Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2's Carol Kane on Funny Women as Starship Engineers and Being Yanked Into Sci-Fi

Playing Pelia, the Enterprise's new Chief Engineer, in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is Carol Kane's introduction to the world of sci-fi. Kane has had a stellar career as an actress, including an Academy Award-nominated performance in 1975's Hester Street, roles in beloved films including The Princess Bride, Scrooged, and Dog Day Afternoon, playing Madame Morrible on stage in Wicked, and her hilarious turn as landlady Lillian Kaushtupper in the Netflix original series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. But she tells ComicBook.com during the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 press junket that she has "never ever, ever -- did I say ever -- known anything about the sci-fi world. For some reason, it just wasn't something that I veered toward."

Yet, Kane's Strange New Worlds casting continues a recent trend in modern sci-fi, casting funny women in engineering roles. Star Trek: Discovery did it by casting comedian Tig Notaro as engineer Jet Reno, who's surprisingly sarcastic for a Starfleet officer. Fellow comedian Amy Sedaris brings a sillier energy to a similar role in the Star Wars universe, fixing up Din Djarin's ship as Pelli Motto in The Mandalorian. We asked Kane about the trend. She thinks the reason for it is pretty straightforward.

"I think the reason is because the people you mentioned, and certainly many, many more, are really good at it," Kane says. "I think that's the reason and that maybe for a long time people always thought, 'Oh, an an engineer is a man,' et cetera, but that's obviously changing, and then there's a big wonderful pool of talent that they can choose from, and so it's just a good evolution and it runs along with the times."

How Carol Kane Handles Star Trek's Technobabble

Kane goes on to say that since she's been "yanked" into the sci-fi realm, she's "just been having a ball," calling it "a great new discovery." But being an engineer in the Star Trek universe means speaking in the franchise's signature pseudo-scientific technical jargon that fans and series veterans call "technobabble." Kane shares with us her secret to getting those lines out.

"Repitition, repetition, repetition," she says. "That's it. For me, I just have to run it over and over and over and over until my mouth and my brain can wrap themselves around the technobabble and make it seem like something I'm knowledgeable about, and I have to know what I'm talking tabout to say it as well. That's the biggest challenge."

But playing Pelia comes with some exciting perks as well. "I think it's exciting to be playing someone who is not afraid of their own knowledge and their own power," Kane says. "There's kind of a freedom that I've been given by the way she was written and I just love that. It's a new thing for me."

When is the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 release date?

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds stars Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Una Chin-Riley, Ethan Peck as Spock, Jess Bush as Christine Chapel, Christina Chong as La'An Noonien-Singh, Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura, Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas and Babs Olusanmokun as Joseph M'Benga. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 also brings back special guest star Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk and adds Carol Kane in the recurring role of Pelia. CBS Studios, Secret Hideout, and Roddenberry Entertainment produced Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2. Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers are co-showrunners.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 premieres on Paramount+ on Thursday, June 15th in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. The second season will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in South Korea, with the premiere date to be announced at a later time. New episodes of the 10-episode season will then debut weekly on Thursdays. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 is already streaming. It is also available as home media on Blu-ray, DVD, and 4k UHD.