Interesting stuff, but what does an actor know about this kind of thing?<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Now Mount is bringing his stories from that role to New Zealand for the first time this month at Auckland\u2019s Armageddon Expo. <\/p>\n
While his Star Trek universe is full of new, final frontiers for humans to encounter, Mount implies this is a rather outdated concept. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a physicist I heard talking in a little blip somewhere on social media. He said if there\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a 19th-century science fiction concept that was established before we understood the distances that we\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anson Mount in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022). Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
He admits even before he joined the cast, he was a genuine Star Trek fan.<\/p>\n
For Mount, joining the Star Trek universe has \u201cbeen a dream come true for a dream I didn\u2019t even know I really had\u201d. And while he might think taking over the universe isn\u2019t the job of humans, our ability to communicate with it is a different story. <\/p>\n
It all started with a conversation he had in 2017 on his science and creative thinking podcast, The Well.<\/p>\n
In a discussion with Dr Doug Vakoch, the director of METI International, Mount became interested in the way we talk to the universe.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Mount joined the organisation\u2019s board after the interview with Vakoch and is keen to share what he\u2019s learnt through its work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more I learn through science, the more spiritual I become,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also hard to wrap your head around what a million, much less a billion years, actually means; 75,000 years of Homo sapiens\u2019 existence compared to the 13 billion years of the universe\u2019s existence. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not just missing each other here [in distance], we\u2019re also possibly missing each other in terms of different planes of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anson Mount (right) as Cullen Bohannon in Hell on Wheels.<\/p>\n
Besides his role as USS Enterprise and Discovery Captain in the Star Trek universe, Mount\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 character Charlotte York crabs.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a fairly practical actor. I\u2019ve 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\u2019s directly in front of me, whether I\u2019m doing an Off-Broadway play or I\u2019m doing a studio film or whatever it is,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re a guest star, you just try to show up, do the job they\u2019re expecting you to do, and go home.\u201d<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been wanting to go my whole life. So, I\u2019m looking forward to it. I have friends from there and every picture I\u2019ve seen of New Zealand is gorgeous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mount offers to catch up for a beer when he\u2019s in town. I gladly accept, eager to soak up his knowledge and chat about what this crazy universe has in store for us next.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll 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. <\/p>\n
What creativity does he have in store for the lucky dozen?<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly have no clue what we\u2019re going to make yet, but it should be fun\u201d.<\/p>\n
Anson Mount will appear on the panel and in person at Armageddon Expo, October 23-26 at Auckland\u2019s ASB showgrounds. Tickets via iTicket.<\/p>\n
Mitchell Hageman joined the Herald\u2019s entertainment and lifestyle team in 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist for Hawke\u2019s Bay Today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Interesting stuff, but what does an actor know about this kind of thing? Mount, 53, spent nearly 60…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3376,27324,308829,12642,59677,1975,51,156,298209,190768,87070,30538,424,13233,111,139,69,6045,16487,392,2737,11227,61,115741,6730],"class_list":["post-629393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-actor","tag-alien","tag-anson","tag-appear","tag-armageddon","tag-at","tag-auckland","tag-entertainment","tag-explored","tag-expo","tag-forms","tag-helping","tag-life","tag-mount","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-reality","tag-shape","tag-space","tag-star","tag-talk","tag-to","tag-trek","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}