He is responsible for introducing one of the most notable species in science fiction… the Nox. Armin Shimerman sits down with Dial the Gate LIVE to discuss bringing the character of Anteaus to life, concluding his Illyria novel series, and take your questions!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:41 – Welcome
2:13 – Guest Introductions
2:47 – Armin’s Book Trilogy — Illyria
8:59 – Illyria as Reading Material
20:24 – How Illyria Holds a Mirror to Modern Times
29:23 – How did COVID effect Illyria?
32:33 – Illyria Book Breakdowns
35:56 – Illyria on Audible?
37:36 – When Deep Space Nine abruptly halted production
44:03 – Make-A-Wish on the final day of filming Deep Space Nine
47:27 – The Importance of the Nox Species
48:33 – Getting Hired for SG-1’s “The Nox”
54:18 – The Nox Headdress Wilted!
57:24 – Armin was invited back to SG-1 — twice
58:54 – The Nox are the Most Powerful in Stargate
1:01:34 – Reprising Quark in Star Trek Lower Decks
1:08:12 – Memories of Rene Auberjonois
1:10:57 – Armin’s Experience on the set of Seinfeld
1:16:06 – Armin Has No Props — Not Even Ferengi Ears!
1:20:57 – The Ferengi Were the Most Fleshed Out Characters on DS9
1:23:42 – A Proud Career
1:29:57 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:30:45 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello everyone, and welcome to episode 160 of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Thank you so much for joining. We have Armin Shimerman joining us for this episode. He is responsible for creating one of the most iconic alien species in all of science fiction. I’m of course referring to the Nox. We have him for a little bit here. And if you are in the chat, you can start submitting your questions. But before we really get into the chunk of this, if you like Stargate, and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click the Like button, it really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend. And if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. And giving the Bell icon to click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guest changes. And clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few days on the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. Again, this is a live show so my team who’s put together in the YouTube chat are ready to take your questions. We’re going to be asking Armin about his time on SG-1. And also primarily his upcoming launch of his third book Illyria. He’s been working on this series for a little, you know what, let me just go ahead and bring him in and ask, rather than just go ahead and continue blubber. I have Linda “GateGabber” Furey with me as well, Producer. How are you guys doing? Armin how are you, sir?

Armin Shimerman
Very fine. Thank you. And I’d like to correct you something you just said.

David Read
Oh, please.

Armin Shimerman
It is the third book of Illyria. Illyria is a trilogy, but it is actually my sixth or seventh book that I published.

David Read
Oh, I apologize. Okay. Wow. I am sorry.

Armin Shimerman
It’s quite alright.

David Read
Okay. So this is, tell us about this series.

Armin Shimerman
Illyria, I had this idea of writing this series of novels about Elizabethan times. So the book takes place in 1583 in England, and it’s a period that I had studied since I was a college major, an English major. I am a prolific Shakespearean actor, a prolific Shakespearean teacher. And aside from studying the plays, I’ve studied the period for a great long time, I became primarily interested in a particular historical character named Dr. John Dee, who looks a little like this, if you could see.

David Read
Just a second let me pull this up here. Oh, okay. All right.

Armin Shimerman
And if he looks like a magician to you, it’s because a lot of people thought he was. But he had many, many attributes. Things that he did well, he was a great mathematician, he was a great scholar, he had the largest library in England, many people came to him to study and most likely, he was a spy for the Elizabethan crown. So, my series Illyria deals with a particular adventure that he is required to take on. An investigation into the loyalty of a particular count in the English Channel. Many people do not, are not aware that Elizabeth, Elizabethan times, and which includes both England and Europe, were taken up with a great deal of antipathy between Catholics and Protestants. It was a horrible time for people who believed in their religions, and many people suffered. My book deals with that and so Dee is asked to investigate the loyalty of a Catholic count to the Protestant Queen Elizabeth the first. In the process of getting ready for the for the mission he meets a very young Shakespeare, by young I mean 16-years-old, and takes him on as a student. Now, this book is about finding out who is responsible for smuggling traitors, for want of a better term, into England. A lot of missionaries came into England to help Catholics celebrate mass, but the government always felt that these missionaries were there to overthrow the Crown. So the story is about finding out if this count is loyal to the Queen, or is he loyal to his Catholic friends in Europe, and the story is also about how this young man this William Shakespeare of 16, who is a failed playwright and becomes this William Shakespeare that we’re aware of, here in the 21st century.

David Read
That’s always been the real big question. Linda, I’m gonna I’m gonna give you the next question. You have a young man who is, and to be fair English is very young at this point anyway, responsible for about, at that time, a quarter of the English language. In terms of the terms that we use today, we use hundreds. And where did he come up with all of this? I mean, he was either divinely blessed, or a savant or, and even after hundreds of years, no one can tap into the human soul like he can. So it’s interesting that you’re taking this direction of well, he must have had some life experience so let’s tell a story about where…

Armin Shimerman
And not just life experience, which I think is very important. I think you’re absolutely right, David, about life experience influencing Shakespeare’s abilities. But he also had to have access to a great deal of literature. Because scholars have pored over his plays and recognize the echoes from other writers. And it’s always a question of what Shakespeare was reading at the time he wrote any particular play. So in order to do that he had to have access to a lot of books. Being a relatively poor actor in the beginning of his career, he wouldn’t have had much access, he couldn’t afford books, books were very expensive. So where did he get this access? My premise is that he found John Dee rather extensive library, and was able to take advantage of that library and read things. Over the course of my research into John Dee and over the course of my writing the trilogy, I came to find that certain scholars believe that some of the books that were only to be had in John Dee’s library, scholars will cite certain books, and those books only existed in John Dee’s library. So my premise which was fantastical, when I started, may, in fact, have a lot of truth to it.

David Read
That’s the thing. We often ask, imagine if the Library of Alexandria had survived, where humanity would be now if someone had had access to a fraction of that material, and the right mind had been given access to those books. who knows where we’d be. Linda…

Armin Shimerman
John Dee, let me just finish. John Dee certainly felt the same way you do, David, and it was his modus operandi in life to to accumulate as many of those books, or copies of those books, as he could find. He was fascinated with classical scholars, and he read them and wrote about them and taught them the wisdom that those books had to other people. So Linda, yes, go ahead,

David Read
Linda. Actually, I’m very thankful Linda reads very fast. So when we have the opportunity to secure you, she went ahead and absorbed the material. And I wanted to bring her into to discuss.

Linda Furey
Yeah, I dove into all three books. And I’m enjoying them immensely. I’m not quite done with the trilogy yet. I’m about a third of the way through book three having done books one and two.

Armin Shimerman
Good for you. And they’re not that easy to read, especially in the beginning.

Linda Furey
No, I’m loving the language in them and I’ll definitely gush about that a lot. The fact that you have them speaking in the language of Shakespeare’s time, really drew me to them and just immediately hooked me. And yeah, they’re a difficult read, I was stopping a lot to look up words but I was having great fun doing that. I’m a librarian so when you give me something a little challenging, I’m like, “Yeah. Okay.” But I wanted to ask you about Twelfth Night, which figures very majorly in your storyline through all three books. Illyria is from Twelfth Night. We’ve got Count Orsino and Malvolio and the other characters. How did you make that connection? I mean, it seems like a very natural one to me that the island between France and England and the smuggling that just seems… Oh, sorry, cat. But how did that all come together in your mind that that was the direction you were taking?

