Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Geordi La Forge
8. Baseball, Vampires, And A Vulcan
The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion gives LeVar Burton as "the most recognisable 'name'" amongst the band of space newbies at the time of casting for TNG. (Well, there was that "unknown Shakespearean actor.") Burton had already been lauded for his role in the hugely successful series Roots and for Reading Rainbow. Before Burton got the part, however, there were a few other recognisable faces in the running for the role of Geordi La Forge.
In a memo dated 13 April 1987 that was never meant to be seen outside of Paramount — but that found its way onto the Internet via Slice of Sci-Fi in 2006 and to TrekMovie in 2010 — can be seen a list of actors in consideration for roles on TNG. Under Geordi (amongst others) is baseball hall-of-famer and actor Reggie Jackson, given as the "favorite" for the part, as well as future vampire hunter Wesley Snipes, who told Collider in 2021 that he had been "disappointed" when he found out he hadn't got the Geordi role.
There's a final name that immediately stands out in the memo — Tim Russ. He very nearly got to play Geordi too, it seems. In the 1995 documentary Star Trek Voyager: Inside the New Adventure, Rick Berman stated, "A good point for trivia fans of Star Trek: Tim Russ was the first runner-up for the role of Geordi eight years ago. […] Now, it's sweet revenge [for Russ]." Still, that didn't stop the writers trying to get a joke in to the Voyager scripts about this Geordi fact.