‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Star Christina Chong Discusses Her Heartbreaking Childhood Connection to La’an Noonien-Singh

[Warning: This story contains spoilers for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode “Memento Mori.”] 

Christina Chong instantly understood her Star Trek: Strange New Worlds character, La’an Noonien-Singh. It was a heartbreaking realization.

Her mother English and her father Chinese, the actress was brutally teased in her youth because of her ethnicity. Mostly, it was the last name that made her an easy target for the spewed venom, she explains to The Hollywood Reporter.

La’an, the Enterprise’s newly assigned chief of security, faced similar struggles in her youth as a descendant of the Augment tyrant Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban). She is tormented and ridiculed, thus as an adult struggles with self-acceptance and building personal relationships. Bottom line: She has some serious walls.

But in Thursday’s episode titled “Memento Mori,” La’an begins to soften as some complicated layers are peeled back while she faces her greatest fear, in arguably the most intense and emotional chapter yet in the new Paramount + series.

In her chat with THR, Chong discussed turning pain into strength and using all those emotions to better capture the complexities of La’an, all the while developing a new appreciation for the lessons of Star Trek.

We are finally getting to see what a deep and complex person La’an truly is. Between feeling like an outcast for being Noonien-Singh to a horrifying Gorn survival backstory, can you talk about developing her character’s composition?

What I connected to was being judged for who you are and your name. Although my mom is English, my dad is Chinese. And I don’t necessarily look English, and I don’t necessarily look Chinese, but my name is Chong. And throughout my childhood, that brought on bullying and racism. The whole journey of both being judged, having that stigma attached to a name and who you are, was easily translatable and easy to personalize.

How awful you connected to La’an for such a horrible reason.

I had this deep kind of feeling of being ashamed growing up. I remember being at school and if my mom would say, “Your dad is picking you up tonight,” fear would set in because I thought, “If Dad comes to pick me up, everyone will be reminded I’m part Chinese, and the next day the bullying is going to be even worse.” I felt that shame, and I never really wanted to be seen around my dad because of that. I remember this one time walking through the playground to the car and people pulling their eyes in front of my dad.

It was only really when I was about 14, and I went to a performing arts school where everyone was from a different background, that for the first time I felt accepted for who I was. They all were talented, and they all wanted the same thing. And that’s parallel to the crew on the Enterprise. La’an comes onto the Enterprise, and they accept her for who she is. It’s been an incredible journey, how Star Trek has enabled me to use my experience and put that into her. Timing-wise, it all sort of clicked.

In addition to the deep, emotional connection, did you realize right away the strong, classic Star Trek threads in her DNA via Khan and the Gorn?

I had to do a lot of research. There was a two-week quarantine period where I just completely blitzed The Original Series and Discovery. I didn’t really know anything when I’d been given this role. I accepted the job obviously knowing that it’s a huge franchise, and when they told me about Khan, I was just like. “Wow, this is an amazing character arc!” And it’s crazy that you get to know so much about her in such a short period of time, especially in episode four. You get a full history of what she’s been through and understand why she’s so guarded.

On top of all those layers, it seems to me she is plagued with serious survivor’s guilt over the Gorn massacre, which is making her even more closed off to any personal connections. Am I on the right track?

You’ve nailed it on the head. It’s the fibers of guilt, but it’s also accepting her personal loss. The Enterprise crew is her new family. In a way, she’s taken her role as security chief to protect her new family. I think why she’s holding herself back is for her, if you love somebody, they then get killed. So, it’s better to remain guarded, keep that distance. But then when she is faced with her biggest fear, her walls do start to come down. And I think she really starts to realize she’s got to take these risks if she wants to really live. She has to start opening up and connecting and letting people in. She’s still got a long way to go, and that’s her main journey throughout the season.

Backtracking for a moment, that was an intense fight between La’an and Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) in episode three. Tell me about training for that moment.

A lot of rehearsal went into that because we didn’t film the fight when we filmed the episode. That was filmed later as a pickup day, so we had a lot of time to rehearse. But it’s funny, every time we came into the rehearsal room, it would change. So it was like, that fight you learned last week, it’s now this. That happened about five or six times because of things still working out, like the set and different ideas. We did do a lot of it ourselves, but I have to say that the credit goes to our stunt doubles. We did do a lot, but those tricky big throws and lands — all them.

And lastly, I would love to hear what the show has come to mean for you. In my previous cast interviews, I was told the bonds and friendships became strong instantly. Accurate for you, too?

I had no expectations for this show coming in because I had no real knowledge of how Star Trek was loved because if you don’t watch, you don’t understand. For me, coming in, it’s been such a huge gift to slowly unravel. The cast is incredible. We all bring something unique. I love that we all have different personalities, which somehow, weirdly gel on- and off-set. But the biggest revelation for me, on a personal level, was the message that Strange New Worlds continues to pass on of hope, diversity and inclusion.

Interview edited for length and clarity. 

New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds stream Thursdays on Paramount+.