‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ Ended 25 Years Ago: See the Cast In & Out of Alien Character
While Starfleet crew members boldly go where no man has gone before — or, in Deep Space Nine’s case, boldly stay put in a wormhole-adjacent space station — Star Trek’s crew members are arguably the unsung heroes of the franchise. And one of those heroes is Michael Westmore, the makeup designer who crafted alien looks for the franchise for nearly 20 years.
Westmore earned two Emmy Awards and another five nominations for his work on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The syndicated series, created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller, followed Starfleet Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) and his crew as they manned the titular space station and contended with exploration, trade, politics, and conflict between two quadrants of the galaxy.
And with a cast of characters stocked with Bajorans, Cardassians, Changelings, Ferengi, Trill, and other alien species, Westmore and the other makeup artists certainly had their work cut out for them. “Challenges on Deep Space Nine were the same as Next Generation, same as Voyager, same as Enterprise,” Westmore said in a 2004 Television Academy interview. “It’s like, you’re given a concept, figure it out, build it, paint it, and have it ready on the day they’ve requested.”
DS9 ran for seven seasons before coming to an end 25 years ago, when “What You Leave Behind” aired on June 2, 1999. A quarter-century on, check out the photo gallery below to see cast members in and out of their alien characters — and to hear what they said about the makeup magic.
René Auberjonois as Odo
“I couldn’t eat really solid food,” the late actor recalled in the 2018 documentary What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, looking back on his time as DS9’s Changeling security chief. “I’d be in that makeup for hours and hours on end, and I think it affected my persona on set. People who didn’t know me thought I was probably as grumpy as the character Odo.”
Terry Farrell as Jadzia Dax
Not only was Farrell the last original cast member hired, but she also had to re-shoot scenes after the makeup team opted to give her character, a Trill science officer, spots instead of a facial prosthetic. “I had a forehead, and they didn’t like how that looked,” she recalled to StarTrek.com in 2022. “So Michael Westmore came up with the spots and took out the forehead. So we had to re-shoot.”
Armin Shimerman as Quark
Shimerman endured three hours of makeup every day to get into his Ferengi barkeep character, as he said in an appearance on Live With Regis and Kathie Lee. “It’s not bad. Ladies do it all the time,” he quipped. “Michael Westmore … doesn’t believe in rubber masks. He believes that they don’t look real, they don’t work well with the actors’ faces, and all of his Emmys prove that he’s right, I guess.”
Nana Visitor as Kira Nerys
“It was very interesting, and I’m not sure what this was about psychologically still, but I was most comfortable in that makeup,” Visitor, who played the Deep Space Nine’s Bajoran second-in-command, told StarTrek.com in 2011. “When I had Kira’s makeup on, I was completely, physically comfortable, and I didn’t care if there were cameras or if people were taking pictures. It was such a comfortable, natural mask to me. I felt like I could allow everything I am to be.”
Michael Dorn as Worf
In a 2015 Reddit AMA, Dorn told fans that his Klingon officer’s look took three hours to apply each day and that he had sat in the makeup chair 1,000 times by that point. (And that was before he returned for Star Trek: Picard.) “I was the smartest person for those 11 years in Los Angeles, because while they did the makeup, I read the Los Angeles Times from cover-to-cover and did the crossword puzzle,” he quipped.
Nicole de Boer as Ezri Dax
De Boer joined DS9 as the Trill counselor Ezri Dax in Season 7… and suffered a black eye while filming the Ezri-centric episode “Afterimage.” Worse yet, that accident occurred just before the show’s publicity photographer was due to arrive on set. “It was a bit… stressful,” de Boer recalled in the 2000 book Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion. “Fortunately, Mary Kay Morse, amazing makeup goddess that she is, managed to cover it, and you couldn’t even tell I had a shiner.”
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