Posted:
16:22:11 on July 24 2001
By: Steve Krutzler
Dept: People
The Voyager's Delights web site has transcribed the complete interview with actor Garrett Wang from the latest issue of 'Star Trek: The Magazine'. In the interview, Wang reflects on the missed opportunities as well as the successful with his character, 'Harry Kim': "Kim was an easier character to start off with, I think, because he was the youngest member of Starfleet on the crew, so by nature he was a little more naive than the rest of them - which kind of went hand in hand with myself at the time! But I did have to take away a few layers; when I started playing Kim I was probably three or four years older than he was supposed to be, so I had to go down in my maturity level a little bit."
Garrett is also very sorry that Harry and Seven of Nine never got it together, despite a few hints during Seven's early days aboard ship. "I didn't like the fact that they really dropped the ball with Kim and Seven," he says. `At one point Kim was into Seven, and then Seven calls his bluff and offers copulation; Kim turns that down - like a fool! - and then all of a sudden the Doc has a crush on Seven. I suggested to the writers that they should have a B storyline where Kim is competing with the Doctor for Seven's attention, which would have been very funny."
A salutary lesson for Harry came when he took command of an alien vessel in this season's `Nightingale'; convinced of his leadership skills, he was forced to admit he didn't know everything, and learned from the experience. "I did like that show," says Garrett. "I liked how it turned out at the end, but I would have liked to have seen Kim in some more action scenes: the three things I've always pushed for were action, humor, and getting the girl. They just kept focusing on getting the girl for a while, and they were getting the wrong girl, so I told them, `OK, that's enough romance for Kim!"
There seems to be lots of life-changing potential in Garrett's plans, but he realizes VOYAGER has been good for him in arriving at this point. "Overall it's been a wonderful opportunity for me to get in front of the camera and to do some work, and it's been a great time developing relationships with the other cast members - I think that's the funniest part of it so far. And it's been a nice haven for me, seven years of working; that's a lot of time on the time clock, especially for an Asian American male actor. Every other Asian American male I know has been struggling. It's been tough. Hollywood now is on this kick of hiring Asian men, but they're superstars from Asia that they're bringing over, and that's their cop-out.
"Kim has been a strong role, a character who has the ability to love and to laugh, and who is, really most importantly, non-stereotypical. STAR TREK has been great with that; it seems to be the only place that has allowed that to happen, it seems, starting with Roddenberry's choice of having Sulu on the cast. Most of the roles out there are very stereotypical roles, a lot of them with accents. This role is definitely the role of a decade for an Asian American male actor, that's for sure, and I happen to be the one who got it!"
For more of Garrett's comments, you may go here.
