Star Trek: Discovery’s Tig Notaro Has Smaller Role in Season 4

Tig Notaro, who plays Jett Reno on Star Trek: Discovery, says she’ll have a smaller role than intended on season 4 due to COVID worries. Notaro, best known as a stand-up comedian and comic actor, joined the cast of Star Trek: Discovery season 2 as a guest star, playing the engineer. She returned for season 3, again as a guest, and has appeared in nine episodes over the past two seasons. The actor brings her trademark sardonic humor to the role and is one of the more popular minor characters on the well-regarded Star Trek show.

Notaro, who made headlines in 2012 after producing a live stand-up show based around her breast cancer diagnosis, is also set to appear in Zack Snyder’s 2021 Netflix zombie movie, Army of the Dead. She replaced fellow comic Chris D’Elia after he was accused of multiple counts of sexual misconduct. Both the Star Trek: Discovery role and the Army of the Dead part are a departure from Notaro’s usual roles, but she seems to have embraced the diversity in parts and is expanding the focus of her career. She is set to return for season 4 on Discovery but recently revealed her role would be smaller than it was supposed to be.

Speaking on the Fitz Dog podcast (via trekmovie.com), Notaro says she was initially set to do two stints on season 4, one in November and one in May. Unfortunately, Notaro decided she didn’t want to risk traveling from her base in Los Angeles to Toronto for the first block of filming, as she felt the coronavirus risk was too high. She is hopeful the pandemic will be better by the second stint in May but says if not, she’ll drive up rather than risk flying. You can read her full comments below:

I’m just a recurring character on Star Trek and it’s in Toronto and I didn’t feel safe flying, so I forfeited some work there. But the other chunk of work is supposed to be in May and so hopefully things will be in better shape with the pandemic in May. And if not, I’ll just just drive out there probably. So hopefully in May I can go back out and finish, but it was just too much for me to go two times to Toronto for one season as a guest star. But I love it.

Notaro’s hesitance to travel for the show more than once is entirely understandable given her past health problems. Her battle with breast cancer, though successful, would still place her in the vulnerable category, and she’s likely at a higher risk of having complications from the virus if she contracts it. However, the good news is she’ll still return for Star Trek: Discovery season 4, just not in as many episodes as originally intended.

One wonders if the earlier episodes had to undergo any rewrites to explain the character’s absence or if her lines were given to other characters. With shooting still underway for a few months yet, the showrunners are likely still solving this, though as a guest star, it’s unlikely Notaro’s absence would have been too disruptive. However, it’s yet another case of the pandemic having unintended effects on popular movies and TV shows, proving even with COVID safety protocols in place, Star Trek: Discovery wasn’t unaffected.

Source: Fitz Dog podcast (via trekmovie.com)

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Daniel Gillespie
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Daniel Gillespie has been a writer and editor since 2009.

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