The significance of Marlena Moreau
I had done so many roles as the Seniorita, the Japanese girl, the Chinese girl, and the Hawaiian gal, that when I left New York, everyone told me I’d be typecast when I got to Hollywood. So I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to be typed!’
BarBara Luna (Marlena Moreau in “Mirror, Mirror”), quoted in Marc Cushman’s These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season 2.
But it was the sci-fi world where I wasn’t hired just for my ethnicity. In fact, when I read the script for ‘Mirror, Mirror’ and saw the part they had written for Marlena, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, why did they ask me to do this?’ There was nothing ethnic about it; there was no accent; she was just a female, and I thought that was so very interesting that they chose someone of my type to play her.
It was very exciting that Gene Roddenberry had created a show that had those kind of roles – not only were we not hired based on our ethnicity, but the roles were powerful. I mean, in 1967, for a woman to have that kind of power, as with Marlena, where with just one little push of the button she could kill