10 Surprising Star Trek Guest Appearances By Celebrities Who Weren't Actors
1. The Rock - Voyager, 'Tsunkatse'
Of course, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is better known as a Hollywood actor than as a wrestler, but back in 1999, the WWE star made his acting debut on an episode of That 70's Show, and closely followed it with Tsunkatse, an episode of Star Trek: Voyager in 2000. In it, Seven is captured and forced to compete in futuristic arena fights.
The Rock plays, surprise surprise, an alien wrestler who grapples with, and defeats Seven. The cameo was designed as a cross-promotional event between Voyager and Smackdown! which had recently begun airing on the same network. It's why the Rock's alien wrestler delivers a Rock Bottom and arches the People's Eyebrow in his brief appearance at the start of the episode.
Hilariously, Jeri Ryan hadn't a clue who Dwayne Johnson was, and was bewildered to discover a signed photo of his wrestling alter-ego in her trailer after he left the set. She told the Big Issue that:
“When I got to my trailer he had left a signed picture in character as The Rock – and it said ‘The Rock smells what you’re cooking’. Like, what?! It’s the weirdest thing I’d ever seen somebody write.”
22 years later, there's surely no one left in the land who can't smell what the Rock is cookin'.