Badaki said that she loved the script, and was happy to be involved, but the size of her role was a little intimidating. This wasn’t just a standard guest role, but required reciting pages and pages of dialogue. Badaki said: 

“[T]here was a brief moment of panic when I realized how many lines I had, and how many speeches. I was excited about it, but also, that’s the part about being a fan of something that you get to work on. There’s the love and the joy and you’re excited, but you also feel the responsibility to this world. You want to do good by it because it’s something that you’ve loved for so long. And also, wanting to give that experience to the fans, being one of them.”

One can only imagine the pressure an actor experiences when becoming involved with such a long-lived entertainment empire like “Star Trek.” Trekkies are passionate people who love to argue and nitpick, and if Badaki was also a Trekkie, she would be understandably nervous. 

But then she cycled through to a deep appreciation, saying: 

“[T]here was a slight moment of panic, I’ll be honest with you. And then, it just went back into the awe of this space, this world. Getting to do it with this incredible cast. Those were my initial reactions: it was joy; panic; awe.” 

Badaki also admitted that she took a great deal of performance inspiration from a known “Star Trek character, namely Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” From Goldberg, she took an element of “kind inscrutability.”