Meet Michelle Yeoh's "Ragtag Group of Lunatics" for 'Star Trek: Section 31'

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Star Trek: Section 31

Calling all members of Star Trek to the frontier — the long-awaited Star Trek: Section 31 movie is finally seeing the horizon sooner than we think. Set for a release on Friday, January 24, 2025, exclusively on Paramount+, the film follows Emperor Philippa Georgiou (Academy Award-winner Michelle Yeoh) as she joins Section 31, a secret division of Starfleet. Together with her crew, Philippa is assigned to protect the United Federation of Planets. But the emperor hasn't always been the purest of heroes. With the sins of her past surfacing through the cracks, Philippa must lead one of Starfleet's most critical divisions with an iron fist and a clear head.

Collider's very own Therese Lacson had the opportunity to sit down with the cast of Star Trek: Section 31, including Omari Hardwick (Army of the Dead), Kacey Rohl (Hannibal), and Robert Kazinsky (Pacific Rim), as well as director Olatunde Osunsanmi, who served as director and executive producer on Star Trek: Discovery, at the New York Comic Con 2024. Check out our interview with the cast and crew in the player above, or read the full conversation below.

‘Star Trek: Section 31’ Cast on Their "Ragtag Group of Lunatics"

COLLIDER: I'm very excited to chat with you guys today and my first question is for Olatunde. Can you talk to me a little bit about the vibe of this film? It feels a little different from what we're used to when it comes to Star Trek. What's the genre you would put it under? Other than sci-fi, obviously.

OLATUNDE OSUNSANMI: I’d put under action. If there was one word I could use to describe Section 31, it would be “wild.” It takes us on this unbelievable journey with these unbelievable characters played by the cast here and some of the cast who aren't here. It's a lot of fun and there's a lot of joy, but it's still Star Trek.

Can you guys talk about your characters a little bit to introduce them to our audience and give me something interesting that you were surprised by when it comes to playing your character?

OMARI HARDWICK: I play a character named Alok Sahar. The thing that was most interesting while in the construction of this guy was perhaps learning that, and maybe Tunde would smile only on this, me understanding that he was not as in control as he thought he was in control. He was not. It shows up a bit in his need for the team that he surrounded himself with, this team of motley bandits, if you will, who are now just stealing the hearts, hopefully, of all of the great Star Trek fans out there. Also within this space, this galactical space, Alok has been given this dubious task of leading this brigade of rogue bandits into a place where we're still policing, we still are trying to keep the galaxy, the hands of which we wanna keep to the fire of being good and not so bad, but we go about it in such a rogue, bad, if you will, way.

It was really interesting for me to play a guy who knew he couldn't do that alone and knew that he needed to delegate as well as he delegated. So, as much as Alex Kurtzman and Olatunde — we know him as boss or Tunde — gave me the task of being that as much as they, of course, had the task of directing me into that same space. But Alok is them within the space of the film; Alok is Alex Kurtzman at times and Tunde at times, but equally understanding and recognizing what he lacks. That was really cool for me to learn about two or three weeks in of playing this guy, of like, “He's not as in control as he thinks he's in control.” And that was cool to bring to Michelle Yeoh’s Georgiou’s “I'm in total control.” Her thoughts and her movement within that space as a character is that of being in total control, and Alok begs to differ, but often times she's right. So, that was a cool surprise for me.

KACEY ROHL: I play Rachel Garrett. She is the Starfleet component of this wild world we're in. What was very cool about playing her was that she's somebody who's thriving in that system, who takes great comfort in knowing exactly what's expected of her, and what's okay and what's not okay, and lives and dies by that way of doing things. She has been plopped into this world that is chaotic, and there aren't really any rules, and the expectations of what everybody does changes all the time. It was cool for me, particularly as a recovering perfectionist, to be reminded of the space that chaos can provide, the alternatives that not always following the rules can provide, that there are so many different ways to be good, and that you can define it for yourself in some ways. In fact, some of the best ways to be good are by breaking the rules.

Embracing chaos.

ROHL: Exactly!

I am that perfectionist, so this was just basically me.

ROHL: Exactly. So, I think that was the biggest takeaway and reminder that Rachel gave me, for sure. And the joy of playing her, the chaotic joy.