Armin Shimerman
Well, first, I have to give kudos to a friend of mine, Michael, who is a prolific writer, and just for a moment my old age has wiped out his last name. Michael Scott, sorry. Michael Scott actually came up with the idea. As I was saying to David, this is not these are not my first novels. And the first novel I ever wrote was a novel called Merchant Prince, which I co-wrote with Michael Scott. And in a lovely lunch in Ireland, one day, Michael suggested that we write a series of novels, dealing with John Dee, with William Shakespeare, and with the plays. Michael and I are still good friends but with that project, he didn’t want to follow up on that he had other things that were perhaps more important for him. And, but that idea has stuck with me about mixing history and the Shakespearean plays together. So I decided to start with Twelfth Night. And it’s taken me 20 years really to finish my three books about Illyria. And I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to another play. So it starts with Twelfth Night, a play that I was very familiar with, I have directed twice. And I don’t think I’ve ever performed in but I’ve seen it dozens of times, and is perhaps one of Shakespeare’s great comedies. That and As You Like It are perhaps the two best comedies he ever wrote. So that’s how that started.

David Read
Wow. I am kind of blown away by the, I don’t know how you were able to put these out as quickly as you were, but perhaps…

Armin Shimerman
Not quickly it was 20 years in the making.

David Read
That’s certainly true. But I mean, in terms of the books, one after the other. The language in them, the prose, the fluidity of, I’m really kind of only someone who is well versed, backwards and forwards, pretty much with Shakespeare could be able to pull something like this off as convincing as you have. It’s not easy for a modern person to absorb the content in such a way as to put it back out in a language that’s kind of all its own, that you’re reading it and it flows. I don’t necessarily always get every word, like when you’re listening to Shakespeare, but I definitely understand exactly what he’s talking about.

Armin Shimerman
And you put your finger on it exactly, David. As an actor, I am very familiar with the experience that oftentimes audiences and oftentimes me when I sit in an audience do not understand what’s being said. Most of the time I attribute that to the actors and not to Shakespeare. That’s what I teach when I teach Shakespeare is how to make that language understandable to a modern audience. But, that said, there are still passages that are difficult for me to understand, even with my 40-plus years studying Shakespeare. But I wanted to emulate that sort of language. And if I can do what you just said, happens to you when you read it, then I have been very successful, because that’s what I wanted. I wanted people to understand it. But as Linda said, sometimes force them to go to the dictionaries and look up words.

David Read
That’s with any, I think with any good story, something that makes us and with science fiction, and this goes back to Stargate, it makes us go, “Wow, that was interesting. Oh, pieces of it, or more of it than I thought were based on fact?” Well, let me go to a library and pick up a book on this and discover something new and admit, “Wow, I’ve maybe fallen in love with a whole new thing that will lead me in a new trajectory in my life.” That’s what the best literature does.

Armin Shimerman
Right. And one of the things I’m very careful about in my books is, yes, I’m talking about the the fictional characters of Twelfth Night, we can talk more about that in a moment, but I was also enormously concerned about the historical facts of the period, and almost every fact that I use, almost every fact, you can depend upon me as the author, what I’m telling you is the truth. So I’m trying to dispel the idea of merry old England that many people have this period, and tried to tell them exactly how difficult and how tenuous this period was for a lot of people. And I’m also trying to deal with the other things that I told you about, the education of Shakespeare, and the enormous, life-threatening events that were happening because of people’s differences of opinion on religion.

Linda Furey
Now, John Dee also appears in the Merchant Prince series, and that one’s science fiction, and you’ve got him transported into the future. How did you first discover him and I mean he’s fascinating. I went and read a short biography online of him. And I’m like, “I gotta find a longer one to read next.”

Armin Shimerman
Get yourself The Queen’s Conjurer, which is a wonderful book about John Dee. But, again, we have to go back to Michael Scott. When I first sat down to write Merchant Prince with Michael, I had no idea who John Dee was and I was woefully ignorant for a guy who was studying Shakespeare in the period not to know who John Dee was, was a fault in my in my education. But so Michael introduced me to John Dee. And John Dee has been ridiculed for centuries for one of the things he did. But if you look at the times, and what he tried to do, not to keep anybody in the dark here, is that he, it was a period of time when new discoveries were happening all the time, we were finding out that the earth was not the center of the universe, that there were people living in the South Pacific, that there was a South Pacific, all sorts of things were being explored and found out and blowing people’s minds. So John Dee, being the scholar, really attempted to find out more about heaven. And it being religious time it certainly seemed like a right thing to do. And he tried desperately to communicate with angels. And he felt that angels were indeed communicating with him. The problem was for us, in hindsight, we’ve come to learn or I’ve come to learn anyway, that the two or three gentlemen were called scryers who went into trances and said they were communicating with angels, and John Dee was the secretary writing down what the scryers were telling them in their trances. I think these guys were phony. Who knows, but I think they were phony, but John Dee believed them. And after his death, that particular quest of John Dee’s made him the laughingstock of a lot of scholars and a lot of historians and they disregarded all the incredible other things that he did. But like now, I would say in the last 75 years, his reputation is being burnished. And people coming to realize that he was enormously influential for the times and certainly, for Elizabeth the First,

David Read
It’s like a Elizabethan Tesla almost. I’ve read books on Shakespeare, even fairly recently, and I’ve never heard of this man. You know, it’s like, “Why?” He’s certainly compelling and makes me want to go and read about him even more.

Armin Shimerman
There is some supposition that perhaps John Dee was the architect for the Globe Theater. And there are angles in the Globe Theater that may be attributed to him, because of their mystical nature. But he was both scientist and mystic. And he’s not the only one. There were a lot of scientists at that time that were both scientists and mystics. And he’s very fascinating man and ever since Michael brought him into my purview, I’ve spent my entire life studying John Dee, as well as other things.

David Read
If you look at the book art for the previous books, there is a resemblance there. Armin, is he your avatar in the story? Do you kind of put yourself in his place in writing?

Armin Shimerman
In the Merchant Prince, yes, there is that suggestion. But I think, with all due respect to Simon and Schuster, who were my publishers for the Merchant Prince series, I think they were more interested in me as Quark when they were as me, or as John Dee. And so they have me sort of represented on those book covers. On my Illyria series, I’m looking at them now, there are no pictures of anybody really. So no, we didn’t do that in the Illyria series.

David Read
Understood. Linda, if you can lean into this, I would appreciate it but I had a long conversation with Linda last night about the books. And I am always as a sci fi fan coming away going, “Okay, what do I or what can I take away from this content. What is being said between the lines that I can take on and incorporate into my life. What is trying to be said about a reflection on modern times.” Because any good literature holds a mirror up to all of us.

Armin Shimerman
Science fiction is very good about that. That is the best part of science fiction is it holds the mirror up and through the prism of fantasy, we get an insight into what’s happening right in front of us.

David Read
I’m getting a vibe that, and please tell me if I’m wrong, that you’re trying to illustrate that we continually have opposition with one another and have our sacred cows that we hold on to and consider those more important than listening and communicating with one another. Is that reasonable?

Armin Shimerman
Yes, it’s very reasonable. And that’s something I was trying to incorporate into the story. John Dee is sort of in the middle between these two opposing religious sides. He was a participant in both religions. He was a chaplain, a Catholic chaplain. And as a courtier in the Elizabethan court, he took on Protestantism as his foremost religion. His wife certainly was a Protestant, Jane Dee. And so he’s mediating between the two and there is sort of a, he’s open minded to listening to both but he’s trying to thread the needle of finding out what his mission is about, about finding out about Orsino. I’ve called him the Count and not said his name before, that is the connection. The Count that I was mentioning earlier is Count Orsino. And for those of you who are familiar with Twelfth Night know that that’s a fictional character from from Twelfth Night. But everybody else, besides the fictional characters from Twelfth Night, everybody else in the novels are all historical characters and they all would have interacted with Shakespeare in the way that I suggested.

