CAPTAIN’S CALL
Sonequa Martin-green on donning the Starfleet uniform for the last time
That’s really touching to hear you say that. It’s been quite an emotional roller coaster, because we didn’t know that it was going to be our last season when we were shooting. So we got both experiences, where we didn’t know, it was just another season, it was there. There’s a great deal of fun and a sense of adventure, and all of that – a tonal shift, if you will, in season five.
So we were all just vibing with that, and then we found out after the fact. But we also did get the experience of knowing that this is the last time we’re ever gonna do this. It’s been quite a while since we shot, so there’s been time to process, and it’s obviously bittersweet, but I feel a great sense of peace and joy and gratitude for the whole experience.
It had been a few months since we had wrapped season five, when we found out. It was an experience that I’ll always cherish, that I’ll never forget. It was so full. It was so heavy. But it was also light as well, if that makes sense. It felt like all of those things rolled into one, and the beauty of it is that we were in it together.
We ended the way we began, the way we always were. We all felt it together. We all felt the sort of sharpness of it and the size of it as well. We would call out pretty much every time there was a “last time”. We would hug, we would shed some tears. It was huge. I think back on it and it kind of chokes me up even now, when I think about that last take and I remember [director] Olatunde’s voice when he said, “Okay, and now for the last time for Star Trek: Discovery, action.”
What did you think about the additional material?
I was floored. Our showrunners, Michelle and Alex, really went to bat for us, and thankfully CBS and Paramount+ allowed us to have that, and we were deeply grateful for that.
I felt like they had an impossible task before them to wrap up this entire show in such a short period of time, with such a short amount of pages. It seems that they did it in a day and like I said they did it in a handful of pages, and we did it in a handful of days.
So I have a lot of respect for them, and I’m grateful for how they wrapped it up. I think they did it with a gentle touch, but also with specificity, with intention and with poetry as well. Of course there are so many things that I wish we had had the time to see. There are stories I would have wanted to seek, all the characters I would have wanted to touch. But we just had such limited space and such limited time. But my hat’s off to them, my hat’s off to what Michelle and the writers were able to do.
That’s exactly right – the AR wall, yo! Mindblowing, indeed! We took it to another level. Even though what we dealt with in season three and especially season four was so big, we’ve gone even bigger. They really wanted that sense of adventure, that sense of fun, that levity. They wanted that tonal shift and we definitely did that. But then, at the same time, we’re dealing with arguably the biggest things you can deal with in season five.
It was an interesting journey for all of us, and it was an especially interesting journey for me. I can’t really say because I don’t want to spoil anything. But there were some struggles that I had personally with the subject matter, because it is… you’ll see. Everyone will see how big it is.
But I appreciate that we just continue to grow with this show. Our identity morphed so much, we found ourselves over the course of seasons. We found our identity as Discovery,