Paul Giamatti “absolutely” never thought he’d be in the new Star Trek series (Exclusive)

Paul Giamatti learned an unexpected lesson in achieving what he wants.

In several interviews over the past few years, he has said that he would love to play a Klingon in Star Trek, the timeless sci-fi series he loved from his youth. Lo and behold, he got his wish.

Today, he plays the half-Klingon pirate Nuth Braka, a recurring enemy of Holly Hunter’s Chancellor Nala Eik and her inexperienced cadets, on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. But perhaps no one was more surprised that he got the role than the two-time Oscar nominee.

“I never thought I would actually get a call!” Giamatti, 58, confirms exclusively to PEOPLE. “I’ve never hidden the fact that I love this show, but I never thought it would actually happen…This is the best experience for me. There’s nothing that could top it. I still can’t believe I had to do it.”

Giamatti, who has played award-winning roles in films such as Sideways, The Holdovers and high-end television productions such as Billions, John Adams, Downton Abbey and Black Mirror, explains that he views Star Trek on an equal footing.

“I don’t see it as a difference between higher culture or lower culture or anything like that. It’s all the same,” he says. “I think Star Trek is great. It’s smart, it’s good, it’s well written, it’s a good story. So that’s all that matters.”

Giamatti reveals that he is a lifelong Star Trek fan, “more than casual, but not encyclopedic.”

“I absolutely love it,” he added.

That love goes back to creator Gene Roddenberry’s original series starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. The actor’s father, A. Bartlett Giamatti (later to become president of Yale University and commissioner of Major League Baseball), had been a fan of the show since it first aired in the late ’60s. Giamatti became obsessed as a child when his father would watch syndicated reruns with him in the 1970s.

“I think I was probably seven years old, and I think he recognized me as one of three kids who would probably be really into this,” the actor says with a laugh. “He was really excited that it was on the air again, so he sat me down and we watched it together, and that’s how it started…I got really into Spock and Leonard Nimoy. I mean, everybody was great, but I got into Spock as a kid.”

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Although his early obsessions suggest Giamatti might be more interested in tackling the role of cold, logic-driven Vulcans, he confesses that his often frenetic acting style has made the Klingons, an honor-bound, fiercely passionate warlike race portrayed over the years by actors such as Michael Dorn, Christopher Lloyd, and Christopher Plummer, more fertile territory.

“I think even as a kid, I probably knew that I couldn’t compete with Vulcans, that I was temperamentally better suited to Klingons than Vulcans,” he laughs. “I always admired the Vulcans, but as I got older I became more interested in the Klingons.”

Giamatti also enjoyed the antagonistic nature of the role. “I haven’t played a lot of out-and-out villains. I’ve only played them a few times. I play some kind of villain,” he explains. “I play complex, unpleasant characters. I don’t think I’ve ever played a villain so many times, like a capital B or a capital G… It’s always fun to do something like that. There’s really a lot of license and there’s a kind of grandeur to it.”

As Star Trek evolved and expanded over the decades, Giamatti found himself increasingly drawn to the series’ darkest and most complex work, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Coincidentally, he was rewatching it when the Starfleet Academy recruitment came.

“I think that’s what I like best,” he says. “The level of acting on that show is amazing. I mean everyone. Everyone is amazing on that show. Really great acting!” He said he was particularly taken with Armin Shimmerman, who plays the lovable but untrustworthy Ferengi Quark.

“He’s wrapped up in that (makeup). He’s wearing a lot of stuff and that’s what he does. It’s amazing what comes through,” Giamatti marvels.

Giamatti is well-versed in Trek lore, so he was equally excited to explore more of Nuku Bratha’s legacy. He is half-Klingon and half-Tellerite, a pig-like alien race with roots in episodes of The Original Series, but he has rarely been seen in the series’ 60-year history.

“When they were designing the makeup, they came back to me and said, ‘The bottom line is you’re going to be half Klingon, half Tellarite.’ And I was like, ‘Pig guy?’ ” he recalls excitedly. “Because I remembered them from the original series. I don’t think it’s happened very often all these years with anything else, but I actually really remembered them from when I was a kid and I was so shocked by Tellarite, that very strange face and kind of argumentative pig person. And I thought, ‘This kind of looks good. Yeah, I like that! That’s an interesting idea!'”

“And I said, ‘Okay, you’ve got two really aggressive races, so I’m going to be super aggressive,'” he laughed.

Giamatti says he has passed on his love of Star Trek to his son Samuel, but he was not as successful as his father.

“He’s almost 25 years old, and I think he’s grateful for that,” he recalls. “When he was a kid and growing up, Star Wars was all the rage, so he was more into Star Wars than Star Wars. I just couldn’t get him into it the same way. He definitely enjoys it, but I think ultimately he became more of a Star Wars kid.”

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy airs every Thursday on Paramount+.