Linda Furey
Yeah, Walsingham definitely gets a mention and he was very much, he was sort of Elizabeth’s advisor, but also…

Armin Shimerman
He was more than advisor, he wasn’t an advisor. There were two major counselors for the Elizabethan court. One was a man named William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who was the primary advisor, the primary secretary. The second one, the most, certainly at times, even more important than Burghley was Walsingham, who was in charge of foreign affairs and had a extensive spy ring. He was one of the, he wasn’t the first person to use spies, but he used it to a great extent and was able to keep Elizabeth on the throne for as long as she did, because he was able to find out about secret plots that were being waged against her. It was always the threat of Elizabeth from government that Elizabeth was going to be assassinated. And what people for the most part don’t know was there were many attempts, many attempts to assassinate her.

Armin Shimerman
Oh, yeah, she wore clothes, enough cloths to prevent the assassins’ daggers from going after her.

Armin Shimerman
And ironically, ironically, perhaps, is not the right word. But interestingly enough, one of the assassins that tried to kill Elizabeth was a relative of William Shakespeare’s.

David Read
That’s correct. A relative of his father’s.

Armin Shimerman
Was actually a relative of his mother’s.

David Read
Oh, his mother’s excuse me, I apologize. And yet, man, it’s a brutal period of history. We’re talking about an assassin who had plotted to overthrow her was disemboweled in front of her in front of the court, much to the disgust of all, even Elizabeth at that point. They’re like, “You know what? Maybe we should we shouldn’t even do this.” It was a pivotal…

Armin Shimerman
They never backed away from gore. I think their understanding, if I may, was that if we made punishment gorey enough that we would persuade people not to do anything that they shouldn’t do.

David Read
That it’s a period of time, where if you said the wrong thing to the wrong person you would be put to death. And we at a modern world can’t realistically fathom that level of stress when you believe in something so devoutly because of X, Y, or Z, and you, what a world to live in. And on top of that, it was a very smelly world. Like one of the things that you’re doing in the book is you’re very sensory in these books as well. I mean, the Thames stank.

Armin Shimerman
And the people stank, and that, you know the the Queen took a bath twice a year. And people stank and that’s why perfume civet was used constantly to cover up the odors of people. But going back to your question about science fiction. How is that related to my books? Certainly, there was an episode which Linda I think has already read because it happens in the first book, where he has a trance-like event where he’s given some information that comes from outside of himself, that could be heavenly information. There’s that. Because my Merchant Prince novels are indeed as you said, David, science fiction that I wanted to not deal with that so much. I wanted to deal with actual history, as opposed to possible science fiction. The great thing about science fiction, that I’ve learned over the years, if it was science fiction in the 1950s becomes a reality, and 2021 or 2023.

David Read
Yep. Yeah. There are some things that were used on Deep Space Nine, like pads, for instance, and LCARS displays that we take for commonplace now, even talking to the computer. It’s amazing how fast it happens. And who predicted which one first? There’s a reason that the iPad is called a pad.

Armin Shimerman
That’s right. And there’s a reason, if I may, because Leonard Nimoy told me years ago, that there’s a reason why the flip phones look the way they are, because they were designed by the designer to look like communicators from Star Trek.

David Read
Can I have a quick aside since you brought up Leonard? I’m a huge audiobook fan. And I loved Alien Voices.

Armin Shimerman
Thank you.

David Read
That was just a treat, especially the Time Machine. There’s so much that Leonard, John de Lancie, you, Roxann, Andrew Robinson, I’m disappointed that they’re not on Audible. A couple are on Audible. But if you in the audience have not heard these, they are extraordinary listens, especially if you’re Audible fans, especially if you spend a lot of time on the roads, wonderful adaptations of science fiction literature, they come to life.

Armin Shimerman
Well thank you. For those who don’t know, John de Lancie and Leonard Nimoy decided to bring the Star Trek actors, some of the actors together to do exactly what David just described. And we did, I think, don’t quote me, but I think five, six, maybe seven different science fiction novels, and read them for voiceover. We actually did Lost World, which is Arthur Conan Doyle book, on camera. I don’t know if that’s an Audible or not. And it was a great time and I got to work with the incomparable Leonard Nimoy who directed the actors in the project. And it is one, long before I was on Star Trek I was a huge Star Trek fan. So the idea that Leonard became a peer and a friend is one of the great satisfactions of my life.

David Read
Absolutely. And I hope that they make their way to more available place. I’d love to have John de Lancie on to discuss. I’m curious, did COVID spur your consumption of time to make this trilogy more possible, or was this something that you were planning on setting time aside for and getting done anyway?

Armin Shimerman
Well, to answer that question correctly, I have to tell you a little about how I sold the book. I found a publisher, wonderful, a small publishing company called Jumpmaster Press, I can’t praise them highly enough. They’re a great, great publishing company. And especially after my experiences with Simon and Schuster, which is a larger company, but rather distant, at least for me as an author. And when they bought the book, after they bought the book, and it was a book. When they said to me, “How many words do you have?” And when I told him something like 400,000 words, they blinked and said, “I don’t think you have one book, I think you have three books.” So then it became incumbent upon me to figure out how to divide this one large tome into three different books. Which meant, from an actor who has worked a lot on TV, the way to do that was simply to have cliffhangers. And by having the cliffhangers, which are both infuriating, and leaving you in the middle of things.

Linda Furey
The end of book two.

Armin Shimerman
That’s right. That’s right. Maybe I’m infuriating. Cliffhangers are infuriating. But it was the way to divide up the book into into three sections. Then, this is the answer to your question, then it was incumbent upon me to figure out what to do with that cliffhanger to bring it back to the story that I had originally conceived. And so a lot of the time during COVID was spent in, not rewriting, but finding a pathway from the cliffhanger to get the story to pull it back to where I originally had it. And I use the time during COVID to do that primarily.

David Read
Are you satisfied with the end result? Is there anything that’s like…

Armin Shimerman
I am so happy that particular problem was set in front of me because I think the books are richer, and much more interesting with the cliffhangers and the pathway from the cliffhanger back to the story. I think it also allowed me to go deeper into what I was thinking about, what I was writing about, and really had to conceive of ways to make these characters as real and as viable as possible.

David Read
They are the Illyria book series. I’m going to put them on the screen now if I can pull that off here real quick. There we go. Betrayal of Angels is book one, A Sea of Troubles is book two, and coming out soon, Illyria book three, Imbalance of Power. It looks like arminshimerman.com/shop is the place to go. Is that right, Armin?

Armin Shimerman
I think that’s a great place to start. What will happen is I will link you with Jumpmaster Press where you can purchase the books. You don’t actually purchase them from me, purchase them from my publisher from Jumpmaster Press but yes, that’s the place to go to start with. Or you can go directly to jumpmasterpress.com and buy them there.

David Read
And the lovely hardcover boxset here, available as well, look a very nice set.

Armin Shimerman
That comes out, I don’t know exactly when this particular episode of yours will air, but the box that comes out in the number of weeks. On the 24th of January the box set will be available to everybody. And if you want, if people are interested Jumpmaster Press will make available to you, or to the readers, a situation where I can autograph the books for you.

David Read
How nice. Okay, very good. Yeah, this is great. Anyone who is fascinated with history, particularly Elizabethan history, you start digging, you don’t stop, there’s always something more to discover. They’re a very important part of human history. I think this is a great tie in to that period, especially, as thorough as you were about making sure that historical accuracy was paramount and key to great entertainment.

