Having already collected fans from her starring roles in Orphan Black and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Tatiana Maslany is adding another major genre credit to her resume. She’s set to recur on the upcoming Star Trek TV show Starfleet Academy, which will premiere sometime in 2026. One of her co-stars on the project is Paul Giamatti, who’s playing Starfleet Academy’s main villain. Maslany opened up to CinemaBlend about working with The Holdovers actor, but what really got me jazzed was when she shared her fandom for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, one of my favorite shows in the franchise.
What Tatiana Maslany Said About Acting With Paul Giamatti In Starfleet Academy
Our own Sarah El-Mahmoud spoke to Maslany at San Diego Comic-Con about her new movie Keeper, which opens this November on the 2025 release schedule. When Starfleet Academy came up in the conversation, the actress said this about her experience on set with the man we’ll be seeing this September in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale:
I was working with Paul Giamatti, which is cuckoo bananas. [Paul] is like a big kid. Like he’s so playful. It can be so much fun to play and to act in this kind of genre where you’re allowed to be a little bit bigger… You can stretch and expand and go a bit bigger than you usually do. That was really, really cool.
Alas, we still don’t know the identities of Tatiana Maslany and Paul Giamatti’s characters in Starfleet Academy, though thanks to EW, we now know that Giamatti had his pick of five roles when courted to come aboard. Regardless, it’s good to hear from Maslany that she enjoyed her time alongside him, as well as appreciated how she was able to push her acting abilities further than the kind of movies and TV shows she usually does. That makes me all the more eager to learn how she fits into the next Star Trek series.
Why Tatiana Maslany Likes Star Trek: Deep Space Nine So Much
As far as what she did to prepare for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Tatiana Maslany was already a fan of the franchise before being cast. However, getting the gig pushed her to watch all of Deep Space Nine for the first time, and it didn’t take long for her to become a passionate fan. As Maslany explained:
I fell in love with Deep Space Nine because I wanted to start understanding this world in a different way than I had. I’d seen The Original Series and films and blah blah blah, and my husband’s a big Trekkie, but okay. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna start watching Deep Space Nine.’ I watched seven seasons in three months, four months. [I’m] obsessed! [I] am so excited by what it can say about the world politically, all of that. I just think that it’s ahead of the game. It’s braver in a lot of ways or can be braver to actually call things for what they are, but do it in this kind of veiled allegory. Deep Space Nine does that like incredibly. There’s a lot there to dig into and it’s also just really fun.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is very much an underrated offering in the Star Trek franchise, and I recommend to any people who haven’t seen the show to rectify that by streaming it with a Paramount+ subscription. Airing from 1993 to 1999, Deep Space Nine started off episodic like The Original Series and The Next Generation before it, but embraced in its later seasons, long before that was popular on television. I’m glad Tatiana Maslany liked the show so much that she binged it in just a few months and admires how it tackled political topics.
That’s not to say that Starfleet Academy will have a Deep Space Nine feel to it, but at least me and the other fans of the latter series can count Maslany among our ranks. As for the former series, keep checking back with CinemaBlend for the latest news on what to expect from it.
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