From News Nation:
“Nichelle Nichols, Lt. Uhura on ‘Star Trek,’ has died at 89”
Nichelle
Nichols, who broke barriers for Black women in Hollywood when she played
communications officer Lt. Uhura on the original “Star Trek” television series,
has died at the age of 89. Her son Kyle Johnson said Nichols died Saturday in
Silver City, New Mexico. “Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to
natural causes and passed away. Her light however, like the ancient galaxies
now being seen for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to
enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration,” Johnson wrote on her official
Facebook page Sunday. “Hers was a life well lived and as such a model for us
all.”
Her role in
the 1966-69 series as Lt. Uhura earned Nichols a lifelong position of honor
with the series’ rabid fans, known as Trekkers or Trekkies. It also earned her
accolades for breaking stereotypes that had limited Black women to acting roles
as servants and included an interracial onscreen kiss with co-star William
Shatner that was unheard of at the time. “I shall have more to say about the
trailblazing, incomparable Nichelle Nichols, who shared the bridge with us as
Lt. Uhura of the USS Enterprise, and who passed today at age 89,” George Takei wrote
on Twitter. “For today, my heart is heavy, my eyes shining like the stars you
now rest among, my dearest friend.”
Like other
original cast members, Nichols also appeared in six big-screen spinoffs
starting in 1979 with “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and frequented “Star
Trek” fan conventions. She also served for many years as a NASA recruiter,
helping bring minorities and women into the astronaut corps. More recently, she
had a recurring role on television’s “Heroes,” playing the great-aunt of a young
boy with mystical powers.
The original
“Star Trek” premiered on NBC on Sept. 8, 1966. Its multicultural, multiracial
cast was creator Gene Roddenberry’s message to viewers that in the far-off
future — the 23rd century — human diversity would be fully accepted. “I think
many people took it into their hearts … that what was being said on TV at that
time was a reason to celebrate,” Nichols said in 1992 when a “Star Trek”
exhibit was on view at the Smithsonian Institution. She often recalled how
Martin Luther King Jr. was a fan of the show and praised her role. She met him
at a civil rights gathering in 1967, at a time when she had decided not to
return for the show’s second season. “When I told him I was going to miss my
co-stars and I was leaving the show, he became very serious and said, ‘You
cannot do that,’” she told The Tulsa (Okla.) World in a 2008 interview. “’You’ve
changed the face of television forever, and therefore, you’ve changed the minds
of people,’” she said the civil rights leader told her. “That foresight Dr.
King had was a lightning bolt in my life,” Nichols said.
During the
show’s third season, Nichols’ character and Shatner’s Capt. James Kirk shared
what was described as the first interracial kiss to be broadcast on a U.S.
television series. In the episode, “Plato’s Stepchildren,” their characters,
who always maintained a platonic relationship, were forced into the kiss by
aliens who were controlling their actions. The kiss “suggested that there was a
future where these issues were not such a big deal,” Eric Deggans, a television
critic for National Public Radio, told The Associated Press in 2018. “The characters
themselves were not freaking out because a Black woman was kissing a white man
… In this utopian-like future, we solved this issue. We’re beyond it. That was
a wonderful message to send.” Worried about reaction from Southern television
stations, showrunners wanted to film a second take of the scene where the kiss
happened off-screen. But Nichols said in her book, “Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and
Other Memories,” that she and Shatner deliberately flubbed lines to force the
original take to be used. Despite concerns, the episode aired without blowback.
In fact, it got the most “fan mail that Paramount had ever gotten on Star Trek
for one episode,” Nichols said in a 2010 interview with the Archive of American
Television.
Born Grace
Dell Nichols in Robbins, Illinois, Nichols hated being called “Gracie,” which
everyone insisted on, she said in the 2010 interview. When she was a teen, her
mother told her she had wanted to name her Michelle, but thought she ought to
have alliterative initials like Marilyn Monroe, whom Nichols loved. Hence,
“Nichelle.” Nichols first worked professionally as a singer and dancer in
Chicago at age 14, moving on to New York nightclubs and working for a time with
the Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton bands before coming to Hollywood for her
film debut in 1959’s “Porgy and Bess,” the first of several small film and TV
roles that led up to her “Star Trek” stardom. Nichols was known as being
unafraid to stand up to Shatner on the set when others complained that he was
stealing scenes and camera time. They later learned she had a strong supporter
in the show’s creator. In her 1994 book, “Beyond Uhura,” she said she met
Roddenberry when she guest starred on his show “The Lieutenant,” and the two
had an affair a couple of years before “Star Trek” began. The two remained
lifelong close friends. Another fan of Nichols and the show was future
astronaut Mae Jemison, who became the first Black woman in space when she flew
aboard the shuttle Endeavour in 1992. In an AP interview before her flight,
Jemison said she watched Nichols on “Star Trek” all the time, adding she loved
the show. Jemison eventually got to meet Nichols. Nichols’s regular appearances
at “Star Trek” conventions became limited starting in 2018 when her son
announced that she was suffering from advanced dementia.
^ This is so
sad. She was a great Actress. ^
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