Celia Rose Gooding on Strange New Worlds’ Season 4 Finale, Uhura’s Emotional Journey, and “Uhotty” Shippers

If there is one thing Celia Rose Gooding shares with her Star Trek: Strange New Worlds role Nyota Uhura, it’s that they are both excellent communicators.

Cases in point: SNW‘s timey-whimey fourth season finale “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” (the title being a subtle nod to the classic “Yesterday’s Enterprise” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, one of the franchise’s time travel all-timers) features the Uhura of the Captain Pike-led Enterprise having to unite across the span of a year with the Uhura of the Captain Kirk-helmed era to solve a cosmic conundrum and thwart the death of Scotty, with whom she’d come to have emerging, if conflicted, romantic feelings for; and TV Guide’s conversation with Gooding, who’s clearly devoted extensive thought to not just the journey she played from SNW emerging Uhura to the fully formed version originated by Nichelle Nichols on TOS, but to her own journey in the role since her journey on the Trek prequel series began.

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And she does it all without missing a beat as to which iteration of Uhura — or, for that matter, herself — that she’s referring to.

How did it hit you that you had so many episodes this season in which you really got to grow and develop Uhura so completely?
Celia Rose Gooding: Oh, wow. Just because of the nature of how we shoot, I had an idea of what Uhura’s arc was going to be throughout all of these episodes, but I had no way to sort of glean early on that this was going to be a big season for Uhura. My goodness, we had so many moments. She gets promoted to lieutenant this season — I finally get to say that I’m playing Lieutenant Nyota Uhura. She gets to be a mentee. She has that big old fight sequence. She meets herself. So much goes on!

And I think now that I get to be in a place of reflection, I’m blown away by what she’s gotten to do all this time. What I have been grateful for and my whole mission with this character has always been to establish background for the character that we all know and love, just continue to connect the dots between where she was and who she’s going to be, and having Season 4 be a big dot-connecting experience across all the episodes was… it just felt like I was completing my personal mission with what I was going to get to this character.

I was excited, I was honored, I felt really trusted. And when you have a team of people trusting you to continue the legacy of one of sci-fi’s most beloved characters, you can’t help but feel a little boosted. I really appreciated it.

Tell me about threading the needle on the physical transformation into full TOS Uhura. You really went all the way to Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura in the look and the style, with the earrings and the makeup and the hair and everything. What was exciting about making that full transformation?
Gooding: I love a good aesthetic! As much as I want to be as uncaring about looks and appearances as possible, I have eyes and humans are visual creatures. And so it felt really exciting to look in the mirror and see someone who looks nothing like the Uhura that I have… Well, she does because we have the same face, but it’s like just the differences, the stark differences between the two of them, really everything came into place when I got to go to Video Village and look at the edits of seeing them be in conversation with each other. That’s when I was like, “Oh, we are establishing something really, really powerful and really, really special.”

And I love what I’ve done with Strange New Worlds with her. I love the curly hair, I love her natural hair journey. I also have a great level of respect for the aesthetic of Nichelle’s Uhura, her very mod ’60s look, her beehive, her pointy little sideburns, her very Spock-esque sideburns! [Laughs] I don’t know, it just felt like putting a puzzle together and making it all make sense. And my whole journey throughout this series has been putting pieces together. And I think in Season 4, Episode 10, while the puzzle is not entirely complete, it’s the most complete it’s ever been. And I get to look over my shoulder and see a completed puzzle as a piece of an even bigger puzzle.

And it’s cathartic, it is cerebral, but also deeply primal. And it’s hard to put into the English language from my vocabulary, but it just felt like everything was falling into place and to have a hand in it, to be able to be the vessel in which this circle gets closer and closer to closing and these two points meet, as a service member — I do think that acting as an act of service and storytelling as an act of service to a greater story — I felt like I was doing my job, and I love feeling like I’m doing my job, especially in a way that makes me feel confident and excited, so excited for people who have loved this character well before I got to put my little spin on it.

I’m just excited to give them this gift of saying, “Hey, thank you for trusting me. Thank you for allowing me to go on this journey. Thank you for believing in me. A treat for you and I to share.” It just felt good. It felt very good.

Let’s talk about that Scotty romance. I imagine that you personally had a great time with the fact that it was going to be Martin Quinn who was going to be your scene partner in those moments.
Gooding: I was the happiest fish in the sea! I love Martin. I love him so much. He’s such an incredible addition to our cast. What he’s done with Scotty, no one else could have done. So I’m just happy for him. I’m happy I got to work with him. And theater actor to theater actor, he’s such a collaborative performer. He’s so willing to sit in the liminal space with you and work it out with you and not rush you. And I’m just so grateful for him. Super, super grateful for him.

