Arcgames.com Interviews Chase Masterson

Star Trek Online, the free-to-play online role-playing game based in the iconic Star Trek universe, is thrilled to reunite twelve of the original cast members from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for the new PC expansion, Victory is Life. Joining the crew aboard the infamous space station is Chase Masterson, who is reprising the role of Leeta, former Bajoran Dabo girl and wife to Ferenginar’s Grand Nagus, Rom. The Star Trek Online team had a chance to sit down with Chase after her recording session at Cryptic Studios to talk about her return to the game (Captains may remember as Mirror Universe Leeta in Season 11: New Dawn) and the incredible work she’s been doing with her anti-bullying organization, Pop Culture Hero Coalition.

STO: Welcome back to Star Trek Online, Chase! Thank you for joining us. What is it like returning to the character of Leeta to see how she’s grown?

Chase Masterson: I really value the opportunity to do this. Part of the reason why is that I get to show a really more mature Leeta. I get to walk in the shoes of a woman who has been in charge of an entire empire with Rom, for nearly 20 years now. She’s someone who has definitely grown and come into her own. That was something I felt like I really wanted to do for a long time now. We saw quite a lot of that on the show, but here we see a Leeta who has grown into her own shoes. She’s become an intelligent woman, a strategic thinker who is still very much adoring of her husband, but is able to walk beside him in a way that is extremely valuable.

STO: One of the interesting things about the character of Leeta is that she started off as more of a comic relief and then grew over the course of Deep Space Nine. What was it like playing a role like that?

CM: It was really interesting because a lot of people did see Leeta as eye candy. I’m grateful to say that she was in all the sweeps week episodes in that cat suit, and I think that was certainly one of the reasons why. But you have to credit our amazing writing team under the direction of Ira Behr for her growth and René Echevarria, who created Leeta; she was never just a Dabo girl, she was never just eye candy and they always had more of a vision for her than that. They had a vision of a woman who was very compassionate and knew how to stand up for justice.