Melbourne
March 29-30, 2025
Melbourne Showgrounds
From westerns to sci-fi and everything in between, there are few genres Anson Mount hasn’t mastered across his eclectic career.
Star Trek: Discovery, Inhumans, Hell on Wheels and more were on the itinerary during his Supanova 2019 – Sydney panel.
On his introduction to Star Trek
“My mother turned me onto [Star Trek]. The original started airing on our local access channel when I was about eight years old. I’ve probably seen every episode of the original at least three times.”
The journey to Captain Pike
“I had actually been talking to the creators before the first season about [Captain Gabriel] Lorca and they very wisely hired Jason Isaacs. And then when they started preparing for season two, they called me and said, ‘Hey, what about this new Captain Parker?’ I was like, ‘Alright, that’s not a very creative name for a captain but fine.’ And they said, ‘Would you mind putting yourself on tape?’ So I put myself on tape and the next day I got the call – not only had I got the part, but it was actually Captain Pike and, being a Trekkie, I thought I was going to pass out.”
The iconic tunic
“The first time I put on the tunic… I have never had more fittings in my life for a single costume. Gersha Phillips, our costume designer, is very exact with the cut of all of those uniforms. They do fitting after fitting, after fitting, after fitting. But once it was finally finished, I mean, come on, wearing the Captain’s gold was a dream come true.”
Where would a second season of Inhumans have gone?
“New York. Most of Inhuman’s plot lines are very New York-centric, so I think we were done with Hawaii. Being a New Yorker, I was really looking forward to rolling out of bed and walking to work. That didn’t happen.”
Using sign language as Black Bolt in Inhumans
“I had a signing consulate, but the trick was, because he’s not from Earth, it would not be any form of standard Earth-bound sign language, it would be his own sign system… the hardest part was getting from a mind-mouth connection to a mind-hand [connection] without creating tension in the body. It was just literally a matter of rehearsing my lines like a dance rehearsal. I had to get it in the muscle memory in my body, so I could let it go. It was more work than usual.”
The best type of actor to work with
“Getting to work with horses was the best part of [Hell on Wheels]; they’re the best actors because everything they think or feel is expressed on their skin. They cannot lie, they’re wonderful and they’re really smart animals.”
A funny moment on set
“We had a runway contest during the last or second-last episode [of Star Trek: Discovery] that Doug [Jones, ‘Saru’] won.”
And the DISCO RUNWAY COMPETITON winner is… (drumroll) @actordougjones !!! No surprise I suppose. @startrekcbs pic.twitter.com/So2vdJboZw
— Anson Mount (@ansonmount) April 17, 2019
On his podcast about creative inspiration, The Well
“For me, creativity is really what separates us from the apes; it’s the human force behind everything from cave paintings to putting a man on the moon. It’s fundamentally linked to our curiosity as a species, and I think people at the top of their game are thinking outside of the box, whether they’re a mathematician or they’re an artist.”
What he’d like to do next
“I grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons, so fantasy is something that I’d like to do. I really want to do something set in the world of DC politics. Actually, I have something that I’m going to be shopping to the world. I really want to do another western too.”
Lead image: Anson Mount at Supanova Sydney. Pic by Steven Yee.
