James McAvoy recently volunteered himself to portray a younger version of Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard in a potential Star Trek prequel.
"I mean, I've often talked about loving Star Trek, and jokingly, but also kind of seriously been like, if you ever want to do a young Jean-Luc Picard, I'm your man," the actor told Collider. "But I'm probably getting close to being too old to do a young Jean-Luc Picard now. So there's that."
"I've successfully been Patrick [Stewart], actually, and balded up, although maybe again, the young Jean-Luc wouldn't be bald," McAvoy added. "But yeah, no, maybe I'm overqualified for it, though. That's the other thing. Do you know what I mean? It's too easy, it's too obvious a choice. So maybe that turns people off from it."
Fans will recall that McAvoy portrayed a younger version of Stewart's character, Professor Charles Francis Xavier, in X-Men: First Class (2011), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019).
Stewart made his debut as Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, which served as a follow-up to Star Trek: The Original Series and aired from 1987-1994. He reprised the role in an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, as well as the feature films Star Trek Generations (1994), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002).
While no plans for a Star Trek prequel film have been revealed, Stewart made his return as the one-time captain of the starship USS Enterprise in the Paramount+ series Picard in 2020. That series is set 20 years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis and centers on former Starfleet Captain Picard, who is retired and living on his family's vineyard back on Earth when he's called back into action to help a woman being pursued by a sketchy Romulan organization.
A recent trailer for Season 2 of Picard showed Stewart's character being visited by his longtime rival, the villainous alien Q, who is once again being portrayed by John de Lancie. Specifically, Q reveals that Picard's trial from The Next Generation still isn't over, and transports him to an alternate timeline, where Picard is part of a fascistic regime that has taken over the Earth. The new season will reportedly find Picard attempting to change to the timeline, which involves him encountering a number of familiar friends and foes, including a new Borg Queen played by Annie Wersching.
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 premieres in February 2022. Meanwhile, McAvoy most recently provided the voice of Morpheus in The Sandman: Act II, which is now available on Audible.
Source: Collider