Ayla Ruby
Star Trek has never been afraid to take risks, and Strange New Worlds continues to push those boundaries in season four. We spoke with Celia Rose Gooding over Zoom about portraying Nyota Uhura in a universe alive with genre. Our chat was right before the groundbreaking episode A Case of Chiaroscuro, and Gooding shared some incredible details about the technical craft behind Trek’s first entirely black-and-white episode. Gooding also talked about the dynamic of mentoring a prickly new Vulcan cadet this season, and what it’s really like seeing their performance brought to life through a puppet. Read on for the full interview.
Ayla Ruby: I’m so excited to chat, and I just actually finished watching the screeners for this season, so I have so many questions.
Celia Rose Gooding: Oh, lovely.
Ayla Ruby: So you’ve got dinosaurs, ghosts, puppets, a black and white episode. For you as an actor, how do you approach that? What did you think going into it?
Celia Rose Gooding: Well, the gift of Strange New Worlds is that we’ve always been a very genre diverse show. I mean, even in the beginning, even in our premier season, we had the fantasy episode, we had adventures on … All I can really think of now actually … Oh no, we also had the Spock Amok, the body switch. We had a lot of different types of genre shenaniganery going on. And so when I sat down with Henry and Akiva, the showrunners for the show, before season four, they let me know that we are continuing to push the envelope. And I think that seasons four and seasons five, I think a lot of the cast would agree in saying that they’re some of our strongest work yet because of the big genre swings we’re taking. I think we’re keeping it very quintessential Trek.
I mean, the episode that comes out tomorrow, the black and white episode, is I think a very classic Trek approach to what is some unprecedented type of shooting for Star Trek. There’s never been an entirely black and white episode of Trek before, but the conversations that we’re having, the social commentary that we’re giving, conversations about occupation and espionage, they are very, I think, core to what Trek has always done, it’s been providing social commentary for the world that we’re inheriting. My place in it as an actor is just to continue to show up and do the work and try and make sure I have all my lines memorized. But I think my approach was very practiced given how our show has been pretty genre-diverse from the start.
Ayla Ruby: I’m going to jump into the black and white episode because I’m so glad you mentioned that. I love that there’s genre switch, and then Trek has a message, and this episode conveys it so well. But I want to ask a little bit about the technical aspects of it because like you said, it’s the first black and white episode of Trek. How did that work filming-wise? Was there anything different or was it … Can you speak to that at all?
Celia Rose Gooding: Yes. I think on the day, it wasn’t black and white. We were all in very vibrant colors, so that even in the gray scale, there was still diversity of visual, diversity of texture, diversity of appearance of how things look on screen in the black and white. My costume was actually entirely bronze because for whatever reason, the material against my complexion really made my skin pop. But for the lighting aspect, there are so many cool, very classic film noir cuts of light over our faces. I remember when we were shooting in Hamilton, the scenes that we did outside were all night shoots. It was all nights, a week in a row of nights.
And something that I found very interesting was to make certain metals or the concrete of the ground pop on screen. They were constantly wetting the ground, just giving it new things that I had never seen before when shooting a show, to give it just a little bit more visual, intrigue, and I think aesthetic interest. But truthfully, when it came to shooting and getting the lines, and making sure that the dialogue was clear and the storytelling was still there, it felt like any other day on set. It just so happened to be in incredibly dramatic lighting, and visually different, and unexpected elements on the day that really helped everything pop on screen.
Ayla Ruby: For this episode too, Uhura gets, without going too much into spoilers, Uhura gets captured, and there’s this interesting interrogation scene with lighting. Can you talk about just the scene, what it means for your character, and just your approach to it all?
Celia Rose Gooding: I think in my approach to Uhura, we have delved into a lot of different sides of her professional personality, her excellence in communications, her abilities to provide linguistics expertise to any away mission or even just moments on the bridge. I think what we haven’t seen her in is real on the ground moments of peril. When I read in the script that Uhura was going to have this pretty much light torture moment, I immediately though about Mirror, Mirror, and I was like, oh, that’s where she gets her ferocity.
She has this moment when my version of Uhura, as a ensign, we see her sort of experience the reason why she doesn’t get back to that vulnerable and weak place again. When you do a prequel, especially when you’re reprising an original and beloved character, it was really important for me, along with the writers and the showrunners, to have clear establishing beats of why she becomes the lieutenant that we all know and love. And I think in this episode, we see that sort of ferocity and instinctual brain shift in her lieutenant era where she’s very sharp and very battle-ready.
And even though she doesn’t get to do much of that in the original series, there are pieces of Uhura’s ferocity that Nichelle Nichols got to show off in really specific and while small and short-lived moments, when you look back at what we’re doing in Strange New Worlds, I think audiences who are a fan of her will get to see the connection. They’ll see, oh, when she was younger, she had to experience all this hardship so that when she’s older, she knows how to avoid those circumstances that she was unfortunately in when I was playing her.
