Picard behind the scenes: XBs, synths, and other characters and actor antics

Another batch of behind the scenes Picard goodies today, care of the cast and crew. This time I'm just looking at characters and cast, so dive in for lots of XBs, synths, Romulans and other people of the Picard universe.

First up, the only (non-flashback) full Borg seen up-close in the series, who was played by no less than the head of the makeup department James Mackinnon. He shared these photos to give us an even better look at the character:

Here's a fun photo of Mackinnon as Borg still at work doing make-up for others, in this case Jonathan Del Arco (aka Hugh):

Speaking of Hugh, Jonathan Del Arco shared a couple more pictures of his own time on the show, seen here trying our Hugh's contacts, and with Patrick Stewart:

Prosthetics mold maker Rob Freitas shared this photo of the cast of Del Arco, explaining what's going on here:

Setting up corrected positives is something that I’ve always enjoyed, and it’s an important step. Hair-lines are marked.. (Black line). Chats about eventual appliance edges are had.. (white line). Some urethane.. some clay.. a little bit of vacuum form plastic, and then simply pour in the silicone.. cast.. repeat..

Here also worked on another Borg character, played by Marti Matulis, showing here the parts against the actor's cast:

Make-up artist Vincent Van Dyke then carried on the story of this character in a couple more posts. Here we see the clay sculpts:

And then here the painted silicone prosthetics:

Here's another Borg character, shared by the actor Zachary Perez-Rukavina:

And another here, played by Ernesto Chaverri.

Here's a familiar XB but not as we know her, Seven of Nine's stunt double Katelyn Brooke:

And here she is in action with Janell Haney, stunt double for Narissa, as the two characters fight:

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That one time I didnt bring @katelynbrookela the right coffee... #bodyslam #wwe #startrek #picard #startrekpicard #fight #wirework

A post shared by 🐒Janell Haney (@jane_hane) on Mar 26, 2020 at 3:00am PDT

If you're wondering what the heck happened to the XBs, Michael Chabon had an answer in one of his Instagram Q and A. Their story was literally cut short:

Speaking of synths... They were mostly cast in pairs, which make for some really fun photos! Here are Mike and Matt Perfetuo, as Rune and Codex, shared by Mike:

And this shot shared by Matt has them double paired with Nikita and Jade Ramsey, aka Arcana and Saga:

And here are the Ramseys again, as shared by Nikita:

And another with the twins and much of the main cast:

Another pair of synths were played by Kitty and Celina Nguyen:

I think they can be seen in this video shared by visual effects artist Charles Collyer, capturing some on-set football:

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In about an hour the epic finale to #startrekpicard drops and also the dramatic outcome of this soccer game of humans versus synths. Stay tuned! 🖖🏽 #bingeitnow #catchup #itsfree and if you haven’t signed up yet, use code GIFT and get a month free of #cbsallaccess

A post shared by Charles Collyer (@collyervfx) on Mar 25, 2020 at 11:06pm PDT

One synth that didn't make it to screen was played by stuntwoman Petra Sprecher, but she still managed to chronicle her time on set well! She explains here what wasn't seen:

Sadly, barley anything of the fight sequence that we rehearsed for nearly a week, has made it into the episode. My bit got cut, @_cartago__ ‘s viscous fall onto concrete floor is nowhere to be seen and only seconds of @trvrlogan’s impressive work remained. ...Oh let’s not forget he did all that (all that you didn’t see!!!) in a stiff full bodysuit with heavy boots, wig and full fake beard glued on in the hottest ☀️ and kept us all safe with his razor sharp precision executed tricking! 🙌🏼⁣

The other major race in Picard was of course the Romulans, so there are plenty of those lurking about too! Here's Ifé Moore showing off her Romulan look:

Rebecca Wisocky as Ramdha, moments before losing her mind:

And Donny Boaz as one of the Vashti Romulans:

Jaremy Aiello also shared these photos of his work on the Romulan makeup for the series:

Moving on to our Romulan stars, here's Harry Treadaway as Narek, as captured by set photographer Aaron Epstein:

And a more intimate moment, Treadaway having a nap, captured by head hairstylist Maria Sandoval:

If you're wondering what happened to Narek, Michael Chabon revealed that ending was another victim of the edit!

We also had a Romulan hero of course, the delightful Elnor. Evan Evagora shared this dramatic shot of himself on the Borg set:

And a more relaxed moment from his Instagram stories (check out the cool alien design on the wall in the background!):

Elnor too missed out a minor plot point, as noted by Chabon:

More Romulans ahead, Chabon evasively had thoughts on this as well:

Now, Starfleet! Here's a great shot of Michelle Hurd (Raffi) in uniform, which she shared on the the*gameHERs Instagram, which she took over for a day recently:

And here's Ann Magnuson (Clancy) showing off her admiral's uniform:

Isa Briones is definitely the keenest of the cast to record her experience on the show, and has shared some beautiful shots as a result. Here are a few of her on set:

Enjoying time with the rest of the cast:

And some instant camera photos she shared on Instagram stories:

Which is also where Evan Evagora shared some of these shots (this first one is one of Briones instant-photos):

Finally, here are some teeth! Mr Vup's, as shared by actor Dominic Burgess:

Picard is available now on CBS All Access in the US, Bell Media services in Canada, and Amazon Prime Video in most of the rest of the world. To keep track of all the latest Picard news, have a look back through my Picard tag, for previews, behind the scenes, tie-in fiction, and other merchandise updates.

For more behind the scenes coverage from all of Trek, see my behind the scenes tag. And for more from Picard in particular, see all, these, previous, reports.