Jeri Ryan is once again stepping into her iconic Star Trek role Seven of Nine in the latest season of Star Trek: Picard, and the actress is opening up about what it's like to be playing the fan-favorite character after more than two decades.
"It's crazy. That's a really rare gift as an actor," Ryan recently shared with ET's Matt Cohen. "It was a rare gift to begin with to have a character that was so beautifully written and had so much growth, since she didn't even start out human. But then to be able to revisit her this many years later and continue her journey, It's been pretty astonishing."
Ryan's Seven of Nine was first introduced in the fourth season of Star Trek: Voyager as a Borg drone -- a human who had been assimilated into the hive mind of the Borg, a cybernetic alien race. She was then freed and taken into the crew of the USS Voyager, where she slowly learns to embrace her humanity that she'd lost.
The character became a hit with fans and one of the most immediately recognizable characters in the Star Trek franchise. However, Ryan admits that she never thought she'd be tapped to play Seven again.
"I did four years on Voyager and I really thought that was it," she shared. "And when I said goodbye to the character, then I really thought that was it. I was saying goodbye to that character."
However, she was eventually approached by her friend, Star Trek writer James Duff, with the idea of returning for Picard.
"[He] had mentioned it to me in passing at the Hollywood Bowl, after several glasses of champagne -- which he knew would be the appropriate moment to bring it up," she recalled with a laugh. "I thought he was joking and then he kept bringing it up."
However, the possibility was made real when she learned from showrunner Alex Kurtzman that they'd "been talking a lot about Seven in the writers' room."
As for getting the chance to share the screen with Sir Patrick Stewart -- who is also reprising his role as the series' title character -- Ryan said, "It's been amazing!"
"He's a legend, obviously, and these two characters, it was exciting to get these two characters, especially, together in this world," she shared.
New episodes of Star Trek: Picard air Thursdays on Paramount+.
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