BREAKING: Star Trek star Walter Koenig, who played Chekov, dead at 90

Walter Koenig, who starred in the original Star Trek series as Russian crewman Pavel Chekov, has died at the age of 90. His representative announced on Monday that Koenig died on Sunday of natural causes in his North Hollywood home, per the Hollywood Reporter.

Koenig, the son of Lithuanian immigrants, joined Star Trek for its second season, appearing in 36 of the 50 episodes that aired in 1967-68 and 1968-69. Koenig also reprised his role in the first seven Star Trek movies released by Paramount.

Koenig said in a 2013 interview that he hadn’t watched Star Trek before taking up the role on the show. “I’d flip through the channels and I’d see Styrofoam rocks — they were so obviously Styrofoam — and I said, ‘This has got to be phony.’ I didn’t give it a chance.”

He said that after his audition for the show, he spent a few hours outside an office and was approached by a man and asked to follow him into the wardrobe room. 

“He drops on his knees in front of me,” Koenig said, “and takes my crotch in his hand, and I’m saying, ‘What are you doing?!” I didn’t see the tape-measuring ruler in his other hand, and he was measuring from my crotch to my cuff to decide how long my pants should be. He says, ‘You do have to have a costume, don’t you?’ And that’s the auspicious way I learned I was on Star Trek and it was going to change my life.”