Crew Profile: Nurse Ogawa
Remembering the late Patti Yasutake who passed away earlier this month
I’m sure everyone has heard the sad news of the passing of Patti Yasutake, who played Dr Crusher’s stalwart sick bay companion Nurse Ogawa in sixteen episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as the first two TNG movies. I had planned to save this crew profile until the seventh season episode Lower Decks, within which Yasutake anchors the story by being elevated from recurring supporting player to co-star. Under the circumstances, it would seem prudent to offer an obituary here for one of those performers whose constant reappearances in the background of TNG won a place in every fan’s heart.
I have not raised the paywall shields for this Crew Profile as it doesn’t feel appropriate. However, if you enjoy reading this piece, please remember there are many more of these profiles that I have offered as a thank you to the Away Team for putting money in the tip jar in return for the deep hole in my time that is this very special WAMTNG project.
As a child, Patti Yasutake remembered watching classic Trek with her family - or so she says! Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite sure she did watch the original show as a lot of people did, but on the other hand having appeared in a later Trek franchise she is basically obligated to point this out. I get the impression that a lot of interviewers tried to join the lines between George Takei’s Mr Sulu and Yasutake in the same way that Whoopi Goldberg expressly mentions the influence of Nichelle Nichols’ Lt Uhuru (no, not Nyota Uhuru - Nichols did not ever play a character with this name, no matter what you may read elsewhere). But the thing is, Yasutake did not grow up needing that kind of inspiration - her family was already incredibly remarkable.
The Yasutake family had come to the United States two generations earlier, and Patti’s grandparents on her father’s side came from the northern port city Fukuoka, while her mother was born in Japan and became a US citizen after marrying. Her father, Major Michael Yasutake, served in the US military during World War II as an intelligence specialist, helping to translate intercepted Imperial Japanese communications. Distressingly for the Yasutake’s, however, Patti’s grandfather, aunts, and uncles escaped Japan during the way and were housed in the euphemistically described ‘relocation centre’ at Rowher in Arkansas. As a result, her sister Irene (who became the celebrated businesswoman Irene Hirano) ended up advocating in her later life for other ethnic groups who were persecuted for their race in the US.
Patricia Sue Yasutake was born in Los Angeles in 1953, and so was between 13 and 16 when classic Trek aired. She studied theatre at UCLA, and in 1985 landed a bit part on T.J. Hooker alongside former Star Trek legend William Shatner. The same year she had her first role as a nurse on Dallas spin-off Knots Landing. The following year, she landed a small role in the Ron Howard movie Gung Ho, staring Michael Keaton - a patchy but interesting movie that dares to engage in the differences between the Japanese and the US work ethics. A TV show was spun off this film (Trek albatross Scott Bakula replaced Keaton), and Yasutake was in nine episodes as Umeki Kazihiro, the wife of the factory owner. Embarrassingly, the film credits her as ‘Patti Yasuiake’, almost certainly a misreading of a handwritten note!
She kept acting, but struggled to get a recurring role. However, she got some positive attention for her role as Marsha in The Wash, a film adapted from Philip Kan Gotanda’s 1985 stage play of the same name, which concerns a newly separated nisei (second generation from immigrant parents) couple. Indeed, Yasutake as nominated for an Independent Spirit Award under the category ‘Best Supporting Female’ - but to say that this was an obscure role in an obscure movie would be an understatement. She was getting recognised, but not in a way that truly helped her career. That was all to change just a few years later.
She tried out for the unremarkable role of ‘conn officer’ in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but wasn’t cast. It’s not clear who did get the gig, but this role title only went to three people, so the episodes she could have appeared in were “Justice” (which went to Josh Clark), “The Naked Now” (which went to David Renan) or “Encounter at Farpoint” - which went to none other than future Miles O’Brien, Colm Meaney. I absolutely adore the idea that Yasutake only didn’t land the role because she was up against Meaney! It might not be true, but it’s too wonderful not to be imagined.
Three years later she was to finally get a role on Star Trek: The Next Generation. But this very same year she had already had another unsuccessful audition for the show! She tried out for Keiko Ishikawa - but it has to be said that to beat out Rosalind Chao for this role would have been terribly difficult, not least of all because Chao’s success in M.A.S.H. and its spin-off would have made her a very appealing casting choice. But if it is the case that she lost out to Meaney in the pilot, this would mean Yasutake lost to both of the O’Briens in casting, which is just so delicious that it ought to be true even if it isn’t.
The TNG role she did eventually land was the inauspicious part of ‘N.D. Nurse’, meaning ‘no dialogue Nurse’ (it has taken me years to crack this acronym!). This was for the fourth season episode “Future Imperfect”, pictured above, and she literally cannot be playing Nurse Ogawa in this episode, except by some kind of fanonical intervention, since the story is set inside a pseudo-holodeck and is supposed to be sixteen years later but the nurse looks the same in this episode as she does in “Clues”. You can weave your fanonical logic how you like, but her first appearance as ‘Alyssa Ogawa’ (name according to the screenplay) isn’t until that later episode in the same season, and she was ‘Nurse Ogawa’ both in screenplays and on screen until “Lower Decks”, when the writers resurrected the forename she’d had in the script for her second appearance (and the first as Ogawa).
Small wonder, given the special circumstances of that first episode, that Yasutake didn’t expect to get back on the show. But it seems the production team was really pleased with her, and as the WAMs accurately record, they had absolutely struggled to give Gates McFadden’s Dr Crusher a second fiddle. After watching her in “Future Imperfect”, it must have seemed like a good bet, so back she came! And sixteen episodes and two movies later, Yasutake worked her way into the hearts of Trek fans everywhere.
Her career after TNG was hugely invigorated, leading eventually for her to be cast as Fumi Nakai in last year’s comedy streaming series Beef. When she first read the script for the pilot episode, she felt "it was like the clouds parted and the sun came through... I didn’t believe this gem of a series would suddenly land there in my lap." But so it did. It was to be her last role, but it picked her up two additional award nominations, for Best Supporting Actress and Best Ensemble in the International Online Cinema Awards.
As for those childhoods watching Mr Sulu: Yasutake did eventually meet George Takei at a Star Trek event many years later. She joked with him that her character on TNG was his great-granddaughter, to which Takei wryly joked: “Not too great, please; I’m not that old!”
Patti Yasutake, 6 September 1953 – 5 August 2024