Captain's Log ST-CHI: Doug Jones and Anthony Rapp on Missed Musicals, Strange New Shoes and Finding Your Character
- Antal Bokor
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
We got to sit in on the lovely and unusually gangly Doug Jones and the equally lovely and unusually pale Anthony Rapp, known to Star Trek fans for their time on Discovery, but were famous before they ever put on a Starfleet uniform. Doug Jones is known for his portrayal of creatures in many films including Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy, to name just a few of his multitude of roles from advertisements, tv and film. And Anthony Rapp was known for his role as Mark Cohen in Rent on stage and in film–but I knew him as Daryl Coopersmith in the almost forgotten classic, Adventures in Babysitting.
The last time I saw Doug Jones it was an absolute love fest–he’s definitely the celebrity I’ve seen hug the most people. He’s also the celebrity I think of when I think of creature effects and heavy prosthetics use. When a fan asked Jones what his mental process was like and how he’s able to survive sitting in the makeup chair for hours. Jones replied, “Unlike most people, I don't have to be doing something all the time. Many people ask me, like, what do you do during those hours? It’s like: nothin’. And I mean if I was alone at home I could stare at a wall and drool on myself and be completely content. So I’m kind of built for the makeup process. The longest thing I ever did was for the Hellboy movies, seven hours a day, that was. That sounds like a full work day, and I was like, fine, they’re doing all the work and I’m just sitting here,” he then mimics sitting contentedly while getting makeup applied, and he continues, “But then the hard part is wearing it for the rest of the day and performing in it and keeping your energy up while you’re hotter than everyone else, and heavier than everyone else. A little stickier than everyone else.”
One of the funniest moments of the weekend happened when a fan came up to ask the panelists about the Strange New Worlds musical episode. The fan could not even finish their sentence before Anthony Rapp dramatically yelled, threw his mic and literally flipped over a chair in mock rage, with Jones quipping at the display “As you can see, he’s taking it well.”
The fan finished “if your character had a song, what genre do you think the song would have been?” Rapp replied, “Did you ever play Mass Effect? So, it’s like a bit of an Easter egg, and it’s not necessarily a spoiler, but there’s this character Mordin I always think of this when I’ve thought about it. Mordin sings Gilbert and Sullivan, so I always imagined that would be Stanmets, you know? I don’t think he’d do like a rock number. But on the other hand, maybe he would get totally emo. You know, as like a shift. You never know.” And Jones and Rapp went on to point out the irony that Rapp, a Broadway star, didn’t get to sing a single bar while Jones sang twice as his character Saru.
When the two actors were asked about their favorite episode of Star Trek: Discovery, Anthony Rapp referenced his work with late actor Kenneth Mitchell, who sadly passed away from complications due to ALS in 2024. Of Mitchell Rapp said, “he was an amazing human being” who fought his battle with ALS with courage. Mitchell portrayed Klingons Kol and Tenavik, as well as human Aurelio in Star Trek Discovery.
When asked about Saru’s famous arm swinging gait, Jones had a very practical answer on his process: “How do you make this character different than all the ones I’ve made before, right? And I had played many aliens before Saru, so I’m like ‘how’s his posture, what shape is his spine in that’s different than everyone else? Well, when I got the shoes I was like ‘welp! There we are. It’s a high heel boot–it’s like a hoof, like a land animal with no heel.'
And when I saw that design I was like ‘Oh, that’s going to be a problem. And the producers said, ‘oh, Lady Gaga wears shoes on stage like that all the time. And I said, ‘Well, if Gaga can do it!'
So they had a cobbler–a shoe maker–up in Toronto put these together. And the first time I had them on it was like ‘okay, here goes!. And he said, ‘when you stand up, just put the your hips a little bit forward so the weight goes on the ball of the foot where your base is. You have no heel. Don’t rely on the heel.’” At this point Jones stands up, mimicking trying on these shoes for the first time. “Whoa, that’s no so bad. I’m at this posture, and I'm walking around with full length mirrors in the room and I was like OH!” as he demonstrates the arm swing, “it was that fast. And no one told me to stop doing it.”
As we've seen with every other instance of Rapp and Jones together, they bring the fun, the chaos, and the heart to the Trek world in panels just as much as they do in the shows we all love so much.