Star Trek’s Most Beloved Guest Star Got Hired By Tricking Gene Roddenberry

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 8 seconds ago

One of the sexiest characters in Star Trek history is Nurse Chapel. These days, that character is played by Jess Bush on Strange New Worlds, where she enjoys great banter with Dr. M’Benga and an awkward romantic entanglement with Mr. Spock. But in The Original Series, Chapel was played by Majel Barrett, one of the most iconic forces in the franchise. Barrett previously played Number One in Star Trek’s first pilot and went on to voice the Enterprise computer. Later, she was cast as Lwaxana Troi, the overbearing mother to the half-Betazed counselor, Deanna Troi.

As you can tell, Star Trek was pretty good to Majel Barrett. That’s not so surprising, though, considering who her husband was. When The Original Series started, she was dating franchise creator Gene Roddenberry, a man she would later marry. Roddenberry was all too happy to put her in Trek wherever he could, but there was a problem: NBC had already rejected Trek’s pilot, and they wouldn’t want to see Barrett play a different role. She solved this problem by dying her hair and auditioning under a different name, a gamble she knew would be effective because her new blonde hair fooled the man who knew her best: Gene Roddenberry!

Gene’s Number One Gal

Majel Barrett’s introduction to Star Trek is a heartwarming and slightly messy story. She became a mistress to Gene Roddenberry, someone who was already married and had two kids. Roddenberry was all-in on the relationship (he went on to marry) and was enthusiastic about writing her into Trek. So enthusiastic that when he was writing “The Cage,” Trek’s first pilot, he wrote a very prominent role for Barrett: Number One, the first officer to Captain Pike. Unfortunately, NBC didn’t like the pilot, and while they gave Roddenberry the chance to make another, they had two requests: for him to drop both Leonard Nimoy and Majel Barrett from the show.

Roddenberry went to bat for Nimoy, feeling the Spock character was crucial to Star Trek. He agreed to let Barrett go, though, and she didn’t appear in Trek’s second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” NBC loved the pilot and ordered the show to series. Afterwards, starting in “The Naked Time,” Barrett appeared as a very different character: Nurse Chapel, someone who loved flirting with Spock. Barrett knew she’d have to sneak by NBC executives to appear on Trek again, so she dyed her hair blonde and visited Roddenberry’s office. He didn’t recognize her at first, and Barrett made a declaration: “By God, if I could fool you, I can fool NBC.’”

Blondes Have More Fun (Or At Least, More Roles)

Majel Barrett got the part, and she appeared throughout Star Trek: The Original Series as Nurse Chapel. Did she successfully fool everyone at NBC, though? It depends on who you ask. In an old issue of Star Trek Monthly, Barrett proudly claimed, “For three years, NBC never knew it was the same person.” However, according to Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, NBC Vice President Herb Schlosser asked studio exec Herb Solow about who the Chapel actor was; when he found out it was Barrett, he correctly sussed out that she was likely having an affair with someone important.

Speaking of affairs, Barrett’s stunt severely angered Lucille Ball, whose Desilu studio produced Star Trek: The Original Series. After her own marriage fell apart due to her husband’s philandering, she began demanding that everyone who worked with her act upright and moral at all times. When she found out that married Gene Roddenberry had snuck his mistress back into Trek under a different name (Majel Leigh Hudec, her real name), she wanted to fire the two of them. Basically, she hated their moral impropriety as well as Roddenberry’s naked nepotism. Fortunately, Solow was able to talk her out of it, which allowed Roddenberry to change sci-fi forever.

As for Majel Barrett, she certainly left her mark on Star Trek. She married Roddenberry, appeared extensively in The Original Series, and then popped up in multiple TOS movies and TV spinoffs like The Animated Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine. The franchise effectively changed her life for the better, and her appearances certainly made Trek a deeper and more delightful universe. None of this would have happened, though, if she hadn’t dyed her hair blonde one day and set out to trick the man she would later marry!