Anson Mount Is Leading With Heart

Being a captain on Star Trek puts an actor in rarified company. Depending on exactly which series fans consider to be part of the canon, there are about a dozen of them, including Michelle Yeoh's Captain Philippa Georgiou, Patrick Stewart's Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Sonequa Martin-Green's Michael Burnham, and, of course, both Chris Pine and William Shatner (and now, Vampire Diaries alum Paul Wesley) taking the mantle of James T. Kirk. But Anson Mount, currently in the command chair on the USS Enterprise in Paramount+'s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, says that while it's an honor and a privilege to be part of that elite club, what sets his character, Christopher Pike, apart from his brothers and sisters, is that he doesn't put logic, diplomacy, or "balls" (his words) behind his duties to explore the final frontier, he puts empathy and heart at the core of going where nobody's ever gone before. 

SNW, which debuted in 2022 and returned with its sophomore season earlier this month, reunites Mount and his crew, including Rebecca Romijn, as his Number One, Una Chin-Riley; Ethan Peck as the pointy-eared and suddenly sexy Vulcan, Mr. Spock; and breakout Celia Rose Gooding as the newly promoted Ensign Nyota Uhura (yes, that Uhura). The new season continues the series's commitment to old-school Trek, with an episodic "planet of the week" approach in lieu of its predecessors' sometimes overwrought season-long arcs. As a Trekkie himself ("I started watching this show when I was 7 years old," Mount shares. "I started watching with my mom. She's the one who introduced me."), Mount is elated to be back in uniform and give fans the fun and adventure that they've come to expect.

"I don't think there's a day on set that goes by that I don't look around and go, 'I cannot believe I'm on Star Trek.' And then, it's like, 'I can't believe I'm the captain of the Enterprise,'" Mount says of the continued reverence he has for the role he's made his own. Pike has appeared in previous series, going all the way back to the '60s with Jeffrey Hunter's version in an unaired Star Trek pilot, “The Cage,” and later with Sean Kenney in an episode in 1966. Other than Mount, fans are probably most familiar with Bruce Greenwood's take on the character in J.J. Abrams's Pine and Zoë Saldaña-fronted timeline. "I feel so lucky, it's so surreal to me. It was so far afield of anything that I felt I could touch, it wasn't even on my bucket list. So then, when it happened, I was like, 'Oh, of course, this is my dream job.'"

There's no shortage of adventure in SNW, but Mount is quick to point out that there's also heart behind it — and fans are just as quick to the draw to trace that emotion to Pike. It's not unusual for a starship captain to have close friendships with his crew (see: Picard and Whoopi Goldberg's Guinan and Kate Mulgrew's Captain Janeway and Tuvok, played by the charismatic Tim Russ), it is unusual to see the crew sitting down for a meal with their leader in his quarters. That family dynamic is the center of SNW and a grounding throughlines between episodes that span genres like fantasy and horror in addition to the show's steady foundation of science fiction.

"When I was meeting with the writers at the beginning of all of this, I said, 'One of the very few things that I know about Pike is that he had pretty good parents and he had great teachers,'" Mount says. "And so that is something that has lived with him."

Mount explains that the camaraderie is apparent when the cameras aren't rolling, too, but brings the focus back on Pike's unique leadership style, saying that he's above all, a mentor. Mount, who was a Boy Scout and still keeps in touch with his Scoutmaster after more than two decades ("His name is Ervin Upchurch and he still means a lot to me," Mount shares. "Just went and had brunch with him and his family and that was great."), says that Pike is driven by a desire to lead with his heart, knowing full well that he'll always put his crew first, even if it means that he won't be there to lead them one day.

"Pike very much feels a responsibility to pass on the knowledge. That his job is not just to be the boss, to educate those who are going to be coming after him. His downfall later in life is going to be because he jumped in to save younger officers from death," Mount says. "I also know that when someone comes to his office to speak to him, there is nothing more important than the crew member that's right in front of him. Those are the only things I know."

It's a marked difference from the men and women that have come before him. He lays it all out, putting Pike shoulder-to-shoulder with his fellow leaders, but in a different place when it comes to what's underneath the bravado. He shares that in the beginning, he told the writing team that it was easy to see what differentiated Pike from his peers — and they nailed it.

"My gut is that if Kirk represented — for lack of a better word, balls, or machismo, and if Picard represented brains, I want Pike to represent the heart," he says. It goes back to his days as a Scout, he adds: "I think it's an incredible organization. I think that children are meant to be outside and it's how I first learned leadership, actually. Now that I think about it, it was by gaining rank in the Boy Scouts and having people that were serving under me and learning how to deal with that. I had never really put those two things together."

