We’re just under four weeks into the Star Trek: Picard adventure, and the show continues to slowly introduce the new series cast – and this week’s episode, “Absolute Candor,” brings with it the second Romulan regular to the Star Trek franchise in the form of Elnor, a young swordsman played by actor Evan Evagora in his first American television role.

The youngest of seven siblings, the 23-year-old Melbourne native began his career in modeling before enrolling in film school, landing a role in the upcoming Blumhouse film adaptation of Fantasy Island which arrives in theaters this weekend.

No stranger to science fiction – thanks to some help from his family – Evagora told us how he first became acquainted with the Star Trek franchise before getting the opportunity to join it himself.

“I was fortunate enough to have my mum who’s a very, very, very big sci-fi nerd,” Evagora told us during January’s Star Trek: Picard press tour. “She actually came to the premiere with me — she lost her mind when she found out [I was doing Star Trek], and then lost her mind again when she found out I was working with Jeri Ryan!

I grew up watching the Original Series movies, and some of Next Generation. My oldest memory of Star Trek is actually The Search for Spock, but my favorite episode, only just because I watched it the other day – and because I finally got to meet [Jonathan Del Arco] – I’d say is ‘I, Borg,’ just to see where Hugh’s come from; otherwise, ‘Tapestry.’”

Evagora was filming on location in Fiji for Fantasy Island when the Star Trek: Picard opportunity came his way, as the series producers searched across internationally for Elnor’s casting.

“They found me in, like, the final hour,” he said. “I came back home to Melbourne for like two weeks in between filming, and I was given this script — big pages — but my character breakdown was very, very, very small. And all it said was Sir Patrick Stewart, the new Star Trek, and it had ‘Drawing Room’ [as a working title].

I started reading it, that was kind of what hooked me, the writing. I did the audition, didn’t think I landed it, went back to Fiji – and then I got a phone call from the producers and they were like, ‘Oh, we’d like you to re-tape [your reading] with these notes.’ I redid [the audition] and sent it off.”

Still not sure if he nailed the audition, Evagora returned to work, waiting to hear about his chances.

“I was really sick as well; I’d just gotten a chest infection. I was feeling like crap – when it rains, it pours,” he laughed. “But then I got a call like two days later: ‘Yeah, you’ve got the gig.’ It was like five in the morning, I had just wrapped filming, I was exhausted and just told them, ‘Yeah, okay, cool.’

I woke up the next day thinking, ‘Was that a dream? Am I doing Star Trek?’ The whole cast and crew I was working [on Fantasy Island] found out, and everyone was just so excited for me. And back home, everyone was too – I got back [to Australia] and packed up my stuff from Sydney, moved back home to Melbourne… and then like two weeks later, I was in LA. Very, very quick.”

Once the young actor made it to the finish line, he then had to learn what it meant to be a Romulan – especially one living in the aftermath of the supernova disaster which destroyed the once-powerful Romulan Empire and upended the secretive race’s isolationist culture.

“My character kind of went against everything I knew about Romulan culture,” Evagora shared. “I kind of found myself having to be… not re-educated, but I had to learn a lot more. I can’t say too much without revealing too much about my character, but [Elnor] is an expert in hand to hand combat, raised as the only male in an all-female sect of warrior nuns known as the Qowat Milat [pronounced Koh-wat Mih-laht] on the remote colony planet Vashti.

He’s pretty good with a sword; he’s got long hair. The production team was very collaborative as well, especially when it came to the design of that weapon, because it needed to be usable — but it also needed to look cool, and they were very open to my opinion on it, which was very nice.

In terms of creating an understanding of my character, I’ve got like five sisters and my mother — I’m the youngest as well — so I know exactly what it’s like living with a household of women! It’s very much a matriarchy in my household.”

Like Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd) before him, Elnor is another character who formed a relationship with Jean-Luc Picard during the years after we left the Enterprise captain following Star Trek: Nemesis, where the Starfleet admiral met the young Romulan during his work helping to evacuate the impacted population from the path of the Romulan supernova.

“I would say I’m very loyal and dedicated to Picard,” the actor explained. “I’d say he’s even kind kind of like a father figure, almost. I knew him — we encountered each other — when I was younger, and [the Star Trek: Picard story] picks up after not having seen each other for a while; it picks up on that relationship, and the history there, as well.”

While this week will be the Star Trek community’s first experience of Evan Evagora’s character, the actor has certainly been ready to beam into the future for years, and Picard will finally let him live out that hope.

“I’ve been a big sci-fi and fantasy fan, thanks to mum, through reading and watching, and now I feel like this is where I’m at home the most. I love it, and now we’re doing it – so it’s like a dream come true.”

Evan Evagora makes his Star Trek: Picard debut as Elnor in “Absolute Candor,” arriving Thursday on CBS All Access in the US and CTV Sci-Fi Channel in Canada, following Friday on Amazon Prime Video around the world.