USA TODAY International Edition
‘ Star Trek Beyond’ becomes a tragic tribute for two
Cast stunned by loss of Nimoy, Yelchin
Star Trek Beyond was always going to deal with heartbreak.
Leonard Nimoy, the only member of the seminal TV series to join the rebooted film franchise as Spock Prime, died in February 2015 at 83 before the third
Trek film began shooting. That sadness was amplified months after filming wrapped when Anton Yelchin, 27, who played navigator Pavel Chekov, died in a freak car accident in June.
“We knew going into production this would be bittersweet because of Leonard’s loss,” says Zachary Quinto, who plays a younger version of Commander Spock in the alternate timeline. “But none us could have possibly imagined the unfathomable tragedy of losing Anton.” The credit tributes for Star
Trek Beyond ( in theaters Friday) read simply “In Loving Memory of Leonard Nimoy” before going to “For Anton.” But the impact of these deaths goes deeper.
Spock Prime is portrayed as having died in the film, sending Quinto’s Spock into an existential crisis.
“( Quinto’s) Spock faces his own mortality with his own ( future self ) passing. It just seemed like such an incredibly Trekkie idea,” says Simon Pegg, who co- wrote the movie with Doug Jung. “We had become very close to Leonard and loved the idea of this becoming part of Zach’s Spock journey. It seemed cosmically right, a fitting tribute to one of
Star Trek’s iconic faces.”
When Spock talks about his own mortality onscreen, Quinto let highly un- Vulcan- like tears flow — not hard to tap into with the loss of his close friend Nimoy.
“They were certainly authentic expressions of my sadness,” Quinto says. “It’s not easy to lose someone so dear as Leonard. I was grateful to have somewhere to put that.”
Yelchin’s untimely death was a devastating shock to the tightknit cast, coming weeks before director Justin Lin finished editing the film. Lin added a poignant image of Yelchin to a scene where Captain Kirk ( Chris Pine) toasts absent friends.
“It’s a beautiful shot of Anton, looking relaxed, like he didn’t know the camera was on him,” Pegg says. “That was a way we could at least acknowledge the awfulness of what happened.”
The emotional cast called an emergency meeting to discuss whether they would even talk about the film publicly.
“We were devastated, bereft beyond any idea. The idea of banging a drum, saying ‘ Come see this movie,’ seemed an impossible task,” Pegg says. “It’s been very difficult to process for us all. I would be lying if I said any of us have truly come to terms with it. I don’t know if we ever will.”
Pegg ultimately found the film a fitting tribute to Yelchin, whose role won’t be recast in the already- announced fourth Star Trek.
“To see him onscreen being so great, so alive, it gave me hope that he will be around forever, in some way. Even if we have lost him,” Pegg says. “For people who never met him, he hasn’t gone away and won’t go away. I found myself heartened by that when I watched the movie. That means something to us.”