By GustavoLeao / 04:07, 3 January 2013 / General Star Trek

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TrekCore posted a new extensive interview with TNG actress Denise Crosby and here are excerpts.

TrekCore: What can you remember about your last day on the set, do you have any memories of it?

Denise Crosby: Sure, I mean I thought that would be the last day and they came down with a cake and you know… But my favorite thing is when Rick Berman, the producer, came down to the set and the very first thing he did was pull off my communicator from my uniform and said, "Well, won't be needing that anymore!" [...] You used to just stick [it on with] velcro and it was just like some weird symbolic gesture… I don't know if he thought I was going to sell it on eBay or you know... I mean they all looked the same - it wasn't like mine was any special thing - it was just a very strange thing - I'll never forget that. "Won't be needing that anymore!" <chuckling> I was surprised he didn't take out the rank pins...

TrekCore: <laughing> Like when they punch through the hats in Mary Poppins… "You're no longer a banker… leave!"

Denise Crosby: Exactly… "Bye-bye!"

TrekCore: So the villain you came back to play afterwards, Sela, was loved by fans so much. What was the inspiration behind that from the writers' standpoint and from your standpoint? And where did that blonde wig come from? Whose idea was that?

Denise Crosby: Isn't that bizarre… a blonde Romulan? Well because of her being half human and Tasha's daughter… The idea for Sela really came about from me. I had approached the producers after "Yesterday's Enterprise" with the idea that maybe Tasha, when she went back on the Enterprise C, that she… I mean it was clearly established she and Lt. Castillo were in love… what we didn't know is that Tasha was pregnant with Lt. Castillo's baby. So that when they get engaged in this huge battle with the Romulans and everybody is just crashed… and decimated the ship… Tasha is still alive. And the Romulans take her as a prisoner so that they can raise this human baby as their own and use it as a tool against the Federation.

TrekCore: How did you come up with that? Was that just thinking one day, "Hmm?" <laughing>

Denise Crosby: <laughing> Sitting around, twiddling my thumbs and you know…

TrekCore: "Let's get back into The Next Generation somehow…"

Denise Crosby: Yeah I don't know… maybe it was in the air, you know people had maybe sort of talked to me about… you know at a convention or something… somehow I just composed this whole concept and I think it was because I had come back once, I thought, "Maybe we can find another way to come back." So I pitched it. I called up Rick Berman and I went to lunch with him and I had lunch with him at the Paramount commissary and I said, "I have this idea." And I gave him this idea and he kind of looked at me and went, "Interesting, let me think about it." And I thought…

TrekCore: This was after stripping your commbadge of course… <chuckling>

Denise Crosby: Yes, right, but you know you had to go to him and I thought, "Well okay that's it… he's just obliging me and being polite. I'l never hear from him again." A couple months went by and he called up and said, "We're going to go with that idea you had, changing it a little bit. Instead of Lt. Castillo and you, she was held as a concubine by a Romulan General… so she's half Romulan, she's going to come back and she's going to taunt… you know she's going to be a Commander in the Romulan forces so she's going to hate the Federation and hate her parents and hate her mother, her mother's people…

TrekCore: A lot of, I think frustration, came in with fans towards the end of The Next Generation movie run that you weren't brought back for any of those, especially with Nemesis since it was Romulan centered… Was there any talk or was there any approach to you from the producers about a cameo in that film.

Denise Crosby: I called them and asked them when I got wind of… that it was going to be a Romulan feature… "Can I come back?" And Rick Berman said, "You know we thought of it, we brought it up, but we can't see any way that Sela would be around."

The full interview is here.