As happy hour revellers raved at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess last Friday, LeVar Burton and this reporter took advantage of the elegant and more serene settings in the Fairmont Gold Lounge.

Mr. Burton first became a household name after his first major role as Kunte Kinte in the television miniseries ‘Roots’.

He is also the host and producer of ‘Reading Rainbow’.

But for Trekkies he can only be known for one role — he was the USS Enterprise chief engineer Geordi La Forge on ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’.

The actor, director, producer, lecturer and author was on Island last week to direct his first-ever commercial for the Bermuda Department of Tourism.

After explaining that my sister Roxanne and I were huge Star Trek fans, we settled into comfortable chatter about what he enjoyed most about his role in ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’, and the ideals he shares with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

So what was it that kept him in the role of Geordi La Forge for so long?

The answer was basic: “The fun — it was the best eight years of my life as an actor!

“We had so much fun every day and, you know, it doesn’t happen all the time. But we had that thing, as a family — the love that we had for each other showed up on the screen all the time and it’s what kept us all engaged, how we felt about each other.

“You can’t create it, you can’t orchestrate it, it either happens or it doesn’t and more often than not, it doesn’t.”

Since the series ended, Mr.Burton has taken up directing, working on ‘Star Trek: TNG’ spin-offs ‘Voyager’ and ‘Deep Space Nine’.

“I started on Next Generation and then I was directing rotation on ‘Voyager’, ‘Deep Space Nine’ and ‘Enterprise’,” said the director who was born in Germany.

“In the meantime, I have branched out and I am now doing other series as well and that is how I now make my living.”

His Bermuda Tourism stint was a first, however.

“This is my first commercial and we just finished this afternoon,” he said last week.

His career seems flexible enough to move between roles and genres.

“There was ‘Roots’ and then there is ‘Reading Rainbow’, the children’s series, which I have hosted and produced for 25 years,” he said.

“In fact we just won the Daytime Emmy last night, and actually we won two, one for writing and the other for Outstanding Series.”

Mr. Burton admits to being a fan of the original Star Trek in the 1960s.

“My mother was an English teacher and I read a lot, and science fiction was the body of literature that I always gravitated towards, because I’ve always been in the spirit that wants to see the best in humanity,” he said. “And science fiction literature really tends to have its characters aspire to be the best, which we can be.

“So, discovering Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future in the late ‘60s was really important to me, because there weren’t often a lot of heroes in those pages that looked like me. So seeing Nichelle Nichols on the bridge of the originalEnterprise meant a great deal to me, because it said that in the future there was a place for me.

“I mean, I have just turned 50 this past February and I say that to say that I am a child of the television era. I grew up watching TV and I grew up with the medium and it was a big deal to see people of colour on TV.

“It was a big deal to see Diahann Carroll with her own series, and it was a big deal to see Sammy Davis, Jr. on the ‘Rifleman’. It was a big deal to see Clarence William III on the ‘Mod Squad’.

“So seeing Nichelle Nichols meant a great deal to me and then to have grown up and matured and have followed a path that led to me to be included in a part of that family and to also represent people who deal with physical challenges, it had the same sense of belonging that Nichelle Nichols represented to me. It’s all good.”

The holodeck episodes were some of his most memorable moments on the series.

“They were always some of our favourites because apparently there are no pockets in the 24th Century and no zippers,” he said. “So we hated our spacesuits and you wear them all day, everyday. Your spacesuit is not necessarily your friend. Number one it is made of polyester and it doesn’t hide anything, so when we got to go into the holodeck and we got to dress up in the episodes when Data and Geordi were Holmes and Watson and the Robin Hood episode, anytime we got to break out of the norm was always a lot of fun for us.”

Mr. Burton’s character, Geordi La Forge, had been born blind and had to wear a VISOR that was attached to his temples. The VISOR gave him the gift of sight, but here’s what he thought about it. “I’ve got it, it is a pain in the ass, I wore that thing all day everyday and at the end of the day I always had headaches,” he said.

“I couldn’t see anything, because 80 percent of my vision was taken away when I put the VISOR on, which was an enigma, because when Geordi put it on he could see more than anyone else around him.

“But I have it, the visor, it is in my possession and there is only one.”

When I admitted that up until researching him for the interview, I had no idea that he was Kunte Kinte in ‘Roots’, he said: “You didn’t, come on now René?

“This year is our 30th anniversary—, yeah that was my first job, I was a sophomore, I was a second year drama student at the University of Southern California.”

When asked whether he ever finished his degree, he said: “Let’s say that I have several honorary doctorates in the fine arts.

“When ‘Roots’ hit, it was not just a successful television mini-series, it was a social phenomenon and it became popular all over the world. So I spent 1979, 1980 and most of 1981 travelling around the world when ‘Roots’ premiered.

“So I got out of the rhythm of school and I kept saying to myself, ‘I am going back as soon as it slows down,’ but 30 years later, I am still doing what I do. The interesting thing is that I am a guest lecturer at USC.

“I think that everything comes full circle, but I think that if they really think about it, they will grant me that degree and I think they will at some point.”

But before deciding to become a drama student, his path was far from Hollywood — on the way to priesthood!

“I studied for the priesthood for four years,” he said.

When asked, what changed, he replied: “That is a story that requires just another cocktail, another conversation and another time.”

Bermuda will see much more of Mr. Burton and his family, however.

“I was here two weeks ago scouting for locations, but I want to come back, I want to bring my family and chill — absolutely,” he said.

“It is the kind of place that everywhere you look there is beauty and I kind of liken Bermuda to the continent of Africa because, as a filmmaker, you can’t screw Africa up, you know what I mean, because the beauty is inherent and that is my experience about Bermuda.

“The beauty is so much intrinsic to what Bermuda is, that you really just can’t mess it up, so if you have a camera — it is all good.”

With all the different races, creeds, cultures, species and forms of life that Star Trek presents with respect, when asked what his thoughts were on the subject of simply accepting each other as members of the human race, he said: “One of the things that I always have appreciated about Star Trek is that idea of combination of infinite diversity in infinite combinations and inherent respect for all of that life.

“That was the point of view of the United Federation of Planets, we respect all life everywhere,” he said.

“And I’d like to think that it is my view too, again that highest, best aspect of ourselves is what I want to identify with in my life and I believe that we are on that path. “Sometimes it is difficult to believe it, sometimes it is difficult to feel it, and sometimes it is difficult to discern that we are even close to being on that trajectory, but I believe that is our destiny as humanity to continue to evolve to the point where none of those differences of race, and sex, and class, and station, and gender, and faith or religious doctrine — none of that any-longer divides us, but it is that which we have in common that we focus on.

“It takes those who are willing to go against the status quo to point out the smallness of prejudice, the smallness of those ideas that tend to separate us unnecessarily and inappropriately.”