HOLLYWOOD

The premiere screening and after-party for “Star Trek: Picard,” staged recently at the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard, featured the kind of festive atmosphere you would expect from Hollywood: Nattily dressed stars on the red carpet. Swarms of photographers. Rabid fans clad as Starfleet officers. Lots of tasty treats, including mini lobster rolls and sliders with truffles.

Participating on the front lines that night were two people you might not have expected: Berkeley authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman.

Unbeknownst to many, the married couple — celebrated for their prolific literary endeavors — have spent the past few years diving head-first into television. Or to borrow from Captain Kirk’s iconic speech, they’ve been on a mission to explore strange new worlds and boldly go where they haven’t gone before.

“Some might find it surprising,” Waldman says of the move into TV. “It surprised the hell out of us, as well.”

Chabon displays his love for “Star Trek” during New York Comic-Con. (CBS) 

But here they are, living the show-biz dream while commuting between the East Bay and a Southern California rental home. Chabon is the showrunner on “Star Trek: Picard” and Waldman wrote an episode for the series, which begins streaming Jan. 23 on CBS All Access. This latest entry in the sci-fi franchise has Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Jean-Luc Picard, the character he played for seven seasons on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

So why TV?

“We’re at a time where people are creating marvelous, novelistic stories (for television),” Chabon says. “You’re seeing a lot of long-form series that offer similar kinds of stories you can do in books, with characters who change over time.”

“Picard” is a passion project for Chabon, who began watching “Trek” at the age of 10 and admits to being “a big nerd before that was even a word.” It was recently announced that the series already has been renewed for a second season.

But even bigger news came last month when Chabon and Waldman signed a multi-year production deal with CBS Television Studios. The agreement includes, among other projects, a commitment from Showtime for a limited series adaption of “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.” It’s the acclaimed novel that earned Chabon the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in fiction — and a story he has been trying to get put on film for nearly two decades.

“We’re both so excited,” Waldman says of the opportunity. “There’s still so much juice in that story.”

“It is our personal priority as partners,” he adds. “It’s the one we most want to work on together.”

Their production deal represents a triumphant high point in a long flirtation with Hollywood that, until recently, has been marked by much frustration and rejection for the Berkeley power couple. But those failures only strengthened their resolve to crack the medium.

Chabon, who has screenwriting credits on feature films “Spider-Man 2” and “John Carter,” had been trying to break into TV since the late 1990s. In fact, his novel “Telegraph Avenue” grew out of a failed pitch for a TNT series.

As for Waldman, she succeeded in getting CBS to green light a 2012 pilot based on her “Mommy-Track Mysteries,” only to suffer disappointment when the network decided not to go forward with a series. The rejection, she admits, was difficult to take.

“You can pour your heart into writing a book that no one reads and, at least, you still have your book,” she says. “You can take some comfort in those pages. But a dead pilot is dead to the world.”

Still, that initial experience was pivotal because Waldman came away exhilarated by the production process.

“It was amazing,” she recalls. “I loved trading scripts back and forth with (producer) Jeff Rake in the middle of the night. … (Set designers) replicated my house on a soundstage that was actually nicer than my real house. I was sobbing as I walked from room to room.”

Says Chabon, “She got the bug while they were shooting that pilot. She came home and said: ‘This is what I want to do. I want to make TV shows.'”

Waldman initially pursued that goal on her own, pitching projects with only modest success. Eventually she and Chabon teamed up on a drama project for HBO called “Hobgoblin,” a World War II-era saga about a group of magicians who battle Hitler. Again, the show never made it to air, but the authors learned something about themselves along the way.

“We discovered that we have a good collaborative method that works in the TV frame,” Chabon says. “We couldn’t sit down and write a novel together. That just wouldn’t work. We have very different approaches — from our work habits to our writing styles. But with TV, it’s different.”

Cut to 2019: Chabon and Waldman finally crossed the finish line with “Unbelievable,” a true-crime miniseries they co-created for Netflix with Susannah Grant (“Erin Brockovich”) about a young victim of a serial rapist who is accused by male cops of lying about her assault. “Unbelievable” carried a strong #MeToo resonance and went on to capture three Golden Globe nominations.

While that series was earning raves, Chabon continued work on “Picard.” And last summer, he was elevated to the role of showrunner, meaning he now would be in charge of overseeing daily production of a special effects laden, multi-million-dollar series.

“Suddenly I found myself doing something I never intended to do. It’s nothing remotely like sitting alone in a room and writing a book,” he says. “But I’m 56 years old and, in many ways, the decade of my 50s has been about doing new things and different kinds of writing.”

The job of showrunner is an all-consuming one and Waldman admits she had some concern as her husband routinely worked 18-hour days.

“It’s so intense. I got a little afraid for him,” she says. “Are people our age supposed to be pulling all-nighters? But he found so much joy in the material. He was like a 12-year-old boy.”

That child-like joy extends beyond the work. Waldman gushes about meeting Patrick Stewart for the first time (“It kind of rocked my world”) and accompanying “Unbelievable” actress Merritt Wever on the Hollywood awards circuit.

And then there’s that surreal feeling she gets when driving around Los Angeles and spotting giant billboards advertising their shows.

“At some point I figure that I’ll stop screeching my car to a halt on Sepulveda Boulevard to take photos of that stuff,” she says, laughing.

It might sound like these East Bay authors have completely given themselves over to the Hollywood lifestyle. But they don’t rule out an eventual return to novel-writing — and they certainly have no plans to abandon Berkeley.

“We’ll never leave,” Chabon declares. “We enjoy living and working In LA. But our heart is in Berkeley. We raised four children there and our house is the center of our lives.”

Waldman echoes that emotion.

“When we get home, it’s such a relief,” she says. “In the Bay Area, at least a woman is allowed to look like a 50-year old. You’re not worried about having to undergo some terrifying form of plastic surgery.”

Contact Chuck Barney at cbarney@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/chuckbarney and Facebook.com/bayareanewsgroup.chuckbarney.