Before he beamed into the Trek universe on Discovery, Mount had already stacked his IMDb page with cultural touchstones. Hell on Wheels, a Western that ran on AMC for six years, had him slinging guns and sporting long hair (a drastic shift from his Pike quiff, which has already become the stuff of Trek legend and meme fodder). He also cemented himself in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Black Bolt, who made appearances in the series Inhumans and Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. And an entirely different audience may remember him as the man behind the wheel in Britney Spears's cinematic debut, 2002's Crossroads.

"It comes up every now and then. In the first 10 years after I did it, I swear I thought it was going to be carved on my tombstone," Mount says of Ben (no last name) and acting alongside Spears. It's about time Pike eclipses that iconic role (the hair comes up again, with Mount joking, "That's why I kept it so short in Crossroads. I didn't want to have upstage Britney."), and with the continued success of Strange New Worlds, it very well may be "Hit it!" — Pike's signature phrase — etched on his tombstone.

There are lightyears between that film and Mount's current mindset, which hones in on the gratitude he has for Trek, its fans, and the chance to have fun on a show that's willing to play.

"I believe that little internal sense of mischievousness and fun is key to my work, particularly. And those are the spaces in which I have really reveled," he says. "Getting to do a Western was a dream come true and I want to do another one. Again, we're talking about a genre and this job is meta in the sense that we're actually playing with multiple genres. So, I get to play a lot. We have episodes from season 1 I could point at and say, 'This is our horror episode, this is our fantasy episode, this is our mystery episode,' and it goes on and on."

There will be plenty of time for Pike and his crew to play. Paramount announced that the show got picked up for a third season, meaning there are more captain's logs to fill and more planets of the week to explore. It also affords Mount more time to ensure that his crew can be proud of their place in Star Trek history, giving those die-hard fans and newcomers a reason to keep tuning in.

"I'm a longtime Trekkie, so I want our contribution to be a significant contribution to Trek canon, whatever that means," he says. "I'm really happy with the show and I hope that it continues for a while so that we can make that contribution."

Read on for Mount's hot take on the "best TV show ever made" (spoiler: it's not a Trek series), the not-so-embarrassing and iconic first album he ever owned, and a polarizing pick for the best bagel.

How do you take your coffee?
Iced decaf coffee with oat milk.

Do you believe in astrology?
No. That sounded a little critical, but no.

Who is your favorite villain?
Oh god. Oh, man. Favorite villain of all time? Fuck. It's one of those questions where, you know that two hours from now, I'm going to go, 'Dammit, I wish I'd thought of that, because I really like a great villain.' I'm going to try to stick to film and TV on this one. I mean, it can be argued that Walter White was a villain. That was a pretty incredible performance. I think that Breaking Bad is probably the best TV show ever made. So, I'm going to go with Walter White.

What was the first album you ever owned?
This is embarrassing to admit: It was Michael Jackson's Thriller on vinyl.

What is your favorite book?
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. They say that no one has written the great American novel, but I think he wrote the greatest Southern novel.

Where is one place that you've never been that you really want to go?
Japan. I don't know what it is, but I've always been fascinated with Japanese history and Japanese culture. The one academic course I took during graduate school was History of the Samurai. It seems like a fascinating place. I'd love to visit.

Is there an outfit you regret wearing?
You're talking to a guy who hates shopping. I wear jeans until I can't wear them anymore, they're falling apart. This shirt is from Target. I don't really think too much about that stuff. 

There was this one time, actually, a friend of mine reminded me. I was directing a short film in my twenties that I was also acting in and I was playing a clown, like a circus clown. This was back when the Meatpacking District was kind of sketchy. Now, it's the trendiest spot in Manhattan.

So, we were shooting, we had a location in the Meatpacking District and [it was the] middle of the day, broad daylight. And the guys in the crew thought it would be funny if they drove off in the production van and left me stranded in the middle of the Meatpacking District dressed as a clown. I had to call them. I didn't have anything with me. Apparently, I was like, "OK, haha. Very funny. Leave the clown in the Meatpacking District. I get it. Come back and get me."

What is your favorite kind of bagel?
I would say onion.

When was the last time you cried?
The last time I cried was when I watched ... It was something really silly and my wife was laughing at me. What was that? Oh, man. It was the end of Dungeons & Dragons. It was a really sappy, happy ending and it got me.

Who is your favorite Hollywood Chris?
My favorite Hollywood Chris? I'll go with Chris Walken.

Do you have any memorable dreams?
I have a recurring dream that I am back in college. And it's funny because for a long time — I loved my college, I went to the University of the South Sewanee, it's called Sewanee now, Sewanee: the University of the South — and for a long time after graduating, I had this dream that I was back at Sewanee and I always woke up and I was like, "Oh man, that was such a good dream," because I missed the place. And I do. But these days when I have that dream, I'm like, "Oh god, I can't believe I have to put up with this shit." I have to do what? I have a class in psychology? Give me a break, man. Just give me the damn degree so I can give back to my career.