Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Tasha Yar

It's the long lost Star Trek: The Next Generation casting memo from 13 April 1987 that keeps on giving. On it can be read: "Denise Crosby seems to be the only possibility for the role of 'Troi' at this point." There were five people up for consideration for Tasha, but the "favourite" then was Rosalind Chao. Chao would, of course, go on to play Keiko O'Brien, and her prolific career also includes her role in the 2003 version of Freaky Friday. Another body swap, of sorts, is what it would take for Crosby to become Yar.

As Marina Sirtis told it on the TNG season one DVD extra The Beginning, her first three Trek auditions were for Tasha. From the start, Crosby had been auditioning for Troi. Producers (save for one) were set on casting the characters that way, as Rick Berman confirmed in the season one extra Selected Crew Analysis, "We wanted Marina to play Tasha, and we wanted Denise to play Troi." It was Gene Roddenberry who suggested that the roles be switched. In Selected Crew Analysis, Crosby went on to say that,

Gene felt, and these are his words, that I was too much like Grace Kelly, and that Troi should be this exotic, otherworldly creature, and I was just this kind of American golden girl.

In a way only Hollywood can provide, Denise Crosby was already much less than those six degrees from Grace Kelly. The future Princess of Monaco had starred alongside Denise Crosby's grandfather Bing in the films The Country Girl and High Society — the first as his wife! Work that one out in therapy with Troi now that you're Tasha, I think.