Why Melle From Star Trek: Section 31 Looks So Familiar

Jan Thijs/Paramount+

This article contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Section 31."

Emperor Philippa Giorgiou's (Michelle Yeoh) return in "Star Trek: Section 31" has her associating with a pretty wild bunch. Her crew during the film's strange yet crucial special operation features a collection of fascinating characters, ranging from Omari Hardwick's Section 31 liaison Alok Sahar to Sam Richardson's chameloid character Quasi. Since the entire team is decidedly of the black ops variety, they're effectively expendable. The group's borderline redshirt nature is underlined fairly early in the movie when the seductive Deltan team member Melle attempts to subdue a target — and is promptly shot to death.

Though Melle's demise is far from the only one in the film, it's definitely the earliest. Despite this, she still manages to show why she's a valuable member of the team, which allows actor Humberly González to make the most of the screen time she's given. Since she has a respectable amount of acting credits to her name, there's a fair chance that her turn as Melle will also prompt viewers to start wondering where they may have seen her before. Here's a look at some of González's best-known movie and TV show roles to date.

The CW

One of Humberly González's first major roles was Jessica, a significant recurring character and the girlfriend of one of the show's protagonists, Jess Damon (Brooke Markham), on The CW's crime drama series "In the Dark." Jessica doesn't exactly like the series' main character, the blind and acerbic Murphy Mason (Perry Mattfield), which posits a problem since Murphy and Jess are close. Indeed, Jessica ultimately ends up departing the series in season 2.

In a 2019 interview with Starry Mag, González described her reasons for taking the role, which included her fascination with both The CW's projects and the people involved with making the show, such as director Michael Showalter ("Wet Hot American Summer," "The Big Sick") and producer Ben Stiller (who would later go on to perfect his small-screen craft as the producer and primary director of Apple TV+'s magnificent "Severance"). In her own words:

"I was ecstatic when I knew Michael Showalter was directing the pilot and Ben Stiller's productions company Red Hour Films was involved. I had always wanted to be in a CW series, so this felt like the right time and role for me. When I did the callback for the show, Michael was present and I simply showed confidence and a willingness to play. Something I know was applauded after I booked the part. I remember at the first table read [executive producer] Nicky Weinstock came up to me and asked, 'Were you even nervous?!' No, I wasn't. I felt I had this role in me all along."

Hulu

In "Utopia Falls," the 2020 Hulu sci-fi series with coming-of-age elements, a seemingly perfect future society eschews yearly mayhem of the "Purge" or "Hunger Games" variety in favor of an annual talent competition. Humberly González plays one of this Exemplar contest's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed participants, Brooklyn 2. As she told Hollywood Life in 2019, the futuristic, controlled, and heavily censored reality of New Babyl is an extremely interesting setting for the show's teen drama elements:   

"A 16-year-