Before Denise Crosby, Star Trek considered an Asian Tasha Yar

Star Trek: The Next Generation, which aired from 1987 to 1994, featured Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar. However, it almost didn't happen. Crosby played the character in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then decided to leave, because she felt her character was on the sidelines.

As much as fans now associate Denise Crosby with Tasha Yar, she wasn't even in the running to play the character initially. Rosalind Chao was the one who almost played Tasha Yar.

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Tasha Yar in Star Trek: The Next Generation was almost played by a different actress

Denise Crosby did not play Tasha Yar for too long. She left after season one of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and appeared a few times in later seasons. According to a casting memo that Slice of Sci-Fi released, Tasha Yar could have been played by a different Star Trek actor.

One might wonder if we would have seen more of Tasha had a different actress played the role. We will never know. The actresses who were in the running to be cast as Tasha Yar, according to the memo we earlier mentioned, were Lianne Langland, Julia Nickson, Rosalind Chao, Leah Ayers, and Bunty Bailey. While Denise Crosby was cast for the role, Tasha was almost played by Rosalind Chao.

While Chao did not play Tasha, she later went on to play Keiko O'Brien in Star Trek: The Next Generation and later Star Trek: Deep Space. Keiko O'Brien is the wife of Miles O'Brien (played by Colm Meaney).

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Why did Denise Crosby leave Star Trek: The Next Generation?

After starring in the show for the first season, Denise Crosby decided to leave the show. It must have sounded strange to anybody in the industry back then that somebody would even consider leaving a Star Trek show, given the franchise's stature. Crosby spoke of her decision while interacting with IGN. She said,

“And half of me thought I was crazy,”

Crosby continued, laughing:

“It was like I saw it, I had to do it. And yes, 99% of people that have an acting job with a six-year contract are not going to ask to go out. And I don't know that I would have 25 years later in my life, but I was young enough and perhaps naive enough to know that I was willing to gamble and take a chance. I was young enough that I knew I didn't have a mortgage. I didn't have children. I didn't have private education to pay for. I didn't have an ill relative that I was caring for. I didn't have the things that would necessitate a different way to think about doing a job for a paycheck. So I was free to purely live creatively at that moment.”

Crosby acknowledged how her exit, along with Mariana Sirtis and Gates McFadden getting fired after season one, affected the show. She told IGN,

“And now they're like, ‘Oh my God, there's no … women,’”

Crosby continued,

“So now we’ve got to keep Marina and Gates we'll recast... It kind of wreaked havoc. That wasn't my intention. My intention was to get somebody in the room and tell me, ‘What is this going to be? What is this character?’ It's such an incredible opportunity. You have so much here, but I'm not going to just be the token hot blonde on the show. But they had a ’60s mentality. It was all these old white dudes in the room until, God love them, until Gene passed. And it shifted. There was a shift when [showrunner] Michael Piller came onto the show [in Season 3] and things changed.”

Denise Crosby did return to Star Trek: The Next Generation for Season 3, Episode 15, titled Yesterday's Enterprise, and a few other episodes. She had a fulfilling career outside the franchise, and later went on to star in projects like Dolly Dearest and Trekkis.

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The fact that Rosalind Chao (later known for 3 Body Problem, The O.C., and Mulan) almost played Tasha Yar is interesting because it makes one wonder what she could have brought to the role, and perhaps, if she would have stayed on the show longer, giving us more time with Tasha.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is streaming on Paramount+.

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