Armin Shimerman
Right. And speaking of Paramount and entertainment. There is, it always seemed to me anyway, there’s a great synchronicity between actors who’ve done a lot of Shakespeare, done a lot of classical work, who have done a lot of science fiction as well. I think the reason is when you deal with science fiction, you deal with something larger than life. We’re not dealing in science fiction with kitchen sink tragedies, but rather with cosmic tragedies, with huge questions about certain things about humanity, and something about classical training and classical acting gives you the ability to do that a smidge better than the ordinary actor would be able to do it.

David Read
Pretty much, not necessarily, definitely not like kitchen sink, but kitchen table issues, where people come together and discuss these things. And then they go and they sit down and watch Star Trek is like, “See, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s what happens when you go too far.”

Armin Shimerman
And it is a great tribute to any science fiction program, that what you just described is what happens is indeed, after watching the program hopefully families get together and discuss these issues, which they wouldn’t necessarily do if they were just watching, not putting it down, but Law and order or something like that. You might do that, too. But the larger issues that are brought up in science fiction shows usually generate larger debate around the table.

David Read
Absolutely. Linda, anything more specifically about Illyria? Before we move forward?

Linda Furey
Yeah, just is there any chance of them coming out as Audible titles at some point?

Armin Shimerman
Thank you for asking that, Linda, my first book, Betrayal of Angels is available and it’s performed by a phenomenally good classical actor named Ramon De Ocampo, who I’ve worked with. I directed him in a play and has been a friend of mine for a long time. And it’s an award winning voiceover book reader, that I’m sure there’s a better term for it than I just put it, but he’s won many awards. And I’m very pleased and flattered that Ramon agreed to do my book, he did tell me that it was perhaps the hardest book he ever had to read.

David Read
What a compliment.

Armin Shimerman
It was, especially for a guy who’s just done Hamlet. But it is, that is available for the first book and in time I imagine Ramon will read the other two as well.

Linda Furey
Excellent, I really look forward to that.

David Read
But anything akin to Shakespeare, as far as I’m concerned, is better spoken than read. Shakespeare, you don’t read him, you perform him. He comes to life in all kinds of dimensions.

Armin Shimerman
Yeah, it was never meant to be read. Shakespeare never meant to be read, I don’t have to tell anybody that. And it is so much easier to appreciate Shakespeare, when when a talented actor, a communicative actor, one communicates well, is able to take the language and make it clear to you. That is a blessing that we all hope will when we go to see a Shakespearean play.

Armin Shimerman
I want to ask about a couple of talented actors that I remember seeing in this little show set on on the edge of the frontier of the Gamma Quadrant. And there was, it’s you and it’s Andrew Robinson. And one of my favorite books of all time is Edward Gross and Mark Altman’s comprehensive, The Fifty-Year Mission, I’m sorry, Ed. Where you mention, you talked a lot about bringing the actors over to your house, and you would run the material and run it and rerun it. And at times where you guys should have been frankly sleeping or resting to catch up on all the work that you were doing. But you wanted to get the material right. And my favorite scene in all of Deep Space Nine, I hope you forgive me for just taking a moment about this, was it’s a scene between you and Andrew and you introduce him to root beer. It’s very low key. And you’re talking about how…..

Armin Shimerman
Insideous, insideous.

David Read
And then he says, “But the thing is, if you keep drinking it, you begin to like it. It’s so bubbly and happy. Exactly like the Federation.” Is that the scene that the director wanted to go a little bit more high-key in? And you guys said, “Let’s just play this as,” because it ends wonderfully with Andrew going, “Do you think there’ll be able to save us” and Quark just says, “God, I hope so.” Is that the scene that you’re mentioning? Man. It’s the best scene in the series.

Armin Shimerman
Thank you for that. Yes. To start with your preface. For years, I would bring together the actors that I was involved with in a scene to my house during the weekend and they out of the goodness of their hearts, giving up time, not getting paid just because they, as you said, wanted to do the best work they possibly could. They would come to my house. We would rehearse it, we would look at it every which way to Sunday and be prepared on Monday to do the scene in a way that we thought would be good. So, that indeed happened with Andy and I in this scene. And the story, the historical fact actually, is that when we got to the set, as is usual that we director said, “Well, let’s read through the scene and see what you guys have.” And we did it. And because it was a Quark scene, and it was a Garak scene, the producers, had said to the director, “This is a comic scene and that’s the way you should direct it.” But during the weekend, Andy and I had come up with what you eventually see in the episode, that you were so kind about, and we thought, “There’s a lot happening underneath these lines by these two Machiavels, the comic Machiavel Quark and the true Machiavel Garak.” And when we finished the reading, the director said, “Well, I can’t shoot that. That’s not funny.” And we said, “We don’t think this is funny. We think this is they’re actually quite serious.”

David Read
You’re at war. You’re at war.

Armin Shimerman
And Jim Conway, who was the director, very wisely said, “Well, I can’t answer you. I can’t shoot it your way. And you don’t seem to want to do it my way. So we’re gonna have to bring the producers in.” That’s a long walk for the producers, it was on the other side of the lot. And they came finally, they came to the set, everything stopped waiting for judgment to be made. And Ira Behr, who’s’ the Head of the writing team, said, “What’s the problem?” We explained the problem to him. And he said, “Let me see what Armin and Andy have come up with.” So we performed that way. And then he said, “Can you do it this other way, this comic way?” And Andy was a phenomenal actor, and I’m a pretty good actor, he said, “Sure. We can do it that way. Just to show you what you want.” And so we did it sort of in the vein that the producers and the director had originally conceived as the scene. They saw both versions, Ira conferred with his fellow writers who were there as well. He turned back, I would say 30 seconds or so, turned to Jim Conway and said, “Shoot it the way Armin wants to do it.” And so we did it. And they saw it in dailies and they said, “Those guys are on a right path.” They came back to us a couple of days later, with some new lines, some new suggestions. We did it again incorporating the new…

David Read
You re-recorded the scene? Okay.

Armin Shimerman
Yeah, we re-recorded the scene because they liked the ideas that Andy and I had been using. And we re-recorded the scene and that is the scene that you see in the final version. Final version.

David Read
You’re right. There’s so much subtext going on there because these are two people who don’t necessarily like the Federation, but they appreciate the utility of the Federation when the chips are really down. And when the chips are down, and you’ve got this force coming through, and they ain’t gonna stop. Who do you turn to?

Armin Shimerman
Who do you turn to? Exactly? You’re not the only one who said it’s their favorite scene in Deep Space Nine I actually think there are a lot better scenes that I particularly like. I like that one a lot, I’m not saying I don’t like that one. But I’m flattered to hear that you feel that way. David. Thank you.

David Read
Linda. Anything before on DS9 before we move into… I’m sure fan questions will circle back but…

Linda Furey
Oh, I was working as Bjo Trimble’s assistant at the time that Deep Space Nine was filming and was fortunate enough through her and through some other people I know associated with Siddig’s Fan Club get on to the set on three occasions to watch filming. And I was there the final day Bjo had me help her sneak a Make-A-Wish kid onto the set. And I don’t know if you remember that at all.

Armin Shimerman
I do remember that.

Linda Furey
I just want to thank you profusely for what a good egg everyone was that day and it was one of the most amazing days on a set that I have ever had in my life. And the way you all treated the young lady was just above and beyond.

Armin Shimerman
Make-A-Wish is a great organization. I participated for a number of years in phone calls to kids who were suffering. And I was very flattered and enjoyed that experience a great deal. Because you could hear that they were a little flummoxed, and it was up to me to bring them out of themselves. And, you know, no one should have to go through what those kids were going through, or their parents for that matter.

David Read
When you have, go ahead, yeah, go ahead then Linda.

