Star Trek: Discovery actor says she learned show was ending after filming wrapped

Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays Michael Burnham, has shared insight into show’s unexpected end

Star Trek: Discovery actor Sonequa Martin-Green has revealed that she and her castmates only discovered that season five would be their last after filming had wrapped.

The revival series launched on CBS All Access, now Paramount+, in 2017 and played a pivotal role in renewing interest in the original Star Trek series which started in 1966.

Season five will begin airing in the US on Thursday (4 April) and will conclude the characters’ interstellar adventures.

Series star Martin-Green, who plays Captain Michael Burnham, has spoken out about the unexpected ending of the programme in a new interview.

“We’ve had a lot of time to process it,” she told Radio Times.

“We found that after the fact, right – we had shot all of season five, and thought it was just another season, and then found out a few months later, after we had wrapped. Then we went back to do a shoot, and really wrap up the series.”

Despite the programme ending sooner than she expected, Martin-Green expressed her pride in the show lasting as long as it did.

“TV has changed, and we’re in the streaming era, and so I feel that five seasons is solid. I think we had a good run, you know? So I always felt peace,” she noted.

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ has previously debuted on Netflix in the UK (Paramount)

“I feel…a sense of achievement, ownership and gratitude. I think all of us feel that way.”

Discovery was the seventh Star Trek series in the long-running science fiction franchise but the first to debut on a streaming service. Its immediate success was the catalyst for several other Star Trek spinoffs.

The responsibility to usher in a whole generation of spinoffs brought with it its own pressures, Martin-Green added.

“I don’t think we ever felt comfortable enough, at that time, to feel like leaders, right? We had been given the baton, and we would look at the older iterations as our leaders – and of course they are and they were – but then to be in that position in our own way, in this new day and time, it was encouraging,” she said.

Doug Jones as Saru and Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham (Paramount+/CBS Studios Inc./Michael Gibson. All Rights Reserved)

Elsewhere, Martin-Green spoke about the generational impact of the franchise in an interview with IGN.

“I’ve had the pleasure of meeting so many fans around the world – in Brazil, in Germany, in London. When I meet people who say that Discovery is their very first Trek, they’re younger. They’re usually teenagers.

“They’ll say, ‘You’re my ‘Trek,’” she added. “And that could bring a tear to my eye, because that’s the whole point of this.”

Star Trek: Discovery is available on Paramount+.