Gabrielle Ruiz is making sure Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 is remarkable and fascinating for Lieutenant T’Lyn. After officially joining the crew of the USS Cerritos in Star Trek: Lower Decks In Season 4, the Vulcan with a dry sense of humor fit in perfectly with the rest of the Lower Deckers.
In Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5, T’Lyn works alongside her fellow Lower Deckers, Lieutenants Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), and D’Vana Tendi (Noel Wells) as they investigate the opening of cracks in space that leads to others Star Trek parallel realities. About that, T’Lyn showed new sides to her personality as she develops deeper friendships with the Warp Core Four.
Screen speech I had the pleasure of chatting with Gabrielle Ruiz about her experience playing T’Lyn, including her favorite moments, biggest surprise and what’s yet to come Star Trek: Lower Decks season 5.
She is both.
Screen Rant: I think my first question, and perhaps the most important question I’ve ever asked anyone, is: Remarkable or fascinating?
Gabrielle Ruiz: (laughs) I say now that we are in season 5, remarkable, for sure. Remarkable takes on a different dimension.
That was a great joke.
Gabrielle Ruiz: Oh my God, I loved it. I can’t wait to add this to all my puns when I comment on fans’ trials and cons using this word.
Did you know that Spock said “remarkable” and “fascinating” in the animated series in the same episode?
Gabrielle Ruiz: No, I didn’t.
I saw it last week. That’s where the deep cut comes from.
Gabrielle Ruiz: I can agree. I can totally agree with you that they definitely knew this all along. The writers are great on our show. I think I know, but I don’t know anything when you compare it to what they hid. For all these beautiful Easter eggs for everyone to enjoy.
T’Lyn adapting to the Cerritos after joining Star Trek: Lower Decks in Season 4
Seven out of nine did the same thing
One of the surprising things about T’Lyn, too, is that it’s not often that a TV show adds a new character to an established ensemble and the new character is immediately embraced. And T’Lyn is like Seven of Nine in that sense because she left in Season 4 and became part of the team and is now loved. How has it been for you?
Gabrielle Ruiz: Oh, it’s a great gift. It was a gift to be received, not only by the cast, but also by fans, across the entire Star Trek universe. And I will remember these moments forever and [for[ the rest of my life. My mom’s a Trekkie. I grew up with TNG. I knew who Spock was, and always will. And [it’s] It’s a big deal, and now it will be part of my portfolio, my career, forever. I’m speechless. It’s remarkable. It’s quite remarkable. I take the establishment and all of this seriously, but also with great gratitude. I am very grateful to be part of this world.
You do a great job, and T’Lyn does a great job taking the Vulcan character and making him so funny and fresh. And it helps that Vulcans are inherently funny. T’Lyn seems to know that she is funny and seems aware that her friends are funny.
Gabrielle Ruiz: She really wants to. I just told Mike McMahan last weekend. I said, I don’t know if you’ve heard some of the lines of me always laughing after recording each line, because it’s very serious. But as a human, because personally I’m not a Vulcan, as a human, I laugh and she does that. But I can at least laugh and they stop later. You don’t hear that on TV.
There could be a director’s cut where T’Lyn just laughs throughout the entire episode.
Gabrielle Ruiz: I laugh after every recorded line. I’m really liking her.
In essence, Star Trek It really is about friendships. And I think T’Lyn is really discovering that in Cerritos. She’s really reaching out to the crew for acceptance. And I love how they are all with her.
Gabrielle Ruiz: I also love that she’s not a stubborn perfectionist. That kind of set her back early on, when she was kicked out and sent to Starfleet. She was very stubborn about exactly what she knew she wanted to do. She listened to her gut, which is so, you know, radical, but her gut is working on this dynamic in Starfleet and she’s listening. I’m glad that she’s not necessarily able to just let their friendships affect her and her life, but she’s able to impact theirs.
For example, with Rutherford, where she wants to maintain the ship, and then she realizes that she’s kind of in the way. And she’s okay with doing that and pushing back. And I think it’s a very healthy relationship, a very healthy platonic relationship,
And it was so funny when she dismantled the entire space shuttle. She completely fell apart.
