Local guy, former Star Trek star, now Prince-ly

By CLARK GROOME

Robert Picardo left his native Philadelphia for Yale in 1971. His intention was to be a doctor. It was a goal that he ultimately achieved, at least for a while, and he never had to pay malpractice insurance.

Picardo, who grew up in East Falls, spent seven years as the doctor on the popular syndicated Star Trek: Voyager. He has returned to his Philadelphia roots to star as the father in the Prince Music Theater’s Gemini, the Musical, which is currently in previews, opens on Saturday and runs through October 31.

After arriving at Yale, Picardo found “the biology curriculum was so challenging” that he changed his major to drama, finishing in three years.

His interest in theater went back, he said in a recent interview on his day off from Gemini rehearsals, to his days at Philadelphia’s private William Penn Charter School. He thanks his English and drama teacher, Ted Shakespeare, and said that a pal got him started. “When I got a few laughs, I realized it was a lot of fun, and you didn’t have to get dirty the way you did playing soccer. It’s also,” he added with the twinkle so familiar to Star Trek fans, “a good way to meet girls in a boys school.”

While at Yale, he was part of several memorable events, including the fabled production of Stephen Sondheim’s Frogs, performed with Sigourney Weaver, Meryl Streep, Christopher Durang and the Yale swim team in the university swimming pool.

“The turning point,” he says about the switch between pre-med and theater, “was when I was in a quasi-professional production of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, which was a year or two before it opened the Kennedy Center [in Washington]. Mr. Bernstein came to see it, was very taken with the production. He took us to Vienna, and we premiered the work in Europe. I was all of 19.

“I had a featured role in it. The maestro was very supportive. He pulled me aside and said, ‘What do you intend to do for a living once you get out of here?’ I said I was pre-med. He said ‘You really are good at this. You should consider doing this. You have genuine stage energy, not phony Broadway energy.’

“I looked him in the eye and said, ‘Would you tell my mother?’ So he did. With his validation, I had my get-out-of-pre-med-free card, graduated and went off to New York.”

His early days in New York, during which, he says, “I had some very good fortune in a very brief period of time,” were filled with classes and some performances. In 1977 he was cast in the role of Francis in Albert Innaurato’s Gemini. After playing it on Long Island and off-Broadway, he made his debut on Broadway. Then came the role of Jack Lemmon’s son in Tribute, a part he reprised in Los Angeles, where he has been ever since.

Continuing his stage work, he also worked in TV and film. After three years in TV’s China Beach, he tried out for the role of Neelix in Voyager, a role he lost to his old friend Ethan Phillips. The producers had originally asked him to read for the doctor, but he didn’t think the character was very interesting. “I didn’t get the joke. ‘Colorless, humorless, a computer program of a doctor’ was the description. That didn’t sound like seven years of great fun to me.”

After he lost Neelix he was called to read again, this time for the doctor. Since being recalled after losing a part is almost unheard of, “I went in. I’m still convinced the reason I got it versus the other 900 actors who supposedly read for it is that I made a joke at the end of my audition that was so evocative of the original series [which I had never watched] that I lucked into it.”

Since Voyager returned to earth three years ago Picardo, 50, has kept busy, appearing on stage and in some TV series, most recently the ill-fated Lyons Den with Rob Lowe. In a way, Picardo’s career has come full cycle. “My first big break on Broadway was playing the son in Gemini. (After I left to do Tribute with Jack Lemmon) I used to joke, when Gemini was running forever (it played 1,788 performance, the fifth longest-running play in Broadway history) that it might run long enough for me to go back and play the father.

“Lo and behold, it’s almost 28 years later, and I have indeed come back just to do that. I am playing my father in the musical version. I am returning from the original production, and so is Anne DeSilvo, who stole the show the first time around as Lucille (the father’s lady friend).”

It’s a bit surreal, he says, watching the character he originated from a different perspective on the stage.

“I look at Barry James’s Francis and I can remember sitting where he’s sitting, in exactly the same seat in the big dinner scene that I sat in then. . . I remember not only lines and moments in the play but the emotional arc. I’ve only once blurted out one of his lines by mistake.”

This is Picardo’s first job in Philadelphia since he left for Yale 33 years ago. “It’s good to be home,” he said. “I’m going to go back to Penn Charter; I’m going to see all my relatives, and I’m going to Dalessandro’s for a steak sandwich.”