British-born actress Sonita Henry has a vital role at the beginning of J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek movie – she plays the doctor aboard the USS Kelvin, the woman who delivers James T. Kirk into the world! Henry chats to Abbie Bernstein about auditioning for the role and how she's preparing herself for the future convention circuit.

Were you a big Star Trek fan before you got the role?

My dad and my brother were huge fans of the original show and I remember growing up watching the movies, like The Wrath of Khan, so I did enjoy it. I remember getting the call and they said, “Oh, they want to offer you a part in Star Trek!” But it wasn’t until I was on set, especially on the first day, I think it really sunk in. This is huge!

And I was a big fan of J.J. Abrams. I was obsessed with Alias. And actually, about 40 minutes before I got the call to audition on Star Trek – which was called ‘The Untitled J.J. Abrams Project’ at that time – I was on the phone to a friend and I said, “If I could just meet J.J. Abrams, everything would work out fine.” Then I get a phone call saying that I had an audition for his movie, which I think is weird!

What was the audition like?

There was already an air of secrecy and mystery about it. It was with April Webster, who casts most of J.J. Abrams’ stuff, who I’d met before. It was in a tiny meeting room at Paramount Studios and there were a bunch of us in there. And we were each given the sides [pages to help actors prepare for auditions], which were two pages. It was a generic commander role and everyone had to read the same sides. We had five minutes to look at them, and then we went in and did the audition.

There were men, there were women – all completely different-looking people, all reading the same character, I think just to see how you came across on tape. Every colour of the spectrum is in this movie, just to make it look like something that’s in the future, and Abrams wanted my British accent. I don’t know this for a fact, but the make-up artist told me that I was cast because of my cheekbones, because they wanted to stretch out my eyes, so my bone structure worked better for the camera!

So is the Kelvin’s doctor a human or a non-human?

I wasn’t told! All I know is there were two hours of make-up every day, and they had to cover every single one of my freckles, and then put the dots on my face so that they could make my eyes bigger and then stretch them out.

There was a huge discussion the first day. They came up to me and asked me if I would shave my eyebrows off. That was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do - stand in front of J.J. Abrams, a man who I respect and love and think is just a genius, and turn around and say, “No way am I shaving my eyebrows, ever. I will shave my head, but you’re not touching my eyebrows. I love you, but no.” By the end of the day, they were like, “You know what? We’ll just cover your eyebrows with little latex covers and we’ll just do it from there.” That was what took two hours every morning, covering my eyebrows.

Did you work with a real baby?

We did. We also worked with a fake baby, which looked really real but kind of freaked everyone out, and then they brought a couple of real babies on set and chose one.

How straightforward were your scenes to film?

When we shot at Long Beach Power Station there were things blowing up and there were stunt people running into us. But the actual birth scene was filmed a couple of days later at Paramount. The set for this part was so quiet that J.J. kept saying, “Keep your energy up, because we’ve just come from this explosion.” He was very good at sitting there and explaining to us exactly what had just happened, what was happening in this moment and what was about to happen. He put it in context for us.

In the scenes where we’re running down these long corridors we were pushing Jennifer Morrison in a wheelchair, because her character is heavily pregnant and they had wet the floor. That added another element on top of it. There were big explosions going off, my hair was full of hairspray, and I was like, “Oh, great, I’m going to go up in flames!”

We were running in one direction, but everyone else on the ship was running in the opposite direction. And these were big stunt people. And I remember one take, the timing was completely off and a huge stunt person ran straight into Kelvin Yu, who plays my med tech. Kelvin just went flying up in the air and landed on his back. He was OK. We just got up, dusted ourselves off. “Yeah, it’s fine. It’s for J.J., it’s all right!”

Are you prepared for the Star Trek convention scene?

I say, bring it on. I’m ready for it! My career overall is just getting started. And I look forward to whatever it brings me!

Star Trek is out now in US and UK cinemas.