What It's Really Like To Play A Borg On Star Trek

Alice Krige might be playing the Witch in Gretel & Hansel, but the horror-tinged reimagining of the classic fairy tale isn't the first time that the veteran actress has played an iconic baddie. In 1996, Krige appeared in Star Trek: First Contact as the villainous Borg Queen, a role she reprised in Star Trek: Voyager and a couple of spin-off projects.

With the Borg playing a significant role in Jean-Luc Picard's latest adventures in the CBS All Access series Star Trek: Picard, we thought it'd be interesting to ask Krige about her time as the former Starfleet captain's arch-nemesis. While talking with Looper about her role in Gretel & Hansel, Krige shared her thoughts on what it takes to bring a memorable villain to life, saying,

"I'm interested in what it is to be human and to be alive. Your job as an actor is to try to bring the humanness, the frailty, the bit that we all recognize."

However, when it came to playing Star Trek's Borg Queen, finding the humanity in the character presented some difficulties, since, as Krige explained,

"I don't think she is human. No one has told me this; this is what I have come to myself, [but] I think she was an entity that happened at the moment of creation. And she's always been that and she always will be, and it is entirely abnormal."

In addition, when it comes to larger-than-life roles like the Borg Queen or Gretel & Hansel's Witch, Krige noted that it can make the task of grounding those characters particularly challenging, saying,

"You are allowed to live life through those characters as large as it is possible to write it [...] They're archetypes. Somehow they crystallize or distill the human condition [...] It's about catharsis, about the insoluble problem of being human."

On the other hand, villainous parts do provide Krige with a sense of freedom. As the actress revealed to Looper,

"With other roles, you need to try and be just like someone you'd meet in the street. You're not going to meet [the Witch or the Borg Queen] in the street. So every now and then, to be given the chance to live in the magic forest is wonderful because it crystallizes on certain levels what we all face as human beings in a very, very bold, in-your-face kind of way." Keep watching the video to see what it's really like to play a Borg on Star Trek!

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