Star Trek: Discovery’s star Sonequa Martin-Green is on the cover of ESSENCE’s latest digital issue. Her interview is titled Out of this World and she talks about diversity in Hollywood. Her appearance, as one of the few faces of colour, in the movie The Walking Deadmakes her the appropriate star for this interview. She is also the first black woman to be a lead character on a Star Trek series.
Read excerpts below:
Martin-Green on Hollywood Diversity
“I certainly see more doors opening for Black women and people of colour…And of course, I celebrate it. But I also have a healthy yearning for more. The way to continue opening these doors is by continuing to do what we’re doing: telling these varied, interesting, compelling, ugly, beautiful, human stories. We need for people who look like us to tell them because otherwise, we[’ll] continue to see ourselves through other people who are different from us. So I appreciate our writers and producers for standing by this vision to have a Black woman at the helm. I’m so very humbled by it and innovated by it. I just hope that this keeps spreading. I think it will…”
On Loving Her Star Trek Role
“I saw this vision to humanize Star Trek in a way we hadn’t seen before. That’s the kind of stuff I love. That’s so challenging and fulfilling as an actor…Here we have this Black woman who is completely burst open. You’re seeing the inner workings of this Black woman being a human being. We need to see Black people and other people of color and women be human and be broken and be vulnerable. I think that’s a big part of how we move forward.”
Read more on this story on ESSENCE.
