“Star Trek: Discovery” fans were treated to a surprising cameo in the show’s Season 4 finale, when politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams appeared playing the President of Earth. The president greeted Captain Michael Burnham and her crew as the Federation and Starfleet visited Earth for the first time in 100 years, and Abrams’ casting as the president of the planet soon took flight on social media.
In a new video posted on Abrams’ Twitter account, the Democratic candidate fo governor of Georgia and producers from “Discovery” explain how she was cast and why she’s such a big “Star Trek” fan in the first place.
“We knew that she was a fan of the show and I had read an interview with her at some point where she was talking about her love of ‘Star Trek’ and her love of ‘Discovery’ specifically and Burnham,” executive producer and writer Michelle Paradise explained. “We reached out to her people and were like we wanna just ask about this, and she’s so lovely and was so excited about it and genuinely excited to get to do it. And it was just the neatest thing.”
“One of the reasons that I love ‘Star Trek’ is that it is not one thing, it is so many different shows and it’s so many different vantage points,” Abrams said in the video. “It has this idealized notion of what can be but a very grounded understanding of how hard the work will be to get there. And what has been so remarkable about every iteration of the show is that they take that same construct, but they do it so differently and so well that you never get bored with the journey.”
Abrams said it didn’t quite matter which role she was playing, she was ready to jump onboard. “They give such care to how they craft spaces and worlds,” she said. “Whatever the story was, I wanted to be a part of it because watching Michael Burnham come into her power as a captain, watching this hearty crew reclaim itself not only in a new era but in a new space that is so reminiscent of what they remembered but so different. That, to me, speaks of why we do the work we do in politics. It’s about giving people hope and giving them a better life and creating this vision of what is possible. So regardless of the role that I was gonna get to play, I wanted to be a part of it.”
Abrams also couldn’t help but nerd out about the experience of getting into costume to play a character in the “Star Trek” universe. “I went to a performing arts high school, and it was nothing like this,” Abrams said in the video. “I’ve been very lucky to get to sit in a chair and have someone do my hair and my makeup in ways I wouldn’t have imagined. I’m not wearing prosthetics, I don’t get new ears or a new forehead, but my hair is different. And then I got to be outfitted for my uniform and that was just an extraordinary experience. And I got a communicator, which I’m probably going to sneak into my pocket.”
Watch the full video above. The “Star Trek: Discovery” Season 4 finale is now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.
