[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode 7 “Erigah.”]
“We’re going for empathy, and if you empathize with him and Moll, and if you were sad when this episode finishes, then we did our job,” Elias Toufexis says of his and Eve Harlow‘s Star Trek: Discovery characters in Thursday’s new episode.
In it, L’ak and Moll end up back on Discovery as prisoners, with the former receiving as much medical care as Culber (Wilson Cruz) can offer, given his knowledge of the Breen. Speaking of the Breen, multiple primarchs are after L’ak in hopes of using him to secure status. L’ak and Moll, of course, just want off the ship, so he comes up with a plan: He creates a distraction by injecting himself with what ends up being a fatal dose while she gets away to the shuttle; she was supposed to beam him aboard after, but in the end, she returns to him to say goodbye. Then, Moll offers herself—and her knowledge of the Progenitors’ power the Federation is after—up to the Breen.
Below, Toufexis tells us when we found out about L’ak’s death, filming his final scene, and what, as a Star Trek fan, he took from set.
When we spoke about 505, you talked about not knowing about L’ak and Moll’s backstory until you got the script. So talk about finding out that L’ak was going to die.
Elias Toufexis: I kind of sussed it out on my own in a weird way before I got the script because I realized where they were going with it and that they wanted to have a reason for the Breen and the Federation to kind of go at each other more than just normal, everyday Star Trek political stuff. And I thought, well, the reason is going to be that L’ak’s going to die or L’ak’s going to be prisoner for them or something’s going to happen to L’ak that makes them fight each other or not like each other more. So I kind of sussed out. I’m like, I bet you he’s going to die.
I don’t remember when they told me, honestly. I think it was a couple episodes before. Obviously, I didn’t get it the day of or anything, and it just made sense to me story-wise that I knew it was coming, and I was sad. I mean, there’s two parts of it. There’s the fan and the actor loving working with all the people — because Discovery’s one of the best sets I’ve ever been on — working with all those people. That was sad. But then there was a part of me going, I’m kind of glad I don’t have to get up and put that makeup on tomorrow. I was sad to see him go, and you kind of want them to have a happy ending, especially after you see their past. So yeah, it was a sad but happy day when we finally wrapped that episode.
Did part of L’ak know that he wasn’t going to make it out alive and just tell Moll that she could get him after she left? Or did he truly think that he could get away with this plan?
I think he did some math in his head, and it was like 80-20 he’s not going to survive this. But more than anything, he just wants Moll to be okay. But there was that 20 percent—I played it at least that there was a chance he’s going to be… he’s in a med bay, so I think he was like, “I’m in sick bay. They could probably fix me if it’s really bad, but by that time, Moll will get away. It is probably really bad when he is dying there and then Moll shows up and he’s like, “You’re still here?” That’s probably what I should have played instead of dying. I should’ve been like, “Why are you here?” [Laughs] But I think he knew it was a sacrifice. I don’t know that he knew it was a fatal sacrifice, but he knew it was a big risk, but he did it for her.
Talk about filming L’ak’s death scene and that farewell to Moll.
Yeah, it was mostly Eve that makes that work. I had the easier job. I just had to lie there and look at Eve being sad and just be like, okay, I can just work off of that. If I’m honest, it is tough getting the empathy through the makeup and through the contact lenses. It is very tricky. And I had to force myself to overplay things. I normally consider myself a pretty naturalistic actor that doesn’t do much, and I let the camera do a lot of work. Maybe that’s just lazy.
But with Episode 5, I really wanted to get through the makeup and make the love come through and the relationship come through. And when I watched it, I’m like, okay, it does really work. And then I was genuinely worried, is the death scene going to come through? Because you do have to see that emotion through those damn contacts, and it works. I think it works mostly because of Eve’s performance. I was just pretty much playing it straight and Eve brought all the emotion in that scene. It was tough, but I don’t know, in the end, it wasn’t like we were all sitting there depressed or anything. We did the scene and we knew it was coming and we did it at the best we could, took a minute or two to recover after every take, and then were fine.
How would L’ak feel about Moll’s move to offer herself and the power the Federation is after up to the Breen?
I love that she does that because my favorite thing about that is that we’re playing this whole thing about making them sympathetic. They’re actually maybe good guys and they’ll team up with the federation. The first thing she does is throw the Federation under the bus. She’s like, oh, screw these guys. Yeah, no, they were married. I think L’ak knew what he was doing when he was marrying her.
“In case I go, you have this connection now to the Breen, to us. I don’t care if you’re not accepted, this is a statement.” So by marrying her, I think he knew that that could be a possibility. It almost guarantees her safety in a way. So I don’t know that he’d be like, well, yeah, take my body and go hang out with the Breen. But he trusts her implicitly about doing the right thing for them. So if this is her decision, he would know that she’s doing the right thing to protect herself.
Marni Grossman / Paramount+
Would he want her to bring him back if she could? Because that’s always the question in these things: If you could bring someone back, should you?
It’s a good question. I don’t know that I thought about it that much. I think it just folds into he knows that she will do what’s best for them, and if that’s trying to bring him back from the dead or something, or if it’s just using him and his place in the Breen kind of hierarchy to get her freedom, do that. Whatever you think is best for you, that’s why I did this sacrifice.
Would he have made the same decisions if their positions had been reversed? It’s very different for him to go back to the Breen than it is for her to go to them.
Yeah, I don’t know that he would have. Much like in Episode 5 when Michael [Sonequa Martin-Green] is offering him an out kind of, you’ll go to jail, and he starts considering it and he starts saying, “Well, will we do our time together?” You kind of realize that Moll probably wouldn’t do that. So they both want the same thing. Maybe they think there are different ways to get it, but I think, like I said, he trusts her and he puts all of his trust in her. That’s why he marries her.
Since you are a Trek fan, were you able to take anything from the set?
Nothing I’m going to tell you about. Yes, I have some stuff. I definitely have some stuff—not from the set. I didn’t steal from the set. I was sent, because I asked, some wardrobe stuff, but I didn’t steal. Oh my God, I wanted to take a tricorder. I wanted to, but I wasn’t going to steal from the Strange New Worlds set. They might need it, but I definitely asked for some L’ak wardrobe pieces and they sent [them to] me. I also asked for a shirt that Book wears because I love it, just as a fashion shirt, and they sent it to me. Yeah, so I’ll show up when I see [David] Ajala next at some Comic-Con. I’ll wear his Book shirt. I’ll be like, this is yours, man.
Star Trek: Discovery, Thursdays, Paramount+