Interesting stuff, but what does an actor know about this kind of thing?
Mount, 53, spent nearly 60 episodes as Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the prequel to the original TV series. Since 2019, Captain Pike has led his crew to discover, well, strange new worlds.
Now Mount is bringing his stories from that role to New Zealand for the first time this month at Auckland’s Armageddon Expo.
While his Star Trek universe is full of new, final frontiers for humans to encounter, Mount implies this is a rather outdated concept.
“There’s a physicist I heard talking in a little blip somewhere on social media. He said if there’s one thing that he would do for humanity, it would be to help us relinquish this idea that man was meant to populate the stars.
“That is a 19th-century science fiction concept that was established before we understood the distances that we’re talking about.”
Anson Mount in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022). Photo / Supplied
He admits even before he joined the cast, he was a genuine Star Trek fan.
For Mount, joining the Star Trek universe has “been a dream come true for a dream I didn’t even know I really had”. And while he might think taking over the universe isn’t the job of humans, our ability to communicate with it is a different story.
It all started with a conversation he had in 2017 on his science and creative thinking podcast, The Well.
In a discussion with Dr Doug Vakoch, the director of METI International, Mount became interested in the way we talk to the universe.
The non-profit organisation, which is headed by a board of directors and advisory council comprising academics, scientists and creatives, creates and transmits interstellar messages to attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence. It targets nearby stars, sending scientific and mathematical messages, and an observatory in Panama looks for laser pulses. None of the searches have found anything to date.
Mount joined the organisation’s board after the interview with Vakoch and is keen to share what he’s learnt through its work.
“The more I learn through science, the more spiritual I become,” he says.
“It’s also hard to wrap your head around what a million, much less a billion years, actually means; 75,000 years of Homo sapiens’ existence compared to the 13 billion years of the universe’s existence.
“We’re not just missing each other here [in distance], we’re also possibly missing each other in terms of different planes of time.”
Anson Mount (right) as Cullen Bohannon in Hell on Wheels.
Besides his role as USS Enterprise and Discovery Captain in the Star Trek universe, Mount’s got years of stage credits, had a starring role in the Western series Hell on Wheels and has been an adjunct professor of acting at Columbia University, where he gained a Master of Fine Arts in Acting.
And eagle-eyed Sex and the City fans may recognise him from his small role as Greg, a twentysomething toy-boy in the Hamptons who ends up giving Kristin Davis’ character Charlotte York crabs.
Mount lets out a wry laugh. He says it was a job any young actor would have taken for the experience and not one that stands out when he thinks over his career.
“I’m a fairly practical actor. I’ve been around long enough to understand that things like being starstruck are not very helpful to what I do, so I tend not to focus on those things and just do the job that’s directly in front of me, whether I’m doing an Off-Broadway play or I’m doing a studio film or whatever it is,” he says.
“When you’re a guest star, you just try to show up, do the job they’re expecting you to do, and go home.”
As for his upcoming New Zealand trip, the former Boy Scout is excited to tick Huka Falls and the Waitomo caves off his bucket list.
“I’ve been wanting to go my whole life. So, I’m looking forward to it. I have friends from there and every picture I’ve seen of New Zealand is gorgeous.”
Mount offers to catch up for a beer when he’s in town. I gladly accept, eager to soak up his knowledge and chat about what this crazy universe has in store for us next.
He’ll also be sharing his pottery skills with 12 fans who have paid $299 each for a special Armageddon event. Mount took up pottery during the Covid pandemic, and shares his work on social media.
What creativity does he have in store for the lucky dozen?
“I honestly have no clue what we’re going to make yet, but it should be fun”.
Anson Mount will appear on the panel and in person at Armageddon Expo, October 23-26 at Auckland’s ASB showgrounds. Tickets via iTicket.
Mitchell Hageman joined the Herald’s entertainment and lifestyle team in 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist for Hawke’s Bay Today.