Today is an exciting day for Star Trek fans. After an almost two year wait Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns to Paramount+ today with the first two episodes of its blockbuster third season. To celebrate we’re bringing you some of our interview with the cast to prepare you for 10 bold new episodes of the character-driven drama.
Earlier today we brought you our chat with Lieutenant Ortegas, aka Melissa Navia. Now it’s the turn of one of Strange New Worlds’ legacy characters, Uhura. We asked actor Celia Rose Gooding what it’s been like to inhabit Uhura from a cadet through to becoming a bridge officer and how it’s been balancing making the character their own. Watch the full interview in the player below:
NB: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
NEIL VAGG: Celia coming to you. It’s fascinating watching her grow from a cadet towards this person that we know she will eventually become. I’m just wondering for you. How is it at this point in her journey, balancing out, honouring that legacy, but still making her your own, which I feel you very much do.
CELIA ROSE GOODING: Thank you. That’s incredibly kind of you to say. That’s playing a character like Uhura and knowing how much she means to people. It is incredibly important to me that she remains recognisable. So much of her story in the first couple of seasons of our show are not very like the Uhura that we know. We see a version of her that is insecure and unsure and very caged by herself.
As we continue to tell more stories my goal as as the person who is sort of holding this torch of this character is to just continue to make her more and more recognisable. [To] continue to show pieces of herself that fans who have known her longer than I have can see pieces of her and say that’s where that began. The nature of a prequel is we’re telling the beginnings of these stories. We know the conclusion. We know where they end up and the journey that I’ve been going on is showing pieces of her that are more warm and intimate and playful. We see it in season three with the budding of a romance and with her, candidness with her crew, with the candidness of her position in Starfleet.
We see a lot of self interrogation in season three that we haven’t really seen in previous seasons. But to play this character, it reminds me so much of the women in my life that I know. It reminds me of my future self and my younger self. I feel so many pieces of me are weaving into the story of this character and so it means a lot to hear that it’s turning into something that is mine but also is very much Nichelle’s and Zoe Saldana and the Trekki communities. This is all of our characters belong to the Trekkie communit and so to have that received so well, it’s an honour. It really, really is.