Gabrielle Ruiz: And, you know, she wants to grow up. She wants to move forward. I assume she wants to advance wherever she is in her career. And, fortunately, she doesn’t sleep. So that definitely happened. And then she was very kind to give Rutherford and Tendi that moment as well.
Tawny was the one who said Star Trek It’s really about competence porn.
Gabrielle Ruiz: (laughs) She would say that.
T’Lyn is all about competence.
Gabrielle Ruiz: It’s all about competence. It’s all about, I think, honesty too. Of just, you know, being scientifically aware of your surroundings and all the people around you. That’s why people like having her around.
Gabrielle Ruiz’s Favorite Moments as T’Lyn
Playing T’Lyn was a joy for Gabrielle Ruiz
What has been your favorite T’Lyn moment so far? Or is it yet to come?
Gabrielle Ruiz: So far? My God, my God. I remember when I read the script about her trying to talk to Captain Sokol again, and she was creating all this emotional energy in Cerritos. I remember reading that script and praying she wouldn’t jump ship. I remember thinking, oh my God, is this her last moment? Because I was a guest star, a recurring guest star, many times. And it’s also very important to be a great subcharacter for the main characters. You are an engine, a catalyst to help them grow and move.
And I was totally discouraged from letting T’Lyn stick around for as long as she needed. But when she stayed, and I remember reading this, I cried. I was so happy that the writers and the crew wanted to keep her around a little longer and be a part of… you know, being able to join the Fabulous Four, the main four, whenever she could. That was a moment for me professionally, that’s for sure.
I remember there was a moment when I interviewed Mike sometime in season four, and I really thought, ‘She’s not going away, is she?’ Will she stay? He’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’
Gabrielle Ruiz: Yes, and ‘wej Duj’ too. It was the first. On that recording day, the entire team was there. It was important to establish her correctly and we spent time with her. And I never felt like there was this state of pressure or stress. It was fun creating her. And as an actor, it’s a wonderful day. It’s a wonderful day when it really works with you and the team who were on the same page to brainstorm ideas, try things together, and create that iconic character.
Gabrielle Ruiz’s biggest surprise playing T’Lyn
There’s something about this Star Trek font
What was the biggest surprise you had playing T’Lyn or just being a part of? Star Trek in general?
Gabrielle Ruiz: I have to say the biggest surprise is seeing my name in the Star Trek font.
God, I can’t imagine how incredible this is.
Gabrielle Ruiz: It’s iconic. It’s timeless. That whole moment when you see Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, all those moments. And again, as an actor, I was the first Lieutenant Lemonts in Lower Decks, where she was killed. After one line, she dies instantly, and I was a computer voice for a second time in the first or second season. And then you hear me like [Ensign] Castro too. Then there were some glimpses.
And those moments, not even T’Lyn, were the moments where I cried because I saw my name in the Star Trek font and I called my mom and told her. I was like, this is a bucket list moment. I’m so excited. So it was surprising to see, because you’re not ready for it until you see it.
Looking at the rest of Star Trek: Lower Decks season 5
It’s an exciting time to be a Star Trek fan
It’s not logical to spoil it, but there’s something you’re excited about that’s yet to come in the rest of season five, or just in Star Trek in general? You know, we have Starfleet Academy arriving. Strange New Worlds, Section 31. It’s an exciting time.
Gabrielle Ruiz: It’s an exciting time for new stories to be told. I love, like you said, the friendliness of everything Lower Decks has. And I feel like Mike has had some time to really button up and tie this big bow for our final season of Star Trek and the friendships that you see T’Lyn no longer establish, but delve into and deepen. This season is going to be super fun. Everyone will enjoy it a lot. It will be remarkable.
About Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 5
In season 5 of Star Trek: Lower Decks, the crew of the USS Cerritos are tasked with closing “space holes” – subspace rifts that are causing chaos in the Alpha Quadrant. Hole duty would be easy for junior officers Mariner, Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford… if they didn’t also have to deal with an Orion war, angry Klingons, diplomatic catastrophes, murder mysteries and most frightening of all: the your own career aspirations. This upcoming season on Paramount+ is a celebration of this downtrodden crew who are dangerously close to being promoted from the lower decks to strange new roles in Starfleet.
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