ROBERT KAZINSKY: And I play Zeph, who, when I first read it, I was like, “Okay, he's the hammer.” — can't touch this — “He smashes things. He's just being powerful.” But what really got me over time — and it was mainly fed by these guys and the gifts that they would give me every day on set, started with me and O just really finding this relationship, and then it developed into other things — was just the heart of this guy, the love that they all have for each other, this little team, apart from Starfleet over here.

The love of this ragtag group of lunatics feeds into that whole thing that you learn as you get older, that it doesn't really matter who you are, everybody has good in them, and everybody has bad in them. Some bad people can really make you laugh, and some good people can really make you cry. This is a show about the gray areas that we exist in and the need for those gray areas. What surprised me most was how much heart and how much Star Trek you can find in characters that aren't as paragon-like as Will Riker or Patrick Stewart.

Definitely. I'm hearing this, and it sounds like being a part of this team, being a part of this group, formulating those relationships is really important.

It’s All About Cast and Crew Teamwork in ‘Star Trek: Section 31’

I'm curious about your time working on set together. Earlier, you were talking about going to dinners and bonding over that. Did that change how you played your character as it continued on during the filming process?

HARDWICK: It gives you a freedom. It is your way of throwing a lob to a director. Spike Lee said to me years ago, “90% of directing is who you choose. It’s who you delegate,” from the DP to the gaffer and the crew that then comes from that — the lighting team, the costume design, which we had second to none in this project. Shoutout to Gersha [Phillips]. Phenomenal. Stunt coordinations, the same thing. Tunde did a great job; he was an athlete. Tunde is a collegiate athlete… His objective is to get a team down the field. So, I think the way that you give Alex Kurtzman and Tunde a lob is to get close to the Kaceys, get close to the Robs, the Svens, the James, the Michelles. Just get close to these people to the point where, before you know it, when they're in a scene, they're forgetting that they're doing a movie. That's super important for me, for us to forget we're doing a movie and just to exist between the day's start and the day's end.

So, it did change in the sense that improvisation became more allowable because I think the boss man behind me allowed us to be trusted enough, and because he trusted us enough that a rapport was being built that had nothing to do with being on set. What changed was we almost became a little bit more liquid and a bit more fluid in terms of throwing lobs to each other. That's the big thing.

That's amazing.

Michelle Yeoh's Original 'Star Trek: Section 31' Idea Was for a Series

"It came together, it fell apart, it came together, it fell apart."

This project started as a TV show and then it slowly became a film. Olatunde, Michelle Yeoh has been a part of this project since the beginning. Can you talk about what it's been like going through that process and, now that it's been finalized, where your head is at and what that experience was like? I can imagine it's kind of stressful compressing the story down into a two-hour movie.

OSUNSANMI: This project was Michelle's idea. She brought it to Alex who brought it to the Roddenberrys and to Paramount + originally as a TV show. Then it came together, it fell apart, it came together, it fell apart. Before I was in television, I was strictly doing features, and in features, my experience was things fall apart all the time, so you gotta try and be zen. It's heartbreaking, but you gotta be zen about it. So, flash forward to my time in television, I was like, “Okay, well, I know what this is. I just gotta stay patient and hope it comes back around.” What was unique to this process for me was having both a super producer in Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Yeoh and a studio that, no matter what we went through, really believed in it. There's also the whole Star Trek of it all — Trevor Roth and Rod Roddenberry, who are just consistent backers of what we try to do here.

So, you flash forward to now and it's a movie, and and we're done. It's like, “Oh my god.” We pushed the boulder up the hill and now the new stress comes along, which is we have to show it to the world — did we do everything we could possibly do to make it as Star Trek as possible, yet not? And for it to be the best possible thing that it could be? I think we got it there, and I hope you agree.

Star Trek: Section 31 is slated to hit Paramount+ in 2025.

Michelle Yeoh as Emperor Philippa Georgiou in Star Trek- Discovery

In Star Trek: Section 31, Emperor Philippa Georgiou, joins a secret division of Starfleet tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets and faces the sins of her past.

Director Olatunde Osunsanmi

Writers Craig Sweeney

Studio(s) CBS

Distributor(s) Paramount Pictures

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