The Big Picture

Doug Jones, who played Saru, discusses the
Discovery
series finale, filming emotional scenes, and the possibility of returning to
Star Trek
.
Jones hopes fans take away the courage to create a full life and reveals what he’s most proud of bringing to the series.
Jones explains why you should watch his
Nosferatu
movie and which projects he’s most excited for fans to see after
Discovery.

After kicking off the current Star Trek renaissance in 2017, Discovery has officially come to an end with a breathtaking and beautiful series finale. As Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) leads her crew on one final mission, she leaves the audience with the lesson of cherishing the people around you as you all strive to make the universe better than you found it. Alongside Michael, we said goodbye to the wonderful crew of the Discovery both past and present. In honor of the finale, I sat down with Doug Jones, who played the lovable and incomparable Kelpien Saru, to discuss the end of the series and more.

During our conversation, Jones spoke about the bittersweet feeling of arriving at the finale, where he thinks Saru and T’Rina are in the future and bringing back “action Saru” for that big hero moment against the Breen. He also told a beautiful story about filming that emotional epilogue with Martin-Green and the rest of the crew, as well as, what he’s most proud of during his time on Discovery. Finally, Jones revealed whether he would ever return to Star Trek and which projects he’s most excited for fans to see him in now that Discovery is over.

Star Trek: Discovery
Taking place almost a decade before Captain Kirk’s Enterprise, the USS Discovery charts a course to uncover new worlds and life forms.Release Date September 24, 2017 Main Genre Sci-Fi Seasons 5

The Original Ending for ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 5 Was Always Saru & T’Rina’s Wedding
Image via Paramount+

Upon coming to the finale seven years after the series premiered, Jones described the moment as “bittersweet.” He continued, saying, “It’s a little bit of both, of course. The bitter part is understood, you know, we would all love to see it go on forever and ever, but it just can’t. So the sweet part is that I feel satisfied that we came to a beautiful conclusion.” By its very nature, each season of Discovery has sort of come to its own natural and satisfying conclusion, with each installment covering a contained narrative arc. Jones went on to explain, “You know, every season of Star Trek: Discovery has come to a conclusion of its own that makes the audience wonder, ‘Is that the end of the series forever?’ Because things seem to wrap up beautifully at the end of every season.”

Luckily, the same rang true for Season 5. “The same thing happened for Season 5,” said Jones, “when we didn’t know that we weren’t coming back. It came to a really lovely conclusion that felt like…I don’t know where we go from there!” As beautiful as that original ending is, it’s not quite got the full weight of a series finale on its own, which is why the cast and crew returned to film that beautiful extended epilogue. Jones explained, “So when we found out that that was our final season, Paramount Plus did us a big favor by giving us the budget and this time to go back to Toronto, open the studio up again, and film that coda, or that epilogue. And that gave then the audience a sense of, like, conclusion and that wrapped up a lot, especially for our lead character, Captain Burnham. It gave Sonequa Martin-Green a chance as an actress to find the end of the character, to find the happy ending for that character. I’m really glad for her, for that.”

Personally, Jones was pretty happy with where Saru ended up, saying:

“I think Saru already had— I already had my happy ending at the end of Season 5. He had professionally and personally came to…I don’t know where you go from that. He’s pretty darn happy now! You know,
he’s found the love of his life
, and it’s a really good fit with President T’Rina. And he’s also professionally found his niche as a diplomat in the Federation, working on behalf of smaller planets like the one he comes from, which is a very good place in his heart that he wants to help those planets. I think he’s, yeah,
he’s found his happily ever after for sure
.”

Jones went on to confirm that everything they filmed for the wedding made it into the finale. With the merging of two alien cultures, Saru and T’Rina have one of the most beautiful weddings that has ever been shown on Star Trek. When I asked Jones about changing his look for these scenes, he had nothing but lovely things to say about costume designer Anthony Tran. “Well, you know, I think that President T’Rina has had a beautiful sense of style all this time anyway, every time she comes out in a gown, you’re like good gosh! Right?!” Jones continued, “And then Anthony Tran, our costume designer, just outdid himself with the wedding costumes. And Saru — my Starfleet uniform, when I became an ambassador — oh, I love the clothes I got to wear as ambassador, too. That fun collar in the blue, and the broach? Mwah!”

