Nicole de Boer is probably best known for her roles as Ezri Dax on Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Sarah Bracknell Bannerman in The Dead Zone, and Joan Leaven in the cult film Cube. I was fortunate enough to be able to quickly interview de Boer whilst at Winter London Film and Comic Con, and it was an absolute pleasure to meet and chat with her.
Hello, Nicole de Boer! How’s it going?
Good, thank you.
How’ve you been enjoying this weekend?
It’s been great! It’s a really nice one. I always love coming to London actually.
Ah right, do you come to London often?
Yeah, over the years I have, for things like this.
Well, glad to hear you’re having a great weekend. Now obviously you’re known in Star Trek circles for playing Ezri Dax on Deep Space Nine. Had you been a fan of the show before you took on the role?
I hadn’t really watched Deep Space Nine, but I did watch The Next Generation pretty faithfully - I loved that show - so I was pretty excited to get the part. Getting to work with Worf and O’Brien…
And how did you feel about taking on the role of Dax? Did you consider how to approach the part to make her still recognisably Dax, yet also your own take on the character?
Well it all happened pretty quickly, and they gave me some episodes to watch since I hadn’t seen much of the show, but they did say “you’re a whole new person; you’re Ezri Dax, and Jadzia will be one of many, like all the rest of them. Part of you, but we don’t want you to act like Jadzia, we want you to act like Ezri.” And on top of it, Ezri wasn’t trained to be Joined, so really you see mostly her personality. But I did notice that Terry [Farrell] walked with her hands clasped behind her back, so I decided I would do that as well, just to see Jadzia coming through a little bit. But other than that, I really had to go with what the producers wanted me to make it.
How did you feel about the character of Ezri as a whole?
I loved it. I loved that she had these challenges to deal with; it gives me something to work with as an actor, and I also did love that she had different personalities going on inside of her that we got to explore in certain episodes, like Joran the murder inside of her… That stuff was fun too.
Had DS9 gone on to film any further series, what would you have liked to see happen with Ezri?
I think it’d be really fun to come back now and see Ezri years later, more mature and definitely with a handle on the whole symbiont situation, and much more confident. And I would be a captain, of course!
Oh naturally!
That’d be great.
Although Ezri took a while to adapt, obviously not being trained to be Joined, it must have been fun as an actor to bring a new approach to the existing relationships between characters. A mix of being familiar with everyone, but only just meeting as well.
It was, yeah! It definitely was. The nice thing for me coming onto the show - as the show was already established - was that everyone else was supposed to know my character, but yet not know her, so the writers had me slowly meet everyone and I had scenes with everyone, so that helped me - as Nicole - get welcomed into the group as well. I had a nice, little lovely scene with almost everybody on the show introducing Ezri, which helped me a lot.
I particularly liked the relationship she has with Sisko, and with Quark, that was always fun. That was actually what I auditioned with, a scene between Ezri and Quark.
Ah fantastic. Did you have to audition opposite Armin Shimmerman, or was it just a cold read?
No, I didn’t actually. Just with a reader and the producers.
Out of your time on the show, what would you say was a real highlight for you?
Just the whole. I’ve worked a lot, but nothing of that magnitude. I’ve worked a lot on American shows, filming in Canada, but nothing like working on the Paramount lot, and the sets were absolutely incredible on that show. Mostly just to be in the same atmosphere as those actors; wonderful veteran character actors that I got to work with. It was a real learning experience for me, and I was very proud of it.
What was your favourite thing about DS9? Any favourite episodes to work on?
I enjoyed all of it. It was fun, but it was also a more serious set. We didn’t really joke around like on The Next Generation, it just wasn’t like that on our show, so when we did get an opportunity to have fun, that was nice, like the Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang episode where we’re all at Vic’s club; I just adore James Darren. That was really fun for me, just because it did get a little serious and tense and hard work, so that was a nice break just to have a good time.
I imagine it must’ve been a very serious production to work on, as out of all the Star Trek series DS9 had some of the darker storylines, which often spanned over many episodes. Which is something it did particularly well, also balancing that with the humour that we associate with the Trek franchise.
And there were so many lovely relationships, too. The father-son relationship with Sisko and Jake. I really liked Kira and Odo’s relationship, really beautiful. There was just so much interwoven depth, and that it was a series and not a string of stand-alone episodes, which made it different. It wasn’t really big at that time. Since then, that’s what all show’s have become; it used to be that producers would shy away from doing serials because they wanted viewers to be able to pop in and out at any time and not have to worry about the storyline and if they knew where they were, but now that’s what everybody does now, like with Abrams’s Lost and all that. You have to tell the whole story. But not a lot of people were doing that when Deep Space Nine was doing it, and that’s something I really liked about it.
And what other projects have you worked on recently? Any productions currently in the pipeline?
Well obviously I did The Dead Zone, it’s been six years since then, and Stargate Atlantis. Lately, I’ve done more like TV movies, like Lifetime TV movies, and then some bad SciFi movies which are totally to pay the bills!
Worst experience on one of those?!
Well, I try to make light of everything, but… They’re never bad, because I love the crews and we have fun. It’s just bad when they actually air. That’s the part that’s bad. I had fun enough while doing it, it was challenging to make some of these works not horrible, that’s a challenge.
But I was back on Haven again recently, which I think is a really good show, and I reprise my character on that.
I haven’t actually started watching Haven yet. I do keep meaning to get around to it!
It’s a good one.
How’s your experience been working on it?
Well I was in their very first episode, because that’s Shawn Piller - Michael Piller’s son (Michael Piller worked on Star Trek as one of the producers and writers, and then went on to do The Dead Zone with his son). Michael sadly passed away, and Shawn continued on with that company and with The Dead Zone, and after The Dead Zone ended, he started Haven. So they asked me to be on the first episode of Haven, which was really great, really fun, lovely people. And then three years later, they ask me back, so I was just back on it again this year, which was great. And I’m not dead, so who knows, I might be back again!
Fantastic, I guess we'll see! Well, thank you for your time, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Thank you, and you.
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