What Gates McFadden Wants You To Know About Podcasting, Star Trek's Beverly Crusher, And More

Tell us the story of how you came to decide you were going to do a podcast — and this podcast specifically.

So I was sitting in my house, and the phone rang, and it was the CEO of Nacelle, Brian Volk-Weiss, who is fantastic. And I had never met him, and he's like, "Hi, this is Brian Volk-Weiss. I really, really want you to do a podcast that we will produce. I just know this is good." And I'm like, "What? Who are you? What?" I was like, "You want me?" I said, "You really want Patrick [Stewart], but you'll settle for me." He said, "No, no, no. I want you to do this." And I'm like, "A podcast." And he said, "Yeah, a podcast about 'Star Trek' with the cast."

I said, "Okay, first of all, Brian, there's no way I'm going to get one friend of mine from 'Star Trek' to go on a podcast with me, and we're going to talk about 'Star Trek,' because we talk about it all the time with everyone else, interviewing. I just don't think so." I mean, I do odd things. I have an eclectic career. That's an understatement. But I said, "I just don't think so." And then he came back a couple of weeks later, or a week later, and said, "I really think you should rethink this, because I think it would be great. You can talk about whatever you want." And I'm like, "But I don't have any vision of what it would be." He said, "Well, talk to your friends. We never get to see that." And I said, "I don't know, I'll think about it, but I don't think so." He came back a third time and asked me. The last time I took two times to say no and then finally said yes was for "Star Trek," playing Dr. Crusher. There's something about me that's really stupid, that says no to these great things that I get offered. And I went, "Okay, I'm going to say yes." 

So I said yes. And I was nervous. I didn't know quite what I was going to do, but obviously I love my friends. We are always in contact with each other, and I was going to start with the "Next Gen" people. But then I'm friends with a lot of other people from different "Star Trek" casts. And I thought, "Well, that will be great too, because we'll see what we're going to talk about." And I would research people that I already knew all the stuff they did, but I wanted to look at it again. That sort of thing. And then I would just come up with stuff, and we'd talk about it. And everyone was different. Some people, it was more serious. Other people, it was more wacky. I think one of my favorites is with Wil Wheaton, because I love my space son. We're close. He's one of the best. And he is so good at podcasting, hosting and all of that, that I thought, "Okay, he's going to be interviewing me. I've got to make this like a conversation. How do I do that?" 

So the idea that I came up with was that we were going to play games. It couldn't be video games, because of the pandemic and stuff. So I came up with just starting with Never Have I Ever, and we got down to it. We talked about things that might be a bit shocking, but I learned a lot about him. And I am sure he learned more than he ever wanted to know about me. And then I had philosophical, ethical questions, and we just started talking about all sorts of subjects, very random. I mean, it really is the gamut. And that's when I started to realize I could open up the list of things we're talking about, and I've had so much fun doing it. I've learned how to sound edit, even though Naselle has someone who double checks all of my sound edits and makes it really come up to snuff. But I've loved learning a new skill. I've loved the challenge of how do I ... It's not really an intimate conversation with my friends, but parts of it are intimate. And how do you do that? So I'm excited.