Nichelle Nichols, Lieutenant Uhura on ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 89
The actress earned the admiration of Martin Luther King Jr. by playing a Black authority figure, rare on 1960s television.
She was number 284 on the list.
Nichelle Nichols, who made history and earned the admiration of Martin Luther King Jr. for her portrayal of communications officer Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek, has died. She was 89.
Nichols, who earlier sang and danced as a performer with Duke Ellington’s orchestra, died Saturday night of natural causes, her son, Kyle Johnson, posted on her official Facebook page.
“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,” he wrote Sunday. “Hers was a life well lived and as such a model for us all.” (Read tribute to the late actress here.)
A family spokesman told The Hollywood Reporter that she died in Silver City, New Mexico. She had been living with her son and was recently hospitalized.
Nichols played a person of authority on television at a time when most Black women were portraying servants.
She was cast as Uhura by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry after she guest-starred as the fiancee of a Black U.S. Marine who is a victim of racism in a 1964 episode of another NBC show he created, the Camp Pendleton-set The Lieutenant.
(Leonard Nimoy and Ricardo Montalban, two other Star Trek actors, appeared on that short-lived Roddenberry series as well.)
In the 2010 documentary Trek Nation, Nichols said she informed Roddenberry midway through Star Trek’s first season of 1966-67 that she wanted to quit the show and return to the musical theater, which she called “her first love.”
However, a chance meeting with King at an NAACP fundraiser — who knew he was a Trekker? — led Nichols to stay put.
“He told me that Star Trek was one of the only shows that his wife Coretta and he would allow their little children to stay up and watch,” she recalled. “I thanked him and I told him I was leaving the show. All the smile came off his face and he said, ‘You can’t do that. Don’t you understand, for the first time, we’re seen as we should be seen? You don’t have a Black role. You have an equal role.’
“I went back to work on Monday morning and went to Gene’s office and told him what had happened over the weekend. And he said, ‘Welcome home. We have a lot of work to do.’ ”
Said Roddenberry in the documentary, “I was pleased that in those days, when you couldn’t even get Blacks on television, that I not only had a Black but a Black woman and a Black officer.”
Nichols played Nyota Uhura, who hailed from the United States of Africa in the future, on all three seasons of the series, which featured a multi-ethnic, multi-racial crew manning the deck of the Starship Enterprise.
She reprised the role in all six of the Star Trek films from 1979 through 1991, on animated series and several videogames and on a 2002 episode of Futurama.
In the three recent Star Trek films directed by J.J. Abrams and Justin Lin, Uhura was portrayed by Zoë Saldana. (Celia Rose Gooding plays her in the new Paramount+ series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.)
On the original Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” which first aired in November 1968, Uhura and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) shared a rare, for the time, interracial kiss on television. (They couldn’t help themselves; according to the plot, aliens made them do it.)
When NBC execs learned about the kiss during production, they feared stations in the Southern states would not air the episode, so they ordered that another version of the scene be filmed. But Nichols and Shatner purposely screwed up every additional take.
“Finally, the guys in charge relented: ‘To hell with it. Let’s go with the kiss,” Nichols wrote in her 1994 book, Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories. “I guess they figured we were going to be canceled in a few months anyway. And so the kiss stayed.”
In the mid-1970s, after Nichols took NASA to task in a speech for not reaching out to women and minorities, the organization asked her to serve as a recruiter.
“I went everywhere,” she said. “I went to universities that had strong science and engineering programs. I was a guest at NORAD [the North American Aerospace Defense Command], where no civilian had gone before.
“At the end of the recruitment, NASA had so many highly qualified people. They took six women, they took three African-American men … it was a very fulfilling accomplishment for me.”
Among those who applied to NASA thanks to Nichols were Sally Ride, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair and Ellison Onizuka. A documentary about her efforts, Woman in Motion, premiered in 2018.
Born Grace Nichols on Dec. 28, 1932, in the Chicago suburb of Robbins, Illinois, she studied dance at the Chicago Ballet Academy. As a teenager, she toured as a dancer with Ellington and Lionel Hampton, then sang for the first time with Ellington’s band when a performer became ill at the last minute.
She danced with Sammy Davis Jr. in Porgy and Bess (1959), was a dice player in James Garner’s Mister Buddwing (1966) and played the foul-mouthed head of a prostitution ring who puts a hit out on Isaac Hayes in Truck Turner (1974). In 1968, she recorded an album, Down to Earth.
Nichols appeared as the grandmother of avenging angel Monica Dawson (Dana Davis), who has the power to mimic any physical motion she witnesses, on the NBC series Heroes.
Her more recent film appearances came in Snow Dogs (2002), Are We There Yet? (2005) and This Bitter Earth (2012).
Survivors include her son, who starred in the Gordon Parks film The Learning Tree (1969). The Los Angeles Times reported in August that he was at the center of a conservatorship battle over his mom, who had lived in Woodland Hills.
In January 1967, Nichols also was featured on the cover of Ebony magazine, and had two feature articles in the publication in five years. Nichols toured the United States, Canada, and Europe as a singer with the Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton bands. On the West Coast, she appeared in The Roar of the Greasepaint and For My People and she garnered high praise for her performance in the James Baldwin play Blues for Mister Charlie. Prior to being cast as Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek, Nichols was a guest actress on television producer Gene Roddenberry's first series The Lieutenant (1964) in an episode, "To Set It Right", which dealt with racial prejudice
Filmography
Films
Year Title Role Notes
1959 Porgy and Bess Dancer Uncredited
1966 Tarzan's Deadly Silence Ruana
Made in Paris Salon customer Uncredited extra
Mister Buddwing Dice Player
1967 Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! Jenny Ribbock
1974 Truck Turner Dorinda
1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture Nyota Uhura
1982 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
1984 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
1986 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
The Supernaturals Sgt. Leona Hawkins
1989 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Nyota Uhura
1991 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
1995 The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space Sagan
2002 Snow Dogs Amelia Brooks
2004 Surge of Power: The Stuff of Heroes Omen
2005 Are We There Yet? Miss Mable
2008 Lady Magdalene's Lady Magdalene / Maggie
Tru Loved Grandmother
The Torturer Doc
2012 This Bitter Earth Clara Watkins
2016 Renegades Grace Jemison
2018 American Nightmares Mystic Woman
The White Orchid Teresa Suskind
2019 Surge of Dawn Omen
Woman in Motion Herself
2020 Unbelievable!!!!! Sensei / Aunt Petunia
Television
Year Title Role Notes
1964 The Lieutenant Norma Bartlett Episode: "To Set It Right"
1966 Tarzan Ruana 2 episodes
1966–1969 Star Trek Nyota Uhura Main role
1970 Insight Ellie Episode: "Old King Cole"
1973 Star Trek: The Animated Series Nyota Uhura / Additional voices[93] Main role
1984 Antony and Cleopatra Charmian TV film
1994 Gargoyles Diane Maza (voice) 4 episodes
Batman: The Animated Series Thoth Khepera (voice) Episode: "Avatar"
1996 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Nyota Uhura Episode: "Trials and Tribble-ations"; archive footage
1997 Spider-Man Miriam (voice) 2 episodes
2000–2002 Futurama Herself (voice) 2 episodes
2004 The Simpsons Episode: "Simple Simpson"
2007 Heroes Nana Dawson Recurring role
Star Trek: Of Gods and Men Nyota Uhura Fan production
2009 The Cabonauts CJ Episode: "Pilot"
2010 Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster Senator TV film
2016 The Young and the Restless Lucinda Winters 4 episodes
2017 Downward Dog Deejay DeVine Episode: "Old"
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming Sec. General Starr TV film
2022 Star Trek: Prodigy Nyota Uhura Episode: "Kobayashi"; archive audio
Video games and theme park attractions
Year Title Role Notes
1994 Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Nyota Uhura (voice) Video games (CD-ROM versions)
1995 Star Trek: Judgment Rites
1996–1998 Star Trek Adventure Nyota Uhura Amusement park feature; appeared in several revisions
Books
Title Publisher Date ISBN Notes
Beyond Uhura G. P. Putnam's Sons October 19, 1994 0-399-13993-1
Saturn's Child Penguin October 17, 1995 0-399-14113-8 with Margaret Wander Bonanno
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