Actress Nichelle Nichols will forever be remembered for playing Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series—one of the first Black women to play a promi

Woman in Motion tells story of how Star Trek’s Uhura changed NASA forever

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2021-06-06 22:30:06

Actress Nichelle Nichols will forever be remembered for playing Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series—one of the first Black women to play a prominent role on television—as well as engaging in the first interracial kiss on scripted television in the US. Less known is her equally seminal role as an ambassador for NASA in the 1970s, working tirelessly to bring more diversity to the agency's recruitment efforts. That work is highlighted in Woman in Motion, a new documentary directed by Todd Thompson that is now streaming on Paramount+.

Thompson himself was not a hardcore Star Trek fan growing up, although he had seen most of the movies and was certainly familiar with Nichols' portrayal of Uhura. His producing partners were fans, however, and when they told him about Nichol's contributions to NASA, he decided it was a story that had to be told. Over the course of production, he interviewed dozens of people about how Nichols inspired them, and also spent a considerable amount of time with the actress herself, now 88.

"She's the definition of Hollywood royalty for me," Thompson told Ars. "How she carries herself, how she treats others, how she engages with you—she's so incredibly magnetic. What she did was so paramount to giving us a blueprint of where we need to go, how we need to be, if we're going to make any sort of progress here on Earth and beyond the stars. I was very humbled by the responsibility to tell her story and tell it the right way."