Picard’s Gates McFadden Had One Concern About Beverly Crusher’s Story

In the Variety interview, Gates McFadden explained that showrunner Terry Matalas and executive producer Akiva Goldsman told her about Crusher and Picard’s son, Jack, in their very first meeting, and she was immediately concerned about whether or not Crusher would actually have kept Jack a secret from Picard for decades:

“They told me the storyline. And I said, ‘Hey, terrific story, but my concern is that she’s not seen as “that b**** didn’t tell him she was pregnant with his child! How could she do something like that?”‘ She’s basically a very ethical humanist. She really cares about doing the right thing. That was my concern. I was coming from “TNG” where I felt the female point of view was only done through different women characters who would come on board, not Troi or Crusher.” 

It’s understandable that McFadden would be hesitant to put Beverly in that kind of position, because, as she points out, there were a lot of scenes in “The Next Generation” that featured Troi and Crusher in skimpy or skin-tight outfits, talking about boys like a pair of besotted teens. She wanted to be certain that there were canonically sound reasons for Crusher to have not told Picard about his son and that her character’s reputation wouldn’t be ruined on account of their need for a plot device. Thankfully, there was a “Next Generation” episode that gave Crusher plenty of reason to not reveal her secret son.