“I went into one of the executive’s offices and I saw an ‘X3’ script, and I immediately knew it was a lot fatter,” Vaughn said. “I was like, ‘What the hell is this draft?’ He went, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ and I’m like, ‘No, no. I’m the director. I’m worrying about this draft.’ He wouldn’t tell me, so I grabbed it literally — it was like a crazy moment — opened the first page, and it said, ‘Africa. Storm. Kids dying of no water. She creates a thunderstorm and saves all these children.'”
Vaughn continued, “[I said] ‘What is this?’ [They said] ‘Oh, it’s Halle Berry’s script.’ I went, ‘OK, because she hasn’t signed up yet.’ ‘But this is what she wants it to be, and once she signs up, we’ll throw it in the bin.'”
While Vaughn said the idea of Storm going to Africa was a “pretty cool idea,” he did not stand by the tactic of misrepresenting the storyline to Berry.
Oh wow, I had never heard that about the production of the Generations movie before but that’s a really fucked up thing to do. Particularly because Whoopi Goldberg was at the height of her fame during ST:TNG’s TV run. She was only on that show because she loved Star Trek. Frankly, at that point in her career she was easily “above” being on a basic cable syndicated TV series.
Nichelle was the reason she was so into Star Trek. She was her idol more or less. It was really empowering to Whoopi to see a black woman on the bridge and it gave her tons of hope for the future.
Didn’t it all go downhill from there tho?