Actress Nichelle Nichols, who is revered by “Star Trek” fans around the world for her role as Lieutenant Uhura, Spacecraft USS Enterprise’s Communications Officer, died Saturday in Silver City, New Mexico. She was 89 years old.
The cause was heart failure, said Sky Conway, a writer and film producer who was asked by Nichols’ son Kyle Johnson to speak for his family.
Nichols had a long career as an entertainer, starting as a teenage super club singer and dancer in her hometown of Chicago and later appearing on television.
However, she aired from 1966 to 1969 and starred William Shatner as Captain Kirk, the heroic leader of the spacecraft crew, in her cult-inspiring space adventure series Star Trek. The work will be the best to remember forever. Leonard Nimoy (died in 2015) is his scientific director and adviser, Spock, a superlogical humanoid on the planet Vulcan. DeForest Kelley (died in 1999) is Dr. McCoy, also known as the ship’s doctor, Bones.
Impressive beauty, Nichols offered a sexy Frison on the Enterprise Bridge. She usually wore a snug red doublet and black tights. Evony magazine called her “the most celestial body in Star Trek” on the cover page of 1967. But her role was substantive and historically important.
Uhura was an executive, highly educated and well-trained technician, performing noble duties while maintaining a business-like attitude. Nichols was one of the first black women to play a leading role in the network television series, and she was anomalous on a small screen where black women rarely played roles other than obedient roles. I made it.
In the November 1968 episode, Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura were forced to be embraced by strange planetary inhabitants during the third and final seasons of the show, widely considered the first interracial kiss in television history. I am.
Nichols first appeared in Star Trek before the 1968 sitcom Julia. There, Diahann Carroll, who plays the widow’s mother who works as a nurse, became the first black woman to play a non-stereotyped role in the network series. ..
(The series called “Beura,” starring Ethel Waters, later Louise Beavers and Hattie McDaniel, as a maid of a white family, also known as the “Beura Show,” aired on ABC in the early 1950s and was subsequently quoted by citizenship. Activist for the sneaky portrait of a black man.)
But Uhura’s influence far exceeded that of television. In 1977, Nichols began a partnership with NASA and contracted as a representative and speaker to assist in recruiting women and minority candidates for space flight training. The following year’s astronaut candidate class was the first class to include women and members of minority groups.
After that, Mr. Nichols appeared publicly and recorded it. Public service announcements On behalf of the agency. NASA’s news release on the event praised her help for the causes of space exploration diversity after she was the keynote speaker at the Goddard Space Center at the African-American History Month celebration in 2012. did.
“Nichols’ role as one of the first black characters on television is more than just a stereotype, one of the first women in authority (she was the fourth commander of the enterprise). Affected thousands of applications from women and minorities, “said the release. “Among them are Ronald McNair, Frederick Gregory, Judith Resnik, the first American woman in space, Sally Ride, and current NASA administrator Charlie Bolden.”
Grace Dell Nichols was born on December 28, 1932 in Robins, Illinois (some sources later) and grew up in Chicago. Her father was the mayor and chemist of Robins for some time. Tired of being called Gracie by her friends when she was 13 or 14, she liked Michelle but asked her mother for another name, who suggested Nicole as her alliteration. did.
She later said she was a ballet dancer as a kid and naturally had a wide range of singing voices (more than four octaves). While attending her Inglewood High School, she landed her first professional gig in a review at the famous Chicago nightspot College Inn.
There she was seen by Duke Ellington, who hired her in his tour orchestra as a dancer in one of his jazz suites a year or two later.
Nichols starred in the works of several musical theaters nationwide in the 1950s. In an interview with the American TV archive, she remembered playing at the Playboy Club in New York City when she was understudy for Carroll on the Broadway musical “No Strings” (she never continued). But).
In 1959, she was a dancer in the movie “Porgy and Bess” by Otto Preminger. She made her television debut in 1963 with an episode of the short-lived drama series Star Trek about the Marines in Camp Pendleton, created by Gene Roddenberry.
Nichols has appeared on other television shows for many years. Among them are “Payton Place” (1966), “Class Head” (1988), and “Heroes” (2007). She also occasionally appears on stage in Los Angeles, including a show of one woman who impressed and respected the black female entertainers in front of her, such as Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey, and Eartha Kitt. did.
But Uhura was supposed to be her legacy. Ten years after Star Trek aired, Nichols replayed his role in Star Trek: Movie, and five times later appeared as Uhura as commander of the time. A sequel to the movie until 1991.
In addition to her son, her survivors include two sisters, Marian Smothers and Diane Robinson.
Nichols got married and divorced twice. In her 1995 autobiography, Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories, Roddenberry, who died in 1991, revealed that she had a romantic relationship for some time. In a 2010 Archive of American Television interview, she said she had little to do with casting on Star Trek, but defended her when her studio executives tried to replace her.
When she played the role of Uhura, Nichols said she considered it a mere job at the time and valuable as a resume enhancer. She wanted a career on Broadway, so she intended to return to the stage altogether. Indeed, she threatened to leave the show after her first season and submitted her resignation to Roddenberry. He told her to rethink it for a few days.
She was a guest at an event on Saturday night in Beverly Hills, California, in a story I often talked about. “I think she was a NAACP fundraiser,” she recalled in an interview with the archive where her organizer introduced her to someone. He described it as “your biggest fan.”
“He’s dying to see you,” she recalled what the organizer said.
A fan, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. introduced himself.
“He said,’We have a lot of respect for you,'” Nichols said, and she thanked him and told him he was about to leave the show. “He said,’You can’t. You can’t.'”
Dr. King told her that her role as a dignified and authoritative person in a popular show was too important for the cause of civil rights and she could not abandon it. As Nichols recalled, “For the first time, we will be seen on television the way we should be seen every day,” he said.
On Monday morning she returned to Rod Denbury’s office and told him what had happened.
“And I said,’If you still want me to stay, I’ll stay. I have to.'”
Eduardo Medina contributed to the report.
