Jess Bush recently shared how she channeled Star Trek: The Original Series star Majel Barrett for her role as Nurse Christine Chapel on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The latest series in the multi-generational science-fiction franchise focuses on Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and the crew of the USS Enterprise. Set five years before Captain James T. Kirk takes the helm of the Federation flagship, Strange New Worlds strives to return to the episodic structure of the Star Trek of old, prior to the rebranding of the franchise led by writer-producer Alex Kurtzman.

Bush stars as Chapel, a civilian nurse aboard the USS Enterprise who works with chief medical officer Doctor M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) in the ship's med bay. Chapel is one of the few characters in Strange New Worlds to have previously existed in the Star Trek universe as the series deals with events that occurred shortly before the timeline of Star Trek: The Original Series. Chapel was originally portrayed by Barrett beginning in 1966 and continuing throughout the span of The Original Series. She also returned to the role for Star Trek: The Animated Series as well as Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

In a recent interview with THR, Bush discussed how she channeled Barrett when she took over the role of Chapel on Strange New Worlds. When asked about how she made the character her own, Bush explained that because she had no base knowledge of Star Trek before being cast, she was able to dive into the role head-first by watching all of her episodes on The Original Series while deciphering who Chapel was as a young nurse. Read what Bush said below.

"It’s a massive honor to be only the second actor to play Nurse Chapel after Majel Barrett. I think that I was lucky in a sense that I wasn’t that aware of Star Trek to begin with, so it wasn’t particularly overwhelming. I watched all her performances. I also read nursing memoirs and continue to read different materials that feed into what it’s like to be a medical practitioner in different situations, like a medevac situation."

"Regarding how much of Nurse Chapel comes through in this current iteration, it was a conversation with [Akiva Goldsman] and [Henry Alonso Myers]. It was a balance between honoring Majel’s Chapel and making her new. Majel’s Chapel definitely had a distinct essence about her, but there was still so much room to explore her backstory, what she was like when she was younger, what she might be like in our time as a young woman, and they gave me a lot of license to explore. It was a fun, collaborative conversation."

As Bush explained, The Original Series episodes covered the character's persona during the years after Kirk took over the captaincy of the USS Enterprise. This new time period allowed the actor to explore a side of Chapel that has yet to be seen on screen. According to the actor, the showrunners worked with her to fully realize the character from a new perspective, even allowing her to choose a new costume for Chapel.

Bush has helped create a new version of the character that projects youthful exuberance while exhibiting an intelligence well beyond the young nurse's years. Although Chapel has a distinctly different appearance from that of Barrett's original portrayal, Bush honors what made the character unique. With Strange New Worlds' overwhelmingly positive reception by critics and audiences alike, Bush has been given a chance to carve out a new chapter in Nurse Chapel's Federation career.