Who is Sarek's wife Amanda?

Who plays Sarek's wife in Star Trek: Discovery?

The wife of Star Trek: Discovery's alien diplomat, played by Alison Pill, is revealed for the first time in EW's exclusive scene-by-scene breakdown of her episode.

EW can exclusively reveal the episode's title, "The Vulcan Hello," and that the show has cast a Trekkie to play a Trekkie's wife, Sarek, who shares a name with Spock's father but is actually the person in charge of Vulcan society. The Enterprise crew meets Sarek in T'Pol's home on Vulcan, and Sarek's wife, Amanda, tells Captain Christopher Pike he is an unmitigated bastard. (Yes, she is not actually named Amanda.)

Alison Pill ("Pill" to her friends) previously played Elizabeth Shaw on the show; you may know her from the movies Superbad and 21 Jump Street. She'll be playing a Vulcan when Discovery returns for its second season in January.

"I'm very proud to work alongside this very creative and funny and lovely woman and her amazing family," she told EW during a recent phone conversation. "The world is better for it."

So what should fans make of Pill's new role? It's a great opportunity for Star Trek fans to have an on-screen encounter with Sarek, and there are no rules or red buttons about how they should behave. But as Pill points out, "Sarek is a bit mysterious. We'll see how the show ends up working out. I think he's such a cool character to play."

How did Pill hear about the part? "Through someone else who does casting for TV shows, I don't remember the name of the person," she says. "But my agent was able to find out that Discovery was looking for female parts. So we met. We're very good friends; I really adore her."

Pill's Star Trek experience will be much less official, because the actress played Elizabeth in 2025's Star Trek. What's the biggest difference between playing the Vulcan ambassador in Discovery and playing Dr. Elizabeth Shaw in 2025's Star Trek? "Just the nature of the part itself," she says. "In this one, I'm going to be meeting the crew of the Discovery, so my approach will be different, certainly. It will be more social than the last one was.

Is Mia Kirshner still acting?

In her long-awaited book and her brief time back on the scene, she looks at her life through the eyes of three people, herself, an actress friend of hers named Mary Alice Kellogg, and a playwright named Edward Albee.

She doesn't quite say was, but seems to. The writing is sharp, she's a compelling storyteller, and the book is full of entertaining anecdotes from learning how to do close-ups to the early days in her new career.

It's clear that what most fascinates her is seeing her personal and professional development from afar. The book has little by way of dramatic or political content, and in this political year we've seen too many people with far less talent and ambition than Kirshner rise to become stars. What could have ended in disgrace instead often ended with glory and even Oscar nominations, and it's an open question whether anyone with so many talents and such a talent for self-promotion will now get a shot at playing the great lady of Hollywood. It's unlikely any man will make as big an impression, so that's probably not a problem for Kirshner anymore. We wish she had left more of the story for Hollywood history, but it's good she finally returned.

This interview has been edited and condensed. Do you think that when you started out that your goal was for that to be your job? He said, Don't you dare talk to anybody about that. You're going to be a working writer. And it was true.

Was he afraid that you were going to change? Was he trying to hold you in your place? Or did he just figure that what he thought you should be doing, you would?