Stewart Struggled Saying Goodbye to Data

The first season of Star Trek: Picard is now complete and streaming in full on CBS All Access. Recently, star Patrick Stewart has been discussing the show’s first season as part of CBS’ Emmy Awards consideration push. That includes speaking with his former Star Trek: The Next Generation co-star Wil Wheaton on a special “Away Mission” edition of The Ready Room aftershow. Now free to discuss the entire season of Picard, Wheaton asked Stewart about the defining moments for Stewart. The star named two, both of which featured other Next Generation stars. The first was with Marina Sirtis reprising her role as Deanna Troi in “Nepenthe.”

“It was a scene where Marina was talking to me about Soji and talking to me about me, and so forth. Long speech,” Stewart says. “And she did it so brilliantly. It was one of those moments which happens, I think, to all actors when I stopped being in a scene and was simply an audience admiring what was going on in front of me. I thought her work was brilliant.”

The second was in the season finale. Stewart revealed that he struggled to say goodbye to Commander Data, played again by Brent Spiner, in their final scene.

“The other one was almost the penultimate scene of the season when I was alone with Data in a strange, rather grim, grey room,” Stewart recalls. “And we were talking about his life and what he expressed as the one thing that he most missed in his life was knowing that he would die. Because of my relationship with Brent, which is very special, as are my relationships with the entire crew of the Enterprise, my principle colleagues, and there was a moment in that scene where I had to stand up out of the chair and prepare to leave the room knowing what I had agreed to do, the last thing I would do to help Data. And I had to turn and say ‘Goodbye, Commander.’ We did that shot several times because I’d get to my mark and I couldn’t say it because it was just too emotional.

“They’re both personal, in a sense. They’re both do with the actor that I was working with. But in the scene with Brent, it was also that we’d had such a long and complicated character history that, to be saying farewell to him for the very last time, was quite potent.”

The first season of Star Trek: Picard is streaming now on CBS All Acess.