Michelle Hurd on filming Star Trek: Picard season 2 during COVID, and keeping "Punk on Bus" a secret

Pictured: Michelle Hurd as Raffi of the Paramount+ original series STAR TREK: PICARD. Photo Cr: Trae Patton/Paramount+ ©2022 ViacomCBS. All Rights Reserved.

APRIL 27, 2022 - Over the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many productions to shut down, only to restart months later with strict protocols in place for the safety of all involved. Speaking with comicbook.com in an interview published late last week, Star Trek: Picard’s Michelle Hurd talked about how the filming process changed for second and third seasons filmed concurrently during the pandemic.

“It was a very different kind of experience,” Hurd said of the change. “Because of our protocols of having to wear masks, [...] the only people who took their masks off were the actors when we were actually shooting.” While safety protocols changed the way things are done on set, it didn’t derail the storytelling in Picard, which tackles some hard hitting topics in the series’ second season.

“I really enjoyed the scripts coming in,” Hurd told comicbook.com. “Star Trek has always been a vehicle to hold the mirror up to society, as Gene Roddenberry had always wanted, and we do that this season. We really put it in the face of our fans and viewers about the effects that we're having on this planet. So I appreciated that we were incorporating those things. And we touch on immigration, and you see how [...] Raffi and Rios are having a much more challenging time and that's the impact of their environment, of how they're being treated.”

During the interview, Hurd touched on working with Kirk Thatcher, also known as the “punk on the bus” in Star Trek IV: The One With the Whales, and now, Star Trek: Picard. Planned as an “Easter Egg” for the fans, Hurd said the hardest part was keeping Thatcher’s cameo a secret while filming in downtown Los Angeles. When conversation turned toward the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation joining Picard for season three, Hurd said she was “giddy as all get up”, adding, “These are people that I grew up watching, and just like when I first got this job [...] You tremble from the inside out.”

To learn more, check out the full interview from comicbook.com, and be sure to catch Star Trek: Picard. The penultimate episode of season two “Hide and Seek” is available to stream now on Paramount+.