Ayla Ruby: There’s also this moment for the character, jumping back out of this episode a little bit, I think it’s the first episode in this part of the season too, she’s got this interesting mentorship role, which is an interesting seeing her grow into that and how that happens for her. Can you talk about that? So she’s got a Vulcan that she’s maybe mentoring, but the Vulcan is reluctant. Can you talk about that?
Celia Rose Gooding: Yes, of course. Cadet A’Sha, played by Bianca Nagara is so fun. The sort of dynamic that Uhura and A’Sha have, and that will be explored later in the season, I think it’s very funny. There’s something as someone who has been the very bright and shiny and excited person in the room, nothing challenges your ability to stay consistent with yourself like someone who is the antithesis of who you are.
A’Sha and Uhura are night and day. They’re like oil and vinegar. And their dynamic is very interesting to watch because you get to see Uhura really … We see her standing in her conviction. We don’t see her fold and soften and try to deny her intuition and belief of what she has to offer her mentee because of her mentee’s bristly, prickly nature. We just see her continue to go for it, and continue to try and find new angles to bring her in, because Uhura does have, while in previous seasons, like in the documentary episode of last year, we see her interrogate Starfleet as a military institution, but she does have a great amount of love for what Starfleet offered her, a sort of haven to process an incredible amount of profound levels of grief. And I think that the haven that Uhura found in Starfleet, she’s trying to showcase that to A’Sha. And whether A’Sha receives it or not, or whether A’Sha can really download what Uhura is trying to offer, that will be showcased in later episode. Excuse me.
Ayla Ruby: Well, I can’t wait to watch. So I’m going to jump a little bit into the puppet episode. Can you talk about the collaboration process with making the puppet for you? Because Jim Henson’s puppets are kind of legendary.
Celia Rose Gooding: They’re iconic.
Ayla Ruby: How does that work, if someone is doing that?
Celia Rose Gooding: So technically, that episode was actually very light on my load as an actor. I think I went home for a couple of days, because I had days and days where I wasn’t really on set.
Ayla Ruby: Did you get to be on set during the filming, or was it kind of like the-
Celia Rose Gooding: It was up to interpretation. We weren’t required to be on set. Of course there were days where I wanted to go and watch the scenes. But we were also like … That was episode five, I believe, of a 10-episode season. So we just reached that halfway point. So I actually was very excited for a little time to rest, just because we’d just get gotten off of the episode that comes out tomorrow, episode four, which was very intense on my body and my spirit. And so when we did our initial reading, it’s a very routine type process. We do the reading, there’s a couple days for edits or re-blocking, and then we go into shoot.
So for the puppet episode, we did our reading, our initial reading, and we actually got to see our puppets and meet our puppeteers. And we had our puppeteers get to know our body language. They were familiar with the show, so they could have our puppets really emulate the different personalities of our crew. But these are master puppeteers. Even if they didn’t have an opportunity to study us and understand us as actors, I think they would’ve still done a fabulous job. And with the nature of the sort of body comedy, or the puppet body comedy that is required, so much of it really existed outside of us.So much of it happened while we were shooting other things. Or because of the nature of how we shoot, sometimes we shoot episodes out of order. So because almost all of the cast was privy to a bunch of free time, I was able to do choreography rehearsals, fight choreo rehearsals or zero-G rehearsals, or doing stunt work or getting a couple extra hours of sleep, which is always nice.
But yeah, it was very unique. We had never done anything … I feel like I say that about a lot of our episodes this season, but it was incredibly unique, this style of shooting. Because we had such master puppeteers and the work of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop is so iconic and easily recognizable, I think so much of the work that makes this episode happened in collaboration with, of course, but really outside of us as actors. I remember watching the episode back when I got to look at the screeners, and being like, “Oh, that’s not what I expected.” Even though it is my voice coming out of the puppet, we still had to record all of our lines, either before or intermittently or after the fact. So yeah, it was an incredibly interesting style of shooting, but it came out and turned out together really well.
Ayla Ruby: Was there anything, I guess, this season that we haven’t talked about or maybe that we’ve talked about that was the most challenging or interesting or exciting thing for you?
Celia Rose Gooding: The most challenging? I think without a doubt, there’s a very Uhura-centric episode that’s coming later in the season, that was, just because of the nature of how it was shot, how much of my vessel, that’s what I refer to as my body, was required. I think that the season finale of this season was very difficult for me, but there are … I think as Uhura grows and evolves, the sort of demand on what is asked of her grows and grows and grows. And so I think there are pockets of moments in every episode that when I read it, I was like, “That’s going to be hard.” Even in the episode that comes out tomorrow, that sort of light torture scene was incredibly strenuous on me. But I’m an actor. It’s what we got to do. And we are really, really taken care of. So I never felt like I was left stranded and to my own devices and hurting without someone checking in on me. But with great power comes great responsibility, and Uhura’s powerful as hell.
Ayla Ruby:Well, that’s wonderful. And I think that’s a lovely note to end it on too. Thank you. This has been wonderful.
Celia Rose Gooding: Thank you. Oh, thank you, Ayla. I appreciate it.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
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