Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we continue our series on actors who played multiple roles in Star Trek, with a look at guest star Kellie Waymire, who played a character in one episode of Voyager before being cast as a recurring character on Enterprise.
Kellie Waymire was born in Columbus, Ohio, a town of great renown. She pursued degrees in theater and that led her to California to pursue an acting career. She started on the soap opera One Life to Live in 1994 and then had several TV and movie small roles before appearing on Voyager in the year 2000.
Waymire was case as Layna, an actress working in an open-air theater of a pre-industrial planet that B'Elanna Torres becomes stranded on in the episode Muse. Layna is in love with a show writer Kelis, who ends up inspired by Torres while she is stranded on the planet. Lanya becomes a jealous girlfriend who tries to ruin the stage play, but her actions end up contributing to the play's success in the end. This was a chance for Waymire to show off her original theater roots, but in a TV context.
QUOTE (from Muse)
Waymire impressed the show runners enough that this appearance earned her an invite to be a recurring character on Enterprise a couple years later. She appears as crewman first class Elizabeth Cutler in a few episodes of the first season of this show. We see that she is an entomologist and and exobiologist on her first away mission in the episode Strange New World. She uses her expertise to study the diverse insect population on a new planet Archer IV.
Cutler could often be seen pursuing her studies in her off time, including over meals, showing her dedication to the sciences. She also interacts with T'Pol and Dr. Phlox a ton, giving the impression she is a xenophilic who prefers the aliens over her human crewmates. These interactions with Phlox lead to her taking on an interim medic role and briefly becoming infatuated with him. However, as a married man, he rebuffs these interests and they remain friends.
Although Waymire and the show runners intended to continue this role into future seasons of Enterprise, the actress suddenly passed away in 2003 from an undiagnosed cardia arrhythmia at the age of 36. Her character was referred to later in the third season, but no mention on screen was made that the character died.
This is one of those sad stories where a promising recurring character appeared to be poised for bigger roles in a show, and Waymire is precisely the type of actress who probably would've shown up again on the new Trek shows now being produced. Despite only having a few Star Trek appearances, she left a favorable impression and good performances for us to enjoy.
Kellie Waymire can also be seen on the HBO series Six Feet Under, as well as in guest spots on 90s hit shows like Seinfeld, the X-Files, and NYPD Blue.
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