Nichelle Nichols made television history with her portrayal of Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: the original series.
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Actress Nichelle Nichols, who made history with her portrayal of Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series, died Saturday, July 30 at the 89 years old. Her son Kyle Johnson announced Nichols' passing on his official Instagram account, saying his mother died of natural causes. (The Los Angeles Times reported the cause of death was heart failure.) Deadline Hollywood confirmed his death with Gilbert Bell, his talent manager and business partner of 15 years. Nichols suffered a mild stroke in 2015 and was diagnosed with dementia in 2018. She rarely appeared in public thereafter.
(Last year we wrote about Woman in Motion, a new documentary about Nichols and her work recruiting for NASA, directed by Todd Thompson (streaming on Paramount+) Some of the following is adapted from this text.)
Nichols began her career as a dancer and singer. She had wanted to become the first black ballerina, and at 14 she landed her first gig at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago. She then toured the United States, Canada and Europe with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton before moving to Los Angeles in 1960 to continue performing.
Among Nichols' early roles was playing the bride of a black soldier in a short-lived series called The Lieutenant, produced by Gene Roddenberry. The episode (which never aired) was titled "To Set It Right" and explicitly dealt with racial bias. So when Roddenberry started developing a new series, originally titled Wagon Train to the Stars, he thought of her for one of the roles. That show became Star Trek, and Nichols made history as Uhura. (In her autobiography, Nichols revealed that she had been romantically involved with Roddenberry before meeting his wife, Majel Hudec, though the affair ended long before she was cast in Star Trek< /em>.)
I will have more to say about the incomparable and pioneering Nichelle Nichols, who shared the deck with us as Lieutenant Uhura of the USS Enterprise, and who passed away today at the age of 89. For today my heart is heavy, my eyes shine like the stars among which you now rest, my very dear friend.
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) July 31, 2022
Nichols nearly quit the show after the first season, frustrated with what she perceived as a steadily diminished role. But a chance encounter with Martin Luther King Jr. changed his mind. "You can't, you can't," she recalled telling him when she told him she wanted to quit the show. "For the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen every day, as intelligent, quality, beautiful people, who can sing, dance and go into space, who are teachers, lawyers .If you leave, that door can be closed because your role is not a black role, and it's not a female role, he can fill it with anyone, even an alien."
Along with co-star William Shatner, Nichols also engaged in what is widely touted as the first interracial kiss on scripted television in the United States in the 1968 episode TOS , "Plato's stepchildren". As Cyrus Farivar wrote for Ars in 2018:
The smooching scene has been commonly referred to as television's first interracial kiss, but there are
Nichelle Nichols made television history with her portrayal of Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: the original series.
SCS
Actress Nichelle Nichols, who made history with her portrayal of Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series, died Saturday, July 30 at the 89 years old. Her son Kyle Johnson announced Nichols' passing on his official Instagram account, saying his mother died of natural causes. (The Los Angeles Times reported the cause of death was heart failure.) Deadline Hollywood confirmed his death with Gilbert Bell, his talent manager and business partner of 15 years. Nichols suffered a mild stroke in 2015 and was diagnosed with dementia in 2018. She rarely appeared in public thereafter.
(Last year we wrote about Woman in Motion, a new documentary about Nichols and her work recruiting for NASA, directed by Todd Thompson (streaming on Paramount+) Some of the following is adapted from this text.)
Nichols began her career as a dancer and singer. She had wanted to become the first black ballerina, and at 14 she landed her first gig at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago. She then toured the United States, Canada and Europe with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton before moving to Los Angeles in 1960 to continue performing.
Among Nichols' early roles was playing the bride of a black soldier in a short-lived series called The Lieutenant, produced by Gene Roddenberry. The episode (which never aired) was titled "To Set It Right" and explicitly dealt with racial bias. So when Roddenberry started developing a new series, originally titled Wagon Train to the Stars, he thought of her for one of the roles. That show became Star Trek, and Nichols made history as Uhura. (In her autobiography, Nichols revealed that she had been romantically involved with Roddenberry before meeting his wife, Majel Hudec, though the affair ended long before she was cast in Star Trek< /em>.)
I will have more to say about the incomparable and pioneering Nichelle Nichols, who shared the deck with us as Lieutenant Uhura of the USS Enterprise, and who passed away today at the age of 89. For today my heart is heavy, my eyes shine like the stars among which you now rest, my very dear friend.
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) July 31, 2022
Nichols nearly quit the show after the first season, frustrated with what she perceived as a steadily diminished role. But a chance encounter with Martin Luther King Jr. changed his mind. "You can't, you can't," she recalled telling him when she told him she wanted to quit the show. "For the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen every day, as intelligent, quality, beautiful people, who can sing, dance and go into space, who are teachers, lawyers .If you leave, that door can be closed because your role is not a black role, and it's not a female role, he can fill it with anyone, even an alien."
Along with co-star William Shatner, Nichols also engaged in what is widely touted as the first interracial kiss on scripted television in the United States in the 1968 episode TOS , "Plato's stepchildren". As Cyrus Farivar wrote for Ars in 2018:
The smooching scene has been commonly referred to as television's first interracial kiss, but there are
Nichelle Nichols made television history with her portrayal of Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: the original series.
SCS