“So then when I was in my first costume — I can’t remember, I was in the costume department for something and I saw pictures on the wall, the designs for our costumes for the wedding scene. I was in there for a fitting for one of my ambassador costumes, and I saw the pictures on the wall like [GASP]! It was for our wedding! So I took out my phone went click, click, because the headpiece for Tara, for T’Rina, played by Tara Rosling, who is gorgeous and brilliant and amazing. That was…it was beyond fabulous, right? And then seeing that I got to wear this beautiful design, with that tunic…being a tall, skinny guy, I love wearing long coats and things. So once we came out in those outfits on the day, even our co-stars were like, “You guys look AMAZING!” Yeah, it was really, really lovely. It felt like a real party.

Doug Jones Loved Bringing Back Action Saru for the ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Series Finale
Image via Paramount+

In the finale, despite not being aboard the Discovery, Saru still gets to take part in the heated action as he and Nhan team up to head off another fleet of Breen ships headed to take out Burnham and her crew. In this storyline, they go up against one of the most powerful alien species in the entire Star Trek franchise, armed with nothing more than their own knowledge and intellect. When asked about filming that big hero moment, Jones said:

“Thank you for, for noticing too. Once I went through Vahar’ai in Season 2, Saru found his courage and his confidence more than ever before, like he didn’t know he could live this free of fear. And now, also, my threat ganglia turned into quills that can shoot poisonous darts. So
he’s got more, more power than he ever knew he had
. But he’s remained a gentleman through it all, so that I’m glad that you mentioned his diplomacy, because he does it with a confidence.
So he’s now being face to face with Primarch, Tahal, in that moment, where she’s making threats, and I can throw threats right back at her and not be at all shaken by her. Because as an ambassador, I’ve been throughout the galaxy visiting all these small planets that are coming into the Federation, I have them all in my back pocket with a great relationship. That’s a lot of power. So when she makes threats, I say, well, you know, ‘Hey, guess what, all these planets that I’m in a relationship with are going to be aiming their guns at you if you continue with this, right? So it’s up to you, you know, if you want to be an ass, you can be an ass, but there’s consequences. Look into my eyes and ask and see if I’m bluffing. Go ahead.’
So to take Action Saru from episode two this season, when I was running through the forest, and we were shooting drones, and being very bad ass, and action Saru-ish…to take all of that physicality and put it into
sitting in a shuttle having a conversation through my eyeballs was an acting challenge for me
. And the writers gave me a real gift by making that scene happen.”

How Sonequa Martin-Green Made ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ an Experience Unlike Any Other
Image via Paramount+

I’ve had the immense pleasure of being able to talk to multiple Star Trek: Discovery actors for this final season, and one thing they all have had in common is high praise for their fearless leader Sonequa Martin-Green. Jones has perhaps worked the most closely with Martin-Green over their years on the series. With that relationship so central to both of their experiences on the show I had to ask Jones what he’s learned from his co-star that he’ll take into all his future roles. “Connection,” immediately came to mind for Jones. He went on to explain, “Connection comes in so many ways, on so many levels. Trust, too. Sonequa Martin-Green and I, we came out of the gates with a trust for each other as humans. And then playing these characters, it’s like with this brother, sister kind of relationship,” he explained.

“We’ve gone through so many, oh gosh, emotional moments together that were competitive, or argumentative, or accusatory.” However, what Jones always cherished were those moments of connection and coming back together. “Every time we had a disagreement, she and I as people didn’t like those scenes because we love each other so much in real life. The scenes we loved were when those characters got to make up, you know? We had our together and understanding make up scenes. Loved them.”

“The hardest part was leaving the ship. Earlier in Season 5, when Saru is going through a change, he’s found the love of his life, and what can I do to make that relationship work better and us to spend more time together? Well, I also have Captain status. Can I stay in the first officer position forever and ever? Probably not, probably not the best fit. But my loyalty to her is so strong that that goodbye scene of like, now that I’m leaving the ship, I’ve accepted the ambassadorship, and I’m gonna be pursuing my new engagement to T’Rina, but that doesn’t mean goodbye forever. It just means we’re not going to be in each other’s faces every day, all day. And that kind of…it hurt a little bit because, you know, I missed her. The minute we were saying goodbye— lovely, lovely to have that connection and that trust with an actor. So yes, my future roles in anything are going to hopefully include that.”