Linda Furey
No, just especially for the families that when someone in the family is that ill, it’s just really heart-wrenching and to know that they’ve gotten an amazing day that they can hold on to and hope around. That’s a big, big thing. So I definitely encourage people to support that organization,

Armin Shimerman
It’s a great, great organization and the smiles and the enjoyment, because they don’t necessarily smile when you’re talking to them because they’re a litttle flummoxed. Oh, my God, who, I’ve got so and so on the phone here with me. But I get feedback, I used to get feedback from the parents saying, “You cannot imagine how my son or my daughter appreciated that.” So Linda, yes, thank you for helping them.

David Read
Armin we… Yes. No, go ahead.

Armin Shimerman
I was just going to ask you if Linda and I actually, I’m asking Linda because I’ve met so many people, did we actually speak on the set?

Linda Furey
Yes, sir. We did. I was a bit starstruck that day. And I think I kind of stammered, and thanked you for letting us in the door. And your wife was there as well, Kitty Swink, and she was just absolutely amazingly lovely to us and came over several times and chatted. And you were in front of the camera the whole time so you only had a moment here and there. But you, David’s got the picture.

David Read
I just showed it to everyone.

Linda Furey
You showed it to everyone. Yeah. It was just, those little moments throughout the day where different cast members came over and posed with the Make-A-Wish kid and got pictures with her and took a moment to talk. And then we all had lunch with you. So.

David Read
I hope he took his teeth out.

Armin Shimerman
Nothing else came out but the teeth certainly came out.

David Read
Yeah, that’s awesome. Armin, the Nox, season one of SG-1, late 90s. I’m not sure if you are aware, you may be, just how important this race is to the canon of SG-1. It is a literal cornerstone, one of the four cornerstones, that hold up the lore of Stargate, this species, were you aware of that?

Armin Shimerman
I have an inkling of it. As the years have gone by. And people have told me at conventions, that sort of thing. I was certainly not aware of that for years, but as I said, in my participation in conventions, where people who are fans of Stargate come up and tell me things like that. I’m flattered, that’s great. I certainly had a wonderful time shooting the episode. And if we have time, I’d like to tell you what I think is a really sweet story about how I got that job.

David Read
Please.

Armin Shimerman
Okay, so there are four Nox. 1,2,3,4. There are four Nox in that episode. There’s myself, there’s Frida who plays…

David Read
Lya?

Armin Shimerman
…basically my wife, Lya. The young man and there’s an older gentleman as well. Well, that older gentleman is one of my dearest and oldest friends, long before Stargate, long before Stargate. And, in fact, we had met in my early career in New York, where we did a Broadway show together, and we were best buds in that show. And I for years have been trying to convince Ray, his name is Raymond Xifo, trying to convince him to move to LA for his career, and just for a better lifestyle. And he came out and was living with me and had an audition for Stargate and got cast in that part.

David Read
Ohper.

Armin Shimerman
Thank you. And after about two days after he had gotten the information that he had been cast and was ecstatic about that. The casting director called me up and said, “Armin,” we didn’t know each other but she called me up. I don’t know why she went around my agent, but she did call me at home and said, “We’d like to offer you the part of Anteaus in Stargate.” And I said, “Wait, is this the episode that Ray Xifo was in?” Now she had no idea how I could possibly know that because she didn’t know Ray was living with me at the time. And and she said, “Yes, yes.” And I said, “I’ll take it.” She said, “Do you want to know about the part or how much money or what the billing is?” “No, Ray’s in it I’ll take it.” And so I did. The agent called a little bit later and said, “I understand you’ve taken this part.” I said, “Yeah”. And then I did ask a question of my agent. I didn’t ask the casting director. I said, “Is there any, is there any makeup involved?” At this point, I was a little tired of Quark’s makeup. And they said, “No, no, no, there’s there’s no makeup whatsoever, so you’ll be fine.” Of course, they didn’t tell me about the headdress which was problematic when we put that on. And because we did that episode, in the woods where it rained a great deal. That straw headdress began to wilt as the days went by. But that’s how I got into Stargate. Thank you Ray Xifo.

David Read
Wow. And he later appeared on Voyager as well.

Armin Shimerman
That’s right.

David Read
That’s terrific. So what did you think of Anteaus and the Nox as a species? These pacifists, who really ultimately honestly turn out to be more like Organians from the original series, it’s very similar, as a Star Trek fan you probably recognize that yourself there’s a very similar arc there. We are not as we appear.

Armin Shimerman
That’s right. The young don’t often do as they are told. I love that. I love the twist at the end. I love that reveal at the end. And it was a chance also an opportunity for me to play something different than Quark. Anteaus, whose name I don’t believe is ever mentioned in the in the episode, it may but I don’t think it is. But in the script it said Anteaus so I knew that’s my name. Which ironically, is the name of the theatre company, has nothing to do with Stargate.

David Read
I wondered.

Armin Shimerman
The theatre companies I helped run or used to have run. But I had a wonderful time. The people on Stargate were just starting their careers on Stargate and they, of course, knew that I was now for several years been on Star Trek so they had lots of questions about conventions, about fandom, about that sort of thing and they were lovely, lovely people. And if you ever watch the episode again, they rarely shoot you below the knee because all of us were filled with mud from the fact that it had rained every day. There were times, really difficult time sometimes, finding your mark in the mud because the mark was all covered with mud and you didn’t know where you were supposed to stand. But that aside, that no one needs to know about, it was a lovely, lovely time. I had a great time with all the actors on the show who couldn’t have been sweeter, just really very nice. And of course when we weren’t working I spent all my time with Ray and we went out to dinner.

David Read
Was that the first time you’d worked in Vancouver?

Armin Shimerman
I don’t think so. I think I did a small movie whose name I don’t remember in Vancouver as well. I’ve come to realize what a great place to shoot a TV show Vancouver is. They have a great, their bench for crews phenomenal. They they can shoot so many shows there because they have so many technicians who are very good and and therefore you can you can shoot lots of things there because if somebody’s working on one show, another person equally good could be hired to do another show.

David Read
Linda, do you have any any questions about the Nox specifically?

Linda Furey
You said that the headdresses were very problematic. Did you have to go for like costume fittings for for the outfits before?

Armin Shimerman
Yes, of course, of course, all that and they took a head cast up my head to make the straw crown what it was. But because we were in the rain and there was only one, as they say a “hero,” there’s only one hero straw thing. They couldn’t replace it so they were constantly fluffing it up because it was wilting in the rain. It’s just wilting.

David Read
It’s Vancouver.

Armin Shimerman
And because they had to do all that work it makes sitting there a little bit longer, as they fluffed it up and made it look as much like the original first day as they possibly could. But I didn’t have to wear any prosthetics on my face for which I was enormously grateful. And again, that’s minor stuff. What was really good was the story, which was I thought, incredibly good. And again, I want to reiterate, I love the twist at the end. Again, it’s the perception of these Nox needed to be helped, that they were incompetent of taking care of themselves, that these humans were superior to the Nox because they were so much better off than the Nox. And then at the twist, find out, no, it’s the other way around. Thank you very much. I love that.

Linda Furey
I’ve always wondered, were they intended to be using some sort of technology we just didn’t see? Or did they have in fact powers to you know?

David Read
Yeah. What’s your interpretation of that? Yeah, Armin,

Armin Shimerman
I’ve always thought it was technology. I don’t think they had powers but it is very possible, that’s true. No one shared that with me one way or the other. But in my own mind, I thought it was technology, which allowed them also to construct their cities up in the clouds. That’s not a power that’s simply their technology. And they had come to learn that simplicity was better than complexity. And that simplicity was what made life worth living. And there’s a lot of truth in that. But at least for me anyway, as my life goes on, I find that making things simpler is usually the better way to go.

