Takei breaks new ground in 'Heroes'

By Ellen Gray | Philadelphia Daily News • Published January 29, 2007

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NBC'S "Heroes" is about to send "Star Trek's" George Takei where he, at least, has never gone before.

When the deep-voiced actor known to millions as "Mr. Sulu" turns up today as the father of Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka), he'll apparently be speaking Japanese, and only Japanese.

"You know, I've made speeches in Japan, I've received a decoration from the emperor of Japan - the Order of the Rising Sun - which I accepted in Japanese, but I have never worked in Japanese," said Takei, 69, earlier this month during an NBC party in Pasadena, Calif.

"And here I am, doing prime-time television, popular television, in Japanese. I haven't, you know, worked in Japan in Japanese. And here I am in the United States, working in Japanese with English subtitles. So that's a delight. But it's also a challenge, because it is not my first language," said Takei, who was born in Los Angeles but spent much of World War II confined with his family in internment camps for Japanese-Americans.

Language wasn't the only challenge.

"Heroes" creator Tim Kring appears to operate on a need-to-know basis with his actors, and Takei, who had filmed three episodes by mid-January and described his commitment to the show as "open-ended," said he's learning about his character a little bit at a time.

"I go from script to script," he said.

What he knows:

"I'm a powerful industrialist. We come from a very distinguished family, an old-line family. I was brought up that way, and I thought I would bring up my son that way, but I'm discovering that there are strange things happening."

Beyond that, "I really don't know who my character is, and why my character does what he does, and what his motivations are and where he's going, because with each new script, I make new discoveries. And is he good, or is he bad, is he domineering or is he being told to behave that way? I mean, there's so many ambiguous things about it," Takei said.

Oka, whose character grew up watching "Star Trek," has said he'd like to see some acknowledgment of the Sulu connection on "Heroes," and Takei agrees.