Michelle Yeoh was ‘a little apprehensive’ about arranging Star Trek: Section 31’s cameo

In a time when lots of franchise movies have final scenes and stingers that allude to larger concerns in their universes, show off a dizzying network of inter-movie connective tissue, or tease the next project coming down the release pipeline, Star Trek: Section 31 goes against the grain.

Its surprising late-game cameo isn’t about franchise ties at all: It features a familiar actor who’s never appeared in Star Trek before. Section 31 star Michelle Yeoh told Polygon this one was all about the personal, real-world connections she made in her Oscar-winning movie Everything Everywhere All at Once.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for a guest appearance in Star Trek: Section 31.]

Section 31 gives viewers a hint at the cameo in its opening scenes, when the artificial intelligence known as Control lays out the assignment for the movie’s central Section 31 team, via voiceover and graphics. But we don’t see Control’s holographic guise until the movie’s final scenes, when the victorious team is celebrating. That’s when Section 31 reveals that Control’s voice and digital persona are provided by none other than Halloween franchise and Freaky Friday star Jamie Lee Curtis.

Section 31’s executive producer Alex Kurtzman and director Olatunde Osunsanmi carefully kept mum when Polygon asked how Curtis’ cameo came together, not wanting to spoil anything. But Yeoh gushed when we brought up her Everything Everywhere All at Once costar, raising her hands in the shape of a heart. And she confirmed she was a part of bringing Curtis into Section 31.

“Yes! Oh yes, of course,” Yeoh said. “I was a little apprehensive, you know, it’s like ‘should I…?’ And then someone said, ‘do it, because she will expect that from you.’ And I was like, ‘OK!’”

“She doesn’t do anything she doesn’t believe in,” Yeoh said, with confidence. “First of all, I have complete faith in that. And I do also have faith that she did it because she loved me. I believe that. [Laughs] [...] And she did such an incredible job.”

It’s a fair contrast from the last time we saw the Control artificial intelligence, as the faceless, bodiless big villain of the second season of Star Trek: Discovery (which is set after the events of Section 31). Who would have thought Control was so personable before its betrayal?