That romance was hinted at in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier way back when. Did you peek at that to maybe get a little inspiration as to what you wanted to do with it?
Gooding: One hundred percent! So much of my role as the sort of stewardess of Uhura through this part of her life, so much of it was about filling in the cracks of the lack of Uhura representation in the time of just the sort of social climate of how interested people were in Black women and their joy.

And in 2026, I have this opportunity to put the things that were left on the cutting room floor back into the limelight. And I really wanted to, because I have eyes, I’m Gen Z, I do engage in the social spaces even though people tell me not to. I do keep an eye out on the conversation surrounding this character because while Uhura is mine and my journey with her is singular, I also owe it to the people who have celebrated her and championed her all of these years to pour back into them the way they poured into me.

And so much of the Scotty and Uhura relationship was about taking away that idea that, “Oh, the Star Trek V relationship came out of nowhere.” I didn’t want anything about Uhura to not have accessible, visible background. And so it was really nice to just give that relationship just a little bit more, just to fluff that pillow a little more, to put a little bit more wind in those sails. And for the “Uhotty” shippers, I wanted to give them just a little bit more wind in the sail so that they don’t feel crazy!

What was fun about finding the chemistry between Uhura and Scotty with Martin?
Gooding: I think that the most exciting thing was playing TOS Uhura with Strange New Worlds Scotty, because she knows the relationship and she is craving to be with him again and to go back and be with this version of Scotty who doesn’t really know but wants something that Strange New Worlds Uhura is not ready for — or that Strange New Worlds Uhura thinks that she’s not ready for — to sort of bridge these two characters across time and have that open version of Uhura for him.

I was excited to give that to his Scotty and I was also really excited to just… I think for TOS Uhura, there’s something incredibly freeing about being able to exist outside of her timeline because I think she’s a little bit more freewheeling than Strange New Worlds Uhura. I think Strange New Worlds Uhura, just because so much of what she’s experiencing is unknown, she’s still working on trusting her ability to do something and not mess it up, especially when it comes to temporal issues. I think she has a lot more confidence in herself when it’s just existing in her own timeline.

But when time starts getting a little wonky, she wants to lean on herself. But when she doesn’t know who that version of herself is in TOS timeline, it can be a little isolating and it can make you a little insecure. So the thing that TOS Uhura does, especially when it comes to Strange New Worlds Scotty, I think that she is just excited to see the person she really cares about again, and she isn’t as pressured. She doesn’t have that same level of pressure on herself the way Strange New Worlds Uhura has a little bit of pressure on herself, or puts a little bit of pressure on herself.

What’s interesting to me is you’ll be able to look back at yourself four years ago when the show started and have a weird sort of relationship with that version of you —
Gooding: Exactly!

How has this journey transformed you? Because Star Trek is a big thing. It’s no small project that comes and goes. It is going to be part of your life forever. So tell me where you were at the beginning and where you are now.
Gooding: Man, you nailed it. So much of my behind-the-scenes scene work journey of making understanding between Strange New Worlds Uhura and TOS Uhura required me to go back and try and make some understanding between Season 1 Celia and Season 4 Celia. And it kind of felt like therapy.

I was in the conversation with my acting coach and with my therapist, and we were talking a lot about what it means to trust yourself to get you to the person that you know exists. How do you honor yourself? How do you honor the work you’ve been asked to do? And trust the fact that the person who already exists, like TOS Uhura — Nichelle Uhura, excuse me, I’m going to be specific because we got a lot of TOS Uhuras floating around — I know where I am now, which is someone who is just filled with gratitude, filled with pride. I am filled with excitement. I’m so excited for this episode to come out on Thursday. I am also really grateful for that version of Celia who shaved her head in June of 2020 and auditioned for a Star Trek show for a young character named Yeboah, and heard that it was going to be Uhura and didn’t immediately try and bail. I have so much gratitude for that version of myself because like Strange New Worlds Uhura, she was confused and really, really hard on herself for no reason.

If I could do anything for that version of myself, I would do the same thing that TOS Uhura did for Strange New Worlds Uhura, and that is grab her by both of the hands and get really, really quiet and make sure I’m capturing a hundred percent of her attention and just tell her “You’re doing great. Keep going. Trust yourself. Let the fact that I exist and I am here for you in this moment be the proof that at your best you have everything you need.”

Shout out to “Keep Us Connected” in the musical episode! If those four Uhuras could sit down and have a conversation, Season 1, Episode 1 Uhura, Musical Episode Uhura, “Orders of Magnitude” Uhura, and TOS Uhura, they could all sit at a table and just celebrate them because they deserve it, all four of them and all four versions of me that existed in all those times.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is now streaming on Paramount+.