A quick, but thorough view of the IMDb page for Tom Hanks reveals one glaring omission in the Sully actor’s oeuvre — Star Trek. The beloved science fiction franchise is nowhere to be found in the 60-year-old performer’s body of work, which is an absolute shame since — per his 2009 appearance on The Graham Norton Show with Simon Pegg, who was promoting the Star Trek reboot then — Hanks is a proud Trekkie. So of course he talked about The Original Series, which celebrated its 50th anniversary on Thursday, during a recent Jimmy Kimmel Live interview.
“Our first season, they were making [Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan] on the movie side of the lot at Paramount, so [Peter Scolari] and I ran over there,” Hanks told Kimmel. All the while the Bosom Buddies co-stars thought they would eventually get into trouble, but they pressed on until they found what they were looking for.
“We snuck onto the sound stage and there was the bridge of the Starship Enterprise right before us. And there was a dude sitting in Captain Kirk’s — on the con, he was sitting in Captain Kirk’s — chair. He had a soldering gun and those kind of like eyeglasses, you know those magnifying eyeglasses, and he was just sitting there like this. And he looked up at us and said, ‘Hey, guys.'”
The two made their way to the transporter room, where they pretended to beam on and off the Enterprise before the Bosom Buddies hair, makeup and costume departments required their presence.
Just in case you’re not entirely sure about Hanks the Trekkie’s Star Trek cred, here he is beating Pegg at a game of trivia.
