20 Things You Didn’t Know About Galaxy Quest
11. Steven Spielberg Added The Romantic Subplot For Laliari And Kwan
As the film was a Dreamworks production, Steven Spielberg (who founded the studio with David Geffen and former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg in 1994) visited the set to provide his input and found himself intrigued with Missi Pyle’s interpretation of the Laliari character.
“I heard that Spielberg was there. He came and then he saw my character and makeup and decided she should be a bigger part. I was only supposed to be in two scenes and then they realized they didn’t have another female except Sigourney Weaver… So they added the relationship with Tony Shalhoub's character.”
Scuttlebutt (like gossip with an executive producer credit) has it that Spielberg was also responsible for keeping Justin Long's fanboy character in the film. Long says that he'd heard they were going to cut his part to almost nothing, but Spielberg told them the audience would need a human connection to the film to identify with it, and so Parisot beefed the role back up again.