Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Beverly Crusher

It would be impossible to imagine anyone else in the role of Doctor Crusher, but as Gates McFadden tells it in her self-narrated and exec-produced documentary series The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek, she almost didn't even make it to her own audition.

McFadden was already in Los Angeles for "something else" at the time and was on her way back to the airport. It was only a last-minute call from her agent — who was a huge Star Trek fan — that got her to go to Paramount for the Next Gen audition, although her agent didn't specify the part. When McFadden arrived, she was told she could read for "any of the [three] women's roles," and picked what she thought was the 'funny character,' Beverly Crusher, but apparently that was just a scene from The Naked Now.

Having been offered the job, it seems McFadden still needed a little more convincing. She would, in fact, say no to Trek twice and went to do a play in New York instead. If McFadden said yes the third time then it was, as she said in The Center Seat, because she thought "it was a big step forward for women in command positions".

Unfortunately, that sense of optimism for the character was not set to last long.