David Read
And symbiosis with nature, I got the impression that some of the Nox lived a more traditional, I suspect the ground dwellers were a more traditional lifestyle, whereas the ones who chose to live in the clouds remained more with the more technical — technological side.

Armin Shimerman
Imagine and the sort of hippies, I guess, the hippie version of the Nox. We appreciate living in nature and making it as simple as possible. For which, again, I find that the right track to take.

David Read
Romantic in a way.

Armin Shimerman
Very romantic.

Linda Furey
Was there ever talk about bringing your character back again and it just didn’t work out or was that offer never made?

David Read
Frida came back twice.

Armin Shimerman
Yes. Frida came back twice. The offer was made. I got two phone calls, I believe for perhaps the same two episodes that Frida appeared on. But both times I was otherwise engaged. And could not make time for it. I was very lucky at that period of my life to be working almost constantly and not only on Star Trek, but on other things as well. People are probably aware of my character on Buffy, but I was doing tons of other shows, in addition to those two shows. So there just wasn’t time to fly to Vancouver and do that. I regret that. But I’m glad they used, I’m glad they used Frida as often as they did.

David Read
Absolutely. Brad Wright himself has said, because you have to understand that there’s four great races that made up the Galaxy eons ago. The Nox, the Asgard, which are the little gray guys in the show, the Furlings, which we never would never see, and then the Ancients who built the Gates. We spend the entire show finding their technology everywhere. But we never find any Nox tech. And it’s Brad Wright’s argument that he believes that the, and he created the series with Jonathan Glasner, that the Nox were even more powerful than the Ancients but they choose not to use their power. They choose to keep their heads down and stay alone. Which is an interesting thought.

Armin Shimerman
Good for them. I mean, it was a delightful episode. And to get into the mindset of that was quite wonderful. And again, after I you know, once I got the script I really thought that these are great characters. And it also gave me the opportunity to do something completely different than what people normally were giving me. Usually I was playing comic villains and stuff like that. So to play something so soulful and familial because it was not just about the technology but the relationship of these four characters, the four of us in tights there, was lovely. Just I don’t get that opportunity very often. And so it was a delight. And again, the Stargate people were wonderful as well.

David Read
Yeah, he’s so low key, where Quark’s a people person. Linda, thank you so much for doing all the research with me to bring us up to speed, you read much faster than I do. And..

Linda Furey
Yeah, pure pleasure.

David Read
Thank you, Armin, for all this. I’d like to bring in some fan questions, if you don’t mind.

Armin Shimerman
Sure. But before you do, I just want to thank Linda for going through the novels and for the very good questions. And I think you’ll be surprised, you said you got into the first third of this third book, I think you’ll be surprised and gratified by the end of the book, if you if you choose to finish it.

Linda Furey
Oh, I’ve got cocoa to make over on the counter. And as soon as we’re done, I’m just going to curl up and keep going. I’m really enjoying it. And I can’t recommend the books highly enough to other people.

Armin Shimerman
Thank you.

David Read
I asked her last night I said, “Now that we’re finished are you going to put it down, finish with the interview tomorrow?” And she’s like, “No, I’m not going to leave this here.”

Linda Furey
There’s no spoiler at the end, there’s no cliffhanger in the third book. So.

Linda Furey
That’s good, or I’d be demanding you write a fourth immediately,

Armin Shimerman
Right, which my publishers are doing. They’re demanding I write another one.

Linda Furey
Oh, excellent. I’m egging them on. And I’m egging you on.

David Read
Jeremy Heiner, “Armin, what was it like reprising Quark in Lower Decks?”

Armin Shimerman
Lower Decks, was great fun, great fun. I hadn’t been in that mindset for a while. Although, because I’ve done enough conventions one never forgets. And of course, seven years, how can you forget? And I had the great honor to represent Deep Space Nine on Lower Decks, as well as Nana Visitor did as well. We were very flattered and very appreciative, very appreciative of the fact that Lower Decks decided to use our characters again. And we hope that secretly going on, I hope that we get another opportunity.

David Read
I hope so as well. Did you have..

Armin Shimerman
And to bring and bring in others.

David Read
Absolutely, yeah, they haven’t moved. It’s gonna be interesting to see what happens with Picard because they also were saying that it’s a DS9 continuation as well, which all of us are like, “Hm. Okay. Interesting.”

Armin Shimerman
Yeah. No, nothing against Patrick. But before they started Picard, he said Armin, “I love the Ferengi. I love you. We’ll get you into Picard.” Well, they’ve done three seasons. I’ve yet to get a phone call for that. But um, I think you were about to ask if I have to wear the teeth.

David Read
For the audio?

Armin Shimerman
I did wear a set of teeth that I had made for me, because my set of teeth doesn’t fit anymore. One of the things about the human body was that your teeth move in your mouth. And so the prosthetic after all these years no longer fit the teeth that I now have, or the positions that my teeth are now in. So I couldn’t put them in, there was no way to get them into stay there and actually be understandable. So not for Lower Decks but for something else. I have a new set of teeth made. So I did wear those teeth for the show, but they weren’t constructed the same way the show’s teeth were. They were prosthetics, but they weren’t constructed. And so there are times when I listen to lower decks. And it doesn’t sound like the teeth are in. So yes, they’re in. But the sound quality isn’t comparable to the original set of teeth that I had.

David Read
Here’s the thing. You’re aging, but Quark was also aging as well. So I think you could make [an excuse].

Armin Shimerman
He ages a lot slower than I do. Ferengi as I understand the mythology live a great long time.

David Read
That’s true. I would make that excuse the Quark’s teeth have also changed to.

Armin Shimerman
One would think, especially since he sharpens them all the time with a little tooth sharpener, a prop that we had a couple of times on a couple of episodes.

David Read
General Maximus just wanted to make a comment, “Your character and race are arguably the most underdeveloped in the franchise and fans are desperate to see and know more.” Here, here.

Armin Shimerman
Thank you. Thank you very much. I would be desperate. And I’m sure so would Max, so would Jeff, so would all the other actors who play Ferengi to see more of the Ferengi. I would be, people often asked would you go back and recreate Quark? And my answer is, I would love to do a recurring character on some show, but that would be terrific. And I hope, as I said about Lower Decks as well, I hope that that does happen. And I think being the age that I am, I would be a little bit reluctant if they were to say to me, “We’re going to do a whole show around Quark, and then you’d be the series regular.” I don’t know if I could face that makeup process day after day after day, as well as I did when I was in my 40s. So that, but to come back and do a recurring character. I would love to do that.

David Read
Just for clarification. He was referring to the Nox.

Armin Shimerman
Oh, so sorry. Most people [inaudible]

David Read
That works as well, too.

Armin Shimerman
Yeah. Now that I have a lot of time, I would love to go do… because I really did like that character a great deal. And only because of circumstances was I not able to recreate that more than once.

David Read
Mama Nox Erika, “Which one would you relate to being more like in real life, Quark or Anteaus?”

Armin Shimerman
Oh, far and away Anteaus, okay. Far and away. Quark is a lovely character and actors love to play something other than themselves. And some actors love to play themselves. But for me Anteaus is much closer to who I really am than Quark is. Playing Quark is a little like being drunk at a party and having a lampshade over your head. You can do whatever you want. So I did do whatever I wanted. But Anteaus is that softer side, that gentler side. I think most people who know me would say “Yes, that’s a better fit for him.”

David Read
Elizabeth Lee, “Did you notice any significant differences in production while you worked between between the two shows?” Stargate was just getting started, it would ultimately do 17 seasons much like the Star Trek team did.