Watching the finale, there were plenty of emotional moments throughout, but the one that makes me cry every time I watch it is the scene with the entire crew in the epilogue. In that final flash forward, Burnham goes to take the Discovery to its final resting place on the edge of space. Before she utters her final “Let’s fly,” Michael is taken into an end-of-Titanic-esque scene in which she is embraced by the whole crew of Discovery one last time. Saru is the one to extend his hand to bring her into that moment, and Jones explained that he was “very honored that they wrote that in for [him] to be the one that takes her out of her fog.” Jones went on to share a story that nearly had me in tears once again. He said:

“Filming it was very emotional for all of us because we’d come back to Toronto, opened up the studio again to film that scene, those scenes. And
knowing that that was the last time we’d all be together
, and the last time I was going to be in my Saru makeup, and just like the last time for so many things…
it was just a tearful day, and a very emotionally charged day
. Once she stepped out of the captain’s chair and started the hugging all around the crew, I got to be the first one. And she— by then, the music is gonna be swelling over us and it was non-dialogue at that point. But
she whispered to me every take, ‘I love you,’
and I whispered back, ‘I love you.’ Every take. And so by the end of this, she says to me — 26 takes later, from different angles — she said,
‘I could do this all day. I love you.’
[And I said] ‘I love you. I could too.’ So you can imagine — like, oh, right — how satisfying of a day that was. It really, really was.”

As we only really see Michael during the future timeline, I had to ask Jones what he thinks Saru and T’Rina are up to in that distant future. And he envisioned a sweet happy ever after for the newlyweds. “I would like to see them living in a stress-free happily ever after where maybe they aren’t full-time in their duties anymore,” he explained, “but maybe they’re consultants still. So they’re still feeling useful and using their wisdom and their expertise for the betterment of the galaxy. But also maybe they have had hybrid children by now. Maybe they have grandchildren by now.”

Doug Jones Is Proud of Showing Fans How To Be Fearless on ‘Star Trek: Discover’
Image via Paramount+

As a part of such a legendary series, Jones leaves his own legacy to the audience. When asked what he’s most proud of bringing to the series during his tenure across its five seasons, he took his answer from the fans. “What I hear from the fans so much about my character in particular, with what this show meant to them and what Saru has meant to them is that overcoming fear thing, overcoming anxiety thing,” he explained. “And so many of us live in that. Me too. If I’m looking at tomorrow and I can’t see what it brings, I’m afraid of it. A fear of the unknown. Or if a task is put before me, I’m always afraid that I’m gonna fail.”

“Fear is our enemy for sure. Watching Saru overcome this and watching him carry on with fear is a thing of the past now. The day around him hasn’t changed,
what has changed is his reaction to it
.
And I want that to be the legacy that Saru leaves behind
for everybody, including myself as a person. I want to wear a wristband that says, ‘What would Saru do?’ Right? And that, when the fears of the day come, to face them with a, ‘We can get through this. We’ve done it before, we’ll get through it this time as well.’ A can-do attitude, as opposed to a ‘Oh, we’re all gonna die’ attitude.”

Building on that legacy, he hopes that the finale leaves audiences with a sense of hope. He said, “I hope they take away the possibilities in their own life for a happily ever after. I really do. The human condition, forces us to look to our future, like, ‘What’s to become of me?’ Right?” He went on to say he hopes audiences take away the courage “to create a life and to make our choices daily that will lead to a great eulogy one day, as opposed to nothing but work, work, work. What do you want said about you at your eulogy? And live your life according to that.”

Doug Jones Wants You to Watch His ‘Nosferatu’ Movie
Image via FX

While Saru may be gone for now, Jones has plenty of upcoming projects for fans to look forward to later this year. After confirming that he’s back for at least three episodes in the final season of What We Do in the Shadows, Jones noted that that isn’t the only vampire project he has on the horizon. While there’s a lot of hype for Robert Eggers’ retelling of Nosferatu coming out later this year, Jones wants to make sure you also give his version of the classic Dracula tale a chance. “I’m really, really looking forward to my Nosferatu coming out,” he gushed. “I played the title character in our smaller budget version. Ours has an artistic bent to it that the other one’s not gonna have. They’ll have their own artistic bent, of course, but they’re very different movies. So I want that to come out. Looking forward to people seeing me play Count Orlok, Nosferatu. That was a bucket list character for me.”

Beyond aliens and vampires, Jones is excited to explore his human side on camera. “I also just finished a movie called The Weight of Darkness, in which I play a fellow running for mayor of a small city and I’m a really good guy everybody loves. And by the end, am I really? That’s a human character,” he said happily. “I’m loving exploring the more human characters now. And I did a very funny comedy called Operation Taco Gary’s that will be coming. It also stars Jason Biggs from the American Pie movies and Dustin Milligan from Schitt’s Creek, and also Simon Rex from the Scary Movie franchise. So it’s a great cast. Very funny. And I got to play an alien posing as a human, but I can’t quite pull it off. Yeah, very fun.”

Keep an eye out for all of these projects and more coming from Jones later this year. In the meantime, you can watch the entirety of Star Trek: Discovery on Paramount+.

Watch on Paramount+