The newest edition to the franchise, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, premiered this month on Paramount+. Oded Fehr recently joined the cast as Admiral Vance on the series, continuing the role that he created on Star Trek: Discovery. For the first time in over 120 years, Starfleet has restarted the Academy to prepare the next generation of Starfleet. People may recognize Oded from his roles in the Resident Evil franchise or his many TV guest spots, such as Charmed.

Fehr recently spoke with SciFi Vision about working on the series, which airs Thursdays on Paramount+.

Read the transcript below.

SCIFI VISION:   Do you feel there's a different tone between Academy and Discovery?

ODED FEHR:   Oh my God, of course. I think, you know, Discovery was kind of your action survival, you know, kind of an end-of-everything show. And I think Starfleet Academy is very much a Star Trek show with the optimism of college.

You know, I love college towns. I love visiting colleges. I have three kids, and my second one is in college right now, and our third, we're starting to think about college. And every time I'm visiting colleges, I love the excitement and optimism towards the future. Do you know what I mean? As we get older, we kind of go, “Everything is so bad,” but in college, everything is - we could do anything. And I think this show is a lot of that.

There’s a lot of, there's a lightness to the show. There's a humor to the show that is different than on Discovery. Not that Discovery didn't have humor here and there, but this show is very much within the optimism of these young students.

And this very unconventional chancellor, who's a good friend and somehow, you know, always gets her way within limits with Admiral Vance, nut he trusts her, because they're both, their moral compass is aligned. And yeah, it's very different.

SCIFI VISION:   How did you get the initial role on Discovery? Was there an additional process or how did that come about?

ODED FEHR:   No, I think it was one of those things that I was brought in to do an arc, and I think it somehow worked well, and we just continued going. For me, I was offered two different arcs on two different TV shows, but Star Trek, you know, I watched the original series as a child in the Middle East, and then I watched the Next Generation religiously. And that optimism of the show, for me, has always been something to strive for, as we are living with more and more conflict. I feel we all need more Star Trek in our daily life, that kind of optimistic view that we can find common grounds; we can all live together equally and so on.

SCIFI VISION:   What's it like being part of the vast Star Trek universe? Do people recognize you from Star Trek, or do they go, “Oh, you're from Resident Evil or Charmed?”

ODED FEHR:   No, definitely the people recognize me from Star Trek all the time, and it's interesting. It’s all different facets of society, different people. Star Trek fans are very, they're very - I love the Star Trek fans, like I said. Star Trek is always for nerds like me and optimists like me, you know what I mean? It's a show that's very positive; it's a show that's very hopeful, and it's a show that's all techie and kind of wonderful technology and all of that, so I think it kind of attracts a certain kind of fans that are lovely.

SCIFI VISION:   What's been, what was your favorite scene to shoot during Academy?

ODED FEHR:   There's a scene, the smaller scenes are always the best when it's, you know, just the two and three of us, but wait a minute, that's hard, the negotiation scene was fabulous too. You know, they're all, it's hard for me to say, but the smallest scenes are always nicer. They're easier to shoot too when you have two to three people and not an entire huge universe that has to be a lot of coverage and so on. But yeah, the smaller scenes with Holly [Hunter] or, you know, Paul Giamatti or those kind of scenes were lovely.

SCIFI VISION:   If you could play any other character in Discovery or Academy, which one would it be and why?

ODED FEHR:   I’ve gotta tell you, I don't know that there's any character specifically that I would like to play other than Admiral Vance. I really do sincerely love the character. I can tell you what I wouldn't want to play someone with heavy prosthetics. I just, Doug Jones, I don't know how he did it, how he does it. I don't - it's just, that's so many hours in makeup. I am not a makeup guy, and I cannot imagine, even though they look so incredible and every time I'm walking into a set when we have a lot of aliens and a lot of prosthetics, it's so incredible to see, and it's so much fun, because you feel like you're there. But I don't - I think I would get very claustrophobic, very uncomfortable, very miserable, very quickly.

SCIFI VISION:   So, you have a very diverse resume of roles, what kind of role do you prefer playing? Something like the Admiral who's more laid back, or an action star like in Resident Evil or a villain like on Charmed?

ODED FEHR:   I love doing action, because action is a lot of fun. You know, as I get older they let me do less and less of it, which is very sad, but I love doing action, because it's like a dance, but it's like, really cool. You learn your moves, you learn your steps, but it's very cool, and especially, you know, sword fighting, things like that are really a lot of fun

 And I like playing the bad guy. I mean, I don't mind playing - you know, like the character of Admiral Vance I love, because he's a good guy, but many times he has to be the bad guy. He has to make decisions that people don't like, and I love being the bad guy. The bad guy gets to have a much wider range of emotion, because, as far as he's concerned, he's the good guy. There's no bad guy who thinks of himself as a bad guy, you know, they're good guys as far as they're concerned, they're just doing things that other people don't like. So, I love playing the bad guy. But yeah, that's it.

SCIFI VISION:   Do you have any other upcoming projects that you could talk about?

ODED FEHR:   You know, we did two seasons of House of David, I'm assuming we're going to get a third, [but] I'm not 100%; it's not 100% guaranteed, but I'm assuming we're going to get a third. There's another project that I'm working on this summer that's something that I'm going and doing again, which I shouldn't really talk about, and there's always Starfleet Academy.