Armin Shimerman
Right. Because they were just getting started and that explains what I’m about to say. They were a little slower about moving along, about moving from one set up to the next set up, from one scene to the other. And also we had the dilemma of the rain, which was causing delays on the technical side as well. So there was that. And also, when I was doing Star Trek, as the years passed, I was very comfortable in that skin because I have played it for so long. When I was creating Anteaus it was a new creation. And what am I learning about this character as each moment progresses. And so that was a different experience as well. I’m learning who this character is as the eight days progressed. Whereas in Star Trek, though, they would give me different scenarios to play, I knew who the character was. And I knew how he would react to certain things, although I have come up with intentions about each script. So there was that differences too.

David Read
Sophie wanted, we recently lost Rene Auberjonois .

Armin Shimerman
I believe it’s two years, a little over. It’s just recently two years.

David Read
Yes, and we also lost Aron Eisenberg. Can you share a memory with Rene, that you had? You spent a lot of time together.

Armin Shimerman
Yeah, we spent a lot of time together…

David Read
Coyote and the Sheepdog.

Armin Shimerman
Rene and I had met, prior to doing Deep Space Nine, we had done a play together in Los Angeles, called Petrified Forest. And although we were both in the same play we rarely spoke to each other because we had no scenes together. And there was no really reason for us to communicate. And that all changed with Deep Space Nine. The relationship, the love, if I can put it that way, that both of us had for each other became manifest early on, and the writers began to see that in the dailies. And so what was originally an antithetical, solely antithetical relationship. The law breaker in the law keeper morphed into this love hate bromance for want of a better term. And I our writers were always astounded that as the years went by Rene and I and Judith and Kitty would take her own vacations together. We would go, we would take vacations together, because our friendship was so close. There are 1000s of incidents that I could probably conjure up. But I love the man. I was in awe of him as well. For those of you who don’t know, Rene’s theatrical career or his resume, it’s quite phenomenal. He is a prince of the American theatre. And I being a fledgling actor was in awe of that. And so it was a great honor, as well as a great love affair for me to work with him. And Rene, in the beginning, as we mentioned before would come to the house, we’d rehearse our scenes together. And it just our friendship grew and grew and grew and grew, and even after the show was over, continue to flourish.

David Read
Thank you for sharing that. If you choose to not have anything to add about this is fine. But I read this as well and was, frankly, pissed. Yvie Cahill, “I’m a huge Seinfeld fan. And I recently read about your experience on set. And frankly, I’m appalled by the cast’s behavior. How would you compare that to your experience on Stargate?”

Armin Shimerman
Night that day, and I mean that the guys on Stargate were really kind, they were just starting out. So they were very kind and they were fascinated, because they knew that they were going to have to be going to conventions, and they knew that they had to deal, “What’s fandom like?” And they would pump me for all my opinions on that sort of thing. So they were very sweet, very, very considerate. Couldn’t have been nicer, really were wonderful. And as you read and I’m a little loath to say it again, but it is the truth. The people on Star, excuse me on Seinfeld, were less than communitive, communicated. They ignored me for an entire week. They rarely said a word to me when we weren’t actually working. It’s no fault of the production, but there was a slight foul up, which was they didn’t have a dressing room for me, which is against union rules. And so I sat on the bleachers where the audience normally sat on on the shoot day. And I was there. You know I was right there and nobody really spoke to me, including Jason, who I have known somewhat before the show.

David Read
Is it just standoffishness? I mean, I don’t I think great shows on television and behind the scenes, it’s like…

Armin Shimerman
I can’t tell you. I will reiterate something that you probably read because it is the most galling of the events. While we were shooting the show, to make the story as short as possible, it was required that Seinfeld and forgive me, the lady,

David Read
Julia Louis Dreyfus

Armin Shimerman
Yeah, the three of us were sitting on a small court bench. Very, it was very tight. So that literally, wherever you see my headphones, they were just on either side. And I was in the middle and they were on either side. And we had to wait 45 minutes for a lighting thing to be fixed. And it was around Christmas time. And the two of them were talking to each other about Christmas and their plans and what they were going to do. And in that 45 minutes not once did they ever turn to me, who’s sitting right between them, and say, “Excuse us for you know, talking around you.” Or ask me what my Christmas plans were. And that’s the way the whole week was like. I was there. The episode is called The Caddy. I was the caddy. I was a you know, I don’t want to brag, I’m already bragging, but I was a series regular on another show. I was occurring a lot on a second show. Never once wanted to know who I was, never once. Now one of the things that made a difference on Stargate, at least when I was there, and certainly during the seven years that I was on Deep Space Nine. Every series regular always took the time to find out what their guest stars life was about. It’s the human thing to do. And it also makes the guest stars more comfortable. So it’s a practical thing to do so that they feel more comfortable they will give a better performance. That was not the truth on Seinfeld.

David Read
Well, I apologize for the exper[ience]–

Armin Shimerman
No need for YOU to apologize.

David Read
All this to say, it’s a wonderful episode of television. And what you what you had to go through, to endure, to make that half hour possible, thank you for it because it’s a great half hour of TV.

Armin Shimerman
You’re welcome and they have made it up to me slightly. It’s the one show that I think I get the most residuals from so I’m very happy about that.

David Read
Absolutely. Why not? Erpel Homo, “Armin, what would happen if Quark was stranded on an uninhabited planet with Anteaus?” Oh, my gosh. It wouldn’t go well.

Armin Shimerman
It would not go well. It would not go well. Once they got over talking about Armin Shimerman I think they would have nothing to say to each other.

David Read
Exactly. Oh, man. Let’s see here. Lockwatcher, “You have worked as everything from an alien to a judge over the years. In all these years is there any prop or costume that you have kept that is close to your heart?” You mentioned you had the teeth. I would hope you have a set of ears.

Armin Shimerman
No, no, I have nothing from Star Trek except the teeth and I’ve thrown those out because they don’t fit anymore. I have one little artifact up above me, that you can’t see, from Quark’s bar that I didn’t take, that was given me when one of the set designers heard years later that I had taken nothing from the set. By the way, you asked me a nice story about Rene. Rene drove up to the back basically, he didn’t actually but with a pickup truck and a hammer and a chisel… No, I have no costumes. I have no props. I’m a dutiful actor. If they give it to me, I return it. And yes, I would like to have some things. And the reason I don’t have anything, especially especially from Star Trek, is that when I heard that they were dismantling the set I did not want to go and see it taken apart. I wanted to live with the memories of the way that I knew. I did not want to see it in disarray. And so I said, “No, I’m not going back for anything because I don’t want to, I don’t want to have that image in my mind. I only want to have the image of the way it was.”

Linda Furey
The final scenes on Deep Space Nine were filmed in Vic’s bar, weren’t they? I know you had one more scene after the main cast left for the day. But earlier in the day, Bjo and I took the Make-A-Wish child over to the promenade sets and they were indeed dismantling them and we all just sort of stood there and went…

Armin Shimerman
Lucky for me Linda, I didn’t see that because indeed…

Linda Furey
Yeah, you didn’t want to.

Armin Shimerman
Right, because the Fontaine set was somewhere else, wasn’t on the promenade was somewhere else. And our last scene, which was Fontaine and I together, Jimmy Darren, we didn’t do on the Promenade, either, so I never saw that.

Linda Furey
Yeah, you’re lucky you didn’t It was upsetting.

Armin Shimerman
And it would certainly be upsetting for me. And I just didn’t want to go through that.

David Read
No. Agreed. I saw the SG-1 Stargate Command after it was, what was left of that soundstage after it was dismantled. It was disheartening. Does that mean it’s reality, but at the same time, it’s like that always stays with you so I get an Armin.

Armin Shimerman
Yeah, as a young man, just tangential to this, when I was in college UCLA they had dismantled the original Star Trek and the board that Uhura looked into had been given to UCLA. And so, it was rather large piece of scenery and seeing it for real was disheartening for a guy who was a huge fan of Star Trek. So that was part of my my reasoning for why I didn’t want to see Deep Space Nine dismantled.

David Read
That makes a lot of sense.

Linda Furey
Kind of the ultimate breaking of the fourth wall.

Armin Shimerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a little like meeting people that you’ve always adored and respected when you come to find out who really human beings are. You can slightly be disappointed at times

David Read
Never meet your heroes.

Armin Shimerman
That’s right, never meet your heroes.

David Read
Scott said, “We’ve also lost Aron Eisenberg.”

Armin Shimerman
Whose birthday was yesterday.

David Read
Yes. Do you have any particular memories of him or one you’d like to share.

Armin Shimerman
Every memory that everyone has of Aron is a laugh. Aron was one of the most energetic, funniest people that you could ever meet. I’m not blowing smoke up anybody’s butt on this, but he genuinely wanted to make people laugh. And he was so enormously kind and large hearted. And he had lived with his illness, his kidney problems, all of his life. And I think he wanted to spend every moment he could to the fullest extent. All I can remember, I can remember many things about Aron, but mostly I remember his need, desire, gift to making people laugh.

David Read
You had a marvelous seven-year-run, the Ferengi, I would argue more than anyone had the best of those seven years because you began as one idea in fans’ minds, and ended in a place where we knew exactly who these people were. They were not who we thought and they became people we never thought they would become. They became heroes.

Armin Shimerman
They became people. That was my raison d’etre from the very first day of Deep Space Nine. I had created that incredibly bad impression. And it was my desire to erase that

David Read
From the Last Outpost.

Armin Shimerman
Yes, from the Last Outpost. If you were to ask me, what piece of work is the one that you most regret? The Last Outpost would be absolutely first, second and third choice. And what I know now of what the Ferengi were supposed to be, and what I did with it, including the other three actors who played the Ferengi as well, but primarily me because I have the largest part, I regret that to this day. On the other hand, those horrible mistakes, lead to my playing Quark, where I got the opportunity to not only fix that, as you just said, but also to get involved with the franchise, which as a fan, I was really gratified by that. But also an opportunity to play a character that I believe is perhaps the most human of all the characters in Star Trek, and that’s not just my show. I believe the Ferengi are the closest things we have to true humanity. Now, you may think, but they’re greedy and they’re suspicious, and they’re conniving, and all those things. And I would say, “Yes, but they also have big hearts.” And you know what? That’s humanity. Humanity is interested in surviving, and making the best of things, but also at times can flip that on its head.

David Read
Or it’s ear.

Armin Shimerman
On it’s ear, and do something enormously saint-like.

David Read
I imagine there there are a number of actors out there who would consider themselves immensely blessed to have a seven-year-run at a shot at anything. So it must be very satisfying to look back on your body of work and say, “Yeah, there’s some good ones in there and ones that parents can share with their kids.” They can watch TV, this program with their kids and say, “Watch this character and be like this character.” Well, maybe not necessarily the beginning, but be like this character by the end.

Armin Shimerman
Yeah. And also we provided some stories, not just Ferengi stories, but other stories that Linda, I think, spoke about much earlier. Things that promoted conversation, that promoted a debate around the kitchen table about what can we learn from what we just saw. Do we agree with what the show just said or do we not agree? Does it promulgate new ideas about certain things? I think science fiction, and certainly Star Trek, have been trying to do that since the very conception of those ideas.

David Read
Have you watched any of the Orville?

Armin Shimerman
No, I haven’t seen Orville yet. No.

David Read
It’s extraordinary science fiction, extraordinary, it gets going right away. I really recommend it.

Armin Shimerman
Thank you. I will. I don’t know why, it may be on a channel that I don’t get, but I just haven’t seen it yet.

David Read
Understood. Alright, Linda, do you have anything further?

Linda Furey
Um, I’m just wondering whether you have any other projects coming up…

David Read
What’s next Armin?

Linda Furey
…share with us?

Armin Shimerman
I found after completing the Illyria trilogy, which was exhausting, but enjoyable, very, very enjoyable and creative. That as the weeks went, by, the months went by, I began to regret that I had nothing to do, nothing to write. So and as mentioned briefly, my publishers are begging me to write another book. So I’ve been dickering with ideas about what another novel might be. And I have sort of begun began to think about that. On the other hand, it’s a daunting thing to write a novel. And people have always asked me, “You’re an actor? Why have you never written a play?” So I have actually started writing pages on a play, that also takes place in Elizabeth in times, because that’s what I know. You know what they say that writers, write what you know about. And so there’s that. And besides being an actor and a writer, I sometimes am also a director. I directed quite a number of Shakespearean plays. And there is the possibility that next year, I might, I’ve been asked to possibly direct another Shakespearean play. So that that’s on my agenda. As far as acting goes, I’ve learned over the course of decades that my employment just comes out of the blue. It’s like the phone call I told you about for Stargate. Things just come out of the blue. So I’m expecting the blue to open up and provide me some more acting work. Although at my age, there’s nothing wrong with being my age, but the business tends to look for people who are a bit younger than I am. Occasionally, they find work for us old geezers. So I’m not expecting a lot of work. Although, I tend now to concentrate on work on stage, which was always my first love. And I have done, I did a play in Kansas for a number of months back in the summer. And I’m hoping that any one of the theaters I’ve worked for in the last few decades and they’ve made noises about it, that they’d like to have me back and do some more plays. And that’s enjoyable to me.

David Read
You cannot beat the the energy of a live performance.

Armin Shimerman
No, you can’t. The connection between the performers and the audience is palpable. And not only for the audience, I mean, you’ve sat in the audience and felt the power of performance on stage. But from the other side, there’s no actor can, there’s no experience for an actor like knowing the audience is with you, whether it’s a laugh, if it’s a comic play, or a complete silence, nothing thrills an actor more than hearing nothing. Hearing no one is breathing, nobody’s moving, nobody’s opening candy wrappers, that rarely happens. But when you get complete stillness, you know you have the audience in the palm of your hand and you know you’re working on all cylinders. There is nothing like experiencing that.

David Read
This was a real treat. And I really thank you, from the bottom of my heart for taking the time with us.

Armin Shimerman
It’s my pleasure. And thank you for inviting me. Thank you for talking about my book and the various things that I’ve done in my life. It’s a joy for me to share that with others. And it’s, if I may, particularly enthused by Linda’s enthusiasm for my books. So thank you very much.

David Read
Absolutely. I’m going to go ahead and, thank you, Linda, for the research as well. I’m going to wrap things up here if you need to go. I totally get it. But I’ll be done in about two minutes here. So thank you Armin, again, very much. Armin Shimerman.

Armin Shimerman
Happy New Year to everyone.

David Read
And to you sir. Armin Shimerman.

David Read
And I muted my microphone. I apologize, everyone. I muted both of them. Armin Shimerman, Anteaus in Stargate SG-1 and you can check out his Illyria book series at arminshimerman.com. And that’s in the link below as well to support him. Big thanks to Linda “GateGabber” Furey for making this conversation complete and truly full with this discussion as well. And thank you to my moderating team Sommer, Tracy, Jeremy, Rhys, and Antony. Big thanks to Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb, our web developer over at Dial the Gate he keeps everything spinning smoothly in the background here. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I thank you so much for tuning in. My thanks again to Armin Shimerman, and we will see you on the other side.