Original-Cin Chat: Cillian O’Sullivan on Star Trek SNW's '60s Callback Character Roger Korby

By John Kirk

As Star Trek: Strange New Worlds enters its third season, it continues to bring out the various aspects that tie it to its TOS (The Original Series) roots.

It shows up in technology, the alien species indigenous to Trek lore, but especially in characters we remember from significant episodes.

In this case, in episodes #302 “Wedding Bell Blues” and this week’s #305 “Through the Lens of Time” the audience meets renowned exo-archeologist, Dr. Roger Korby. Trek fans will undoubtably remember Korby from the TOS episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” as Nurse Christine Chapel’s former romance.

Cillian O’Sullivan as Roger Korby, fiance to Nurse Christine Chapel (below)

Originally played by Michael Strong, Korby is now played by Irish actor, Cillian O'Sullivan. Original-Cin sat down and chatted with O’Sullivan and talk about the nature of canon in re-introducing this character to Star Trek fans again – for the first time!

Christine Chapel (Jess Bush)

We began by asking how Cillian prepared for the role.

“I’m a huge Trekkie. I’ve seen all the old series, but I purposefully didn’t go back to watch Michael Strong’s performance simply because so much about Korby was going to be different. The accent was decided to be different – we are seeing a very different Roger Korby. The reason for that is because Michael Strong’s version is where Korby ends up.”

Canonically speaking, that’s brilliant. Playing with canon is always difficult because of the expectations placed upon the new creators to make sure that the new information melds seamlessly with the old. Canon should always add to continuity instead of taking from it and that is the secret rule of any prequel content. It should build up the show, not supplant it.

“I had to watch the dialogue from SNW, watch Jess (Jess Bush), who plays Korby’s romantic interest, Nurse Christine Chapel), took advantage of conversations from the writers, the showrunners, take everything that everyone wanted from Korby, add myself and showcase the three things that I thought were really important to add to Korby.”

What were those things?

“One: what does Chapel mean to him? Two: the chemistry between him and Spock. Three: understanding the darkness that he has to have inside of him. The obsession that drives him toward hunting and discovering the greatest archeological find of all time – any type of scientific find in the Federation. The obsession is clearly unhealthy and he’s willing to put himself and others at risk to make that happen.”

THAT’S canon-building.

O’Sullivan is in a sweet spot – a very enviable position for anyone entering into the franchise, in that with the limited amount of character background fans have on Korby, he has an opportunity to add his own canon to the character. The challenge, of course, is how does he preserve the continuity? We asked him if he felt the sense of responsibility that came with that task.

“Well, I did, initially. Even right up to after my first scene, really. Because the accent was going to be different.”

(As Cillian is Irish, the decision was to make Korby Irish as well, though there were a number of different accents tried, it was decided to stay with his own.)

“So, there was the question about how will this be received. But once I got over the first scene, the bright lights and the hallways of the Enterprise, being a massive Trekkie and all that (Spock is sitting right there, talking to me!), but it came down to executing what was on the page and doing my job as an actor. But it came down to this: I have to do the best job possible. The pressure was gone after that first scene.”

What Trek historians will remember though, is that ultimately, Roger Korby is a villain. He is Christine Chapel’s love interest and by the end of “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, we get a firm sense of their relationship and the deep love they had for each other. Now we get to see how that relationship starts and what came between them. Cillian’s performance of Korby is successful because he is aware of the character’s limited longevity.

Cillian shared with us how he came into the role.

“Honestly, I had just had a catch-up conversation with all my reps and I said that there were two franchises I wanted to be a part of: Star Trek and Star Wars. I wanted to be a Sith with a red lightsaber!” He chuckled.

“But I didn’t even know that they were already working on the audition for Strange New Worlds!” He laughed. “When I got the part, it was about reading off a bunch of scientific gobbledygook, to Chapel, as it turns out. It didn’t say Chapel, but that’s who it had to be.

But it was about delivering the exposition. I knew that was important and it’s a difficult thing for a lot of actors to do. There’s a lot of that in Star Trek. Also, I was lucky that it was for Korby, because as an archeologist, I knew he’d have a high interest in the things that he was saying – that it’s exciting. I went with that and delivering the chemistry with that person, whoever it was. We also tried a variety of accents – American, South African and my own and it was my own that we went with in the end.

We did the chemistry read and Jess gave me so much to work with. I’d done other chemistry reads before and the person was no help but Jess gave me everything, leaning into the camera - she’s wonderful. I had gotten the part during the SAG strike so I had to wait until after to finally hear but it all worked out in the end!”

A brief word about Michael Strong who played Roger Korby in the original episode. Though Star Trek fans only got to see one of Strong’s performances, he was a regular guest star in many contemporary television shows of the time. His talent was once credited with “being able to eke emotion out of the slightest gesture.”

Korby was a challenging character to play, surrendering his soul for the chance of technology-sourced immortality and an early look at the intersection of AI and Humanity. A complex topic for a complex actor. It’s rewarding to see O’Sullivan take great care in preserving a character that that has such a rich canonical legacy to fans.

Particularly the version of Korby that TOS fans know so very well.

“If we ever get to see that version of Korby, he’ll be a different person from the one we’ve seen in Episode Two (“Wedding Bell Blues”). But who knows? Maybe we will see some of that Korby in Episode Five?”

Promises, promises.

Episode 305 “Through the Lens of Time” drops on CTV Sci-Fi Channel and on Paramount Plus on Thursday, August 7.