Remembering The Iconic Legacy Of Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols

Although Nichols didn’t start trailblazing across your TV screens until her late 20s, she started performing as a child. Initially, she learned a trade at the Chicago Ballet, but her talents shone like the stars. And it attracted them too, because Duke Ellington — an iconic jazz performer in the ’40s — noticed her. Before long, Nichols was lead dancer and singer on his tours. 

No doubt Nichols learned a thing or two about acting along the way as well. Did you know she first appeared on TV screens in 1959? It’s true: she was a dancer in the Sidney Poitier musical drama, Porgy and Bess, albeit uncredited. It wasn’t until five years later that Nichols took the step from TV performer to actress in the TV movie Great Gettin' Up Mornin'. 

That’s not what you all know her from, of course. Her most memorable role was — you guessed it — Lieutenant Nyota Uhura in the classic sci-fi series Star Trek. In those days it was rare enough to have a diverse cast, but Uhura had it all. She was a strong, fleshed-out character in her own right, too. Heck, she was the first female African-American authority figure on TV! 

Even Uhura’s name broke conventions, as Nichols told the Television Academy Foundation in 2011. "Uhuru is Swahili for freedom,” she explained, “and that's the history of Africa — everyone is fighting for uhuru in one way or another.” Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry thought the name sounded “too harsh for a female,” but Nichols fought for her character, too.

“I said, ‘Well why don't you do an alliteration of it?’” Nichols continued. “Soften the end with an ‘A’ and it'll be Uhura. [Rodenberry] said, ‘That's it, that's your name! You named it, it's yours. Now I know exactly where your character comes from — the United States of Africa.’” And so Uhura was born — and she never stopped pushing boundaries. 

As you can imagine, such an influential figure in the history of television inspired other famous actors to reach for the stars, too. Take another actress of color, Whoopi Goldberg, for example. When Goldberg took on the uncredited role of Guinan in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis she had the pleasure of meeting Nichols and recently she spoke sadly of the legendary actress’ passing. 

“Nichelle was the first black person I’d ever seen who made it to the future,” Goldberg announced on the ABC daytime show in August 2022. “She was head of communications. This show and this woman was a beacon that said, ‘Yes, we’ll be there.’ And it just made me feel like that was an amazing thing, and she helped propel other women to go into space.”

“I was lucky enough to spend time with her over the years,” Goldberg continued. “She was my friend and she’ll be missed.” She also rightly said that Nichols “inspired millions and millions of people,” and described her as a “Star Trek legend, trailblazer, a heroine and an extraordinary woman.” There’s no doubt that Nichols revolutionized TV, as she proudly said herself in a 2012 interview at the Comic Con in Detroit, Michigan. 

Nichols revealed, “There were so many firsts on… [Star Trek]. It was the first integrated show on television, and it took to the imagination of the people.” And because it did so in a tumultuous time, you can imagine how controversial it was. Some people — including families in America’s southern states, where the show was most popular — outright forbade their children to watch it!

Of course, that didn’t stop the youth of the generation from tuning in! “They would then go to their friend’s home like they were going to do homework,” Nichols described, relating how some viewers watched Star Trek in secret together. “These are some of the most brilliant people in the country,” the actress elaborated, “and the reason for it is that this show Gene created was so inclusive.”

“Not just of people of different colors and races,” Nichols continued, “but inclusive of all people. People who, before that, wouldn’t go out if you were in a wheelchair because it was so uncomfortable. People were included who were different, who were positive and strong, but they were regarded as different. It made a better world.” Star Trek — and Uhura in particular — had a huge impact on young girls, too. 

Nichols told the 2012 Comic Con, “I think that it opened the door for young women, especially African-American young women, and that door has never closed. There are these brilliant young black actresses, and to be nominated or win an Academy Award, is no longer a dream. It’s a fact.” Zoe Saldana, who played Uhura in J.J. Abrams’ vision of Star Trek, is one of them. 

In fact, Saldana and Nichols have compared notes on the legendary Lieutenant Uhura. “I thought she was brilliant,” Nichols said of Saldana. “When I met her, she was just wonderful. J.J. introduced us on the set. When she saw me she said, ‘Oh, my God.’ We sat there and talked for two hours. She picked my brain, and I praised her beauty. When I saw [her act], I thought it was spot on.”

And then there was Nichols’ iconic on-screen kiss with William Shatner, who played Star Trek’s heartthrob Captain Kirk. It’s credited as the first interracial kiss on TV, but that’s actually not true. Did you know there had been others — including on the set of Star Trek — before that? Shatner had kissed French actress France Nuyen, a woman of partly Asian descent, before that.

Sulu, famously portrayed by George Takei, had kissed Uhura on the show too, albeit on the neck. Shatner and Nichols’ smooch was one of the most famous though, so you’d expect it to have faced some opposition, right? You know, given the time and all. The network executives certainly expected backlash, and the BBC did ban the episode. Yet that was for other, unrelated themes shown in the episode. 

The Daily Telegraph reported in 2022 that the kiss itself got a surprising reception. They described how Nichols recalled, “We received one of the largest batches of fan mail ever. All of it very positive, with many addressed to me from girls wondering how it felt to kiss Captain Kirk, and many to him from guys wondering the same thing about me. However, almost no one found the kiss offensive.”

Yet the memorable kiss almost didn’t happen, because Nichols nearly left Star Trek after Season One. She was going to pursue a career in Broadway, but Martin Luther King Jr. himself changed her mind! “You must not leave,” he told her when they met during a fundraiser. “You have opened a door that must not be allowed to close… you changed the face of television forever.”

King continued, “For the first time, the world sees us as we should be seen, as equals, as intelligent people.” And so Nichols abided by King’s wishes, and the rest is history. She was far from finished in her quest to change the world, though. Nichols will always be remembered for her inspirational speech she gave after the National Space Institute appointed her to its board of directors in 1977. 

The lack of diversity in NASA’s astronaut program incited Nichols to tell them, “Come down from your ivory tower of intellectual pursuit, because the next Einstein might have a black face — and she’s female.” Although Nichols passed away, she will never be forgotten. With all the revolutionary changes she heralded, the late actress might as well have written her name across the stars.

Similarly, Takei will always be synonymous with his iconic Star Trek role. The Japanese-American actor played Hikaru Sulu in the original series, animated series, and six of the seven subsequent films. He even reprised the role in a 1996 episode of Star Trek: Voyager in honor of the franchise’s 30th anniversary.

But these days Takei has become arguably as well-known for his political and social activism as for his acting. He is prominent in local and state politics and has gained recognition and awards for his campaigning on human rights issues, including relations between Japan and America. And, significantly, in 2005 he made the brave move of revealing his sexuality publicly for the first time.

Since publicly coming out, Takei has been an outspoken proponent of LGBTQ+ rights on social media. Fusing his activism with his sharp sense of humor, he's reinvented himself as an internet celebrity personality in his older years. As Takei explained to The Daily Dot in 2018, “The power of social media is fantastic in developing a genuine community.” However, that sense of community was glaringly absent among some of the Star Trek cast members.

Yes, unfortunately, Takei and William Shatner have been engaged in a bitter feud for over four decades now. And the undercurrent of bad feeling between the pair continued over the years before it publicly exploded again in 2008. Apparently, Shatner was upset that he hadn’t been invited to Takei’s wedding to Altman. In a bitter clip posted to his YouTube channel The Shatner Project, the angry actor went on what can only be described as a rant.

“It’s so patently obvious that there is a psychosis there. I don’t know what his original thing about me was. I have no idea,” Shatner said. He then went on to declare that while he had never actually read To The Stars, he was aware of Takei’s claims in the book. And Shatner added of his former colleague, “I literally don’t know him. I didn’t know him very well on the series.”

Shatner maintained, however, that he couldn’t remember doing anything to hurt Takei. He added, “I presume [George] can remember all these terrible things I must have done when I said ‘Hello’ or something to him. You would think he’d have this epiphany and say – because he and I don’t have many years left in this world – ‘I wish him well. I’m so happy that I wish him well.’”

“But instead what [George] does is he makes this big deal about not inviting me to his wedding,” Shatner went on. “If I was such a terrible force in his life – even some 40-odd years later, because I’ve not seen him – that I affect his marriage where he has to isolate it, what kind of sickness is going on in the man? Why would he go out of his way to denigrate me?”

Overall, Shatner’s take on the situation was that he “[felt] nothing but pity for [George].” So, how did Takei respond to this shocking video? Well, he revealed that he had in fact invited Shatner to the wedding. Allegedly, though, he had never received a response from the sci-fi icon. And when Takei told his side of the story to the New York Times Magazine in 2015, he made a pretty bold accusation.

“Two months after my wedding, [Bill] went on YouTube and ranted and raved about our not sending him an invitation,” Takei lamented. “We had. If he had an issue, he could have easily just phoned us before the wedding, simple as that. But he didn’t. And the reason he raised that fuss two months later is because he was premiering his new talk show Raw Nerve.”

For what it’s worth, Shatner is not the only Star Trek cast member with whom Takei had a problem, although this other beef had a happier ending. In 2012 the Sulu star told Mother Jones that he had initially hated Walter Koenig, who had portrayed Ensign Pavel Chekov from season two onwards. This aversion had simply stemmed, however, from Takei’s professional anxiety.

Between seasons one and two of the original Star Trek series, Takei had been cast in the John Wayne movie The Green Berets. Ultimately, though, the filming had run, as Takei explained, “way over schedule.” He added, “I couldn’t be back in time for the beginning of the second season, [so] Walter Koenig was brought in to essentially say the words that were written for me. [But] I had already memorized them because I was so excited.”

“When I came back, I hated Walter sight unseen,” Takei confessed, before reassuring fans that they soon settled any differences. The star continued, “We worked it out. As a matter of fact, we had a shortage of dressing rooms, so they asked me to share my dressing room with Walter – a person who had stolen my part! But he turned out to be a really good friend.”

In fact, the pair became such good friends that Koenig was best man at Takei’s wedding. And it was an all-star lineup at the event, with Nichelle Nichols handed the role of maid of honor. But it seems that this decision did not sit well with Shatner, as in his 2011 memoir Shatner Rules: Your Guide to Understanding the Shatnerverse and the World at Large he insinuated that Takei’s wedding was a publicity stunt.

The pages also revealed Shatner’s claim that Takei’s dislike for him grew from being unwilling to play second fiddle on the show. The actor wrote, “[George] says that I have a ‘big, shiny ego!’ Well, actors have big egos. If mine is shiny, it’s because I tend to it very carefully and lovingly. Perhaps George’s needs a good polish.”

And in August 2020 the spat hit the headlines once again, as Takei spoke out against Shatner during an appearance on Doctor Who star David Tennant’s podcast. There, he claimed that the entire Star Trek cast were friendly with one another except for Shatner. In fact, Takei said that it often felt like “William Shatner versus the rest of the world.”

Takei’s belief was that Shatner hadn’t been happy about another character on the show being more popular than his Captain Kirk. This had allegedly led to him becoming increasingly antagonistic towards the rest of the cast. Takei told Tennant, “It got more and more intense,” before adding, “There was one character whose charisma and whose mystery was like a magnet.”

Takei continued, “It was Spock, the strange alien with pointy ears.” Yes, Leonard Nimoy’s Spock apparently generated more fan engagement than Shatner did as Captain Kirk. And the Sulu actor added, “[Spock] intrigued the audience, and women thought, ‘I’m the one who can arouse him.’ His fan letters were this many, and Leonard’s were that many, and that created an insecurity.”

Interestingly, Takei’s claim that Shatner felt uncomfortable about Spock’s popularity had actually been confirmed a few years earlier by the man himself. In a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Shatner revealed that he had even broached the topic with producers of the show while it was on the air. In particular, he had been worried that Kirk would become sidelined.

“I remember going to the producers and wondering whether they were going to change the thrust of the show as a result of the popularity of Spock,” Shatner admitted. “So, my anxieties were never directed at Leonard per se. It was about, ‘How was the show going to go?’” It seems, too, that the actor had an ever-evolving relationship with Nimoy.

At different points in time, you see, Shatner and Nimoy were alternately professional rivals, bitter enemies and good buddies. In fact, the Captain Kirk actor once described his co-star as “the only friend [he] ever had.” Sadly, though, the pair’s relationship ended badly, with Nimoy cutting off all contact in the final years of his life. And as Shatner told The Hollywood Reporter, this act had left him baffled. He said, “I don’t know why [Leonard] stopped talking to me.”

Yet while the worry over Spock’s popularity was not disputed by Shatner, he did have an issue with Takei’s fan-mail claim. Taking to Twitter in the wake of the podcast being published, Shatner struck a vicious blow by writing, “George needs a new hobby. Now he’s making things up. We never saw fan letters. That’s why there’s so many secretary-signed photos. We barely saw George. He was in once a week at most. How would he know anything? The only person with jealousy is George.” Will the feud ever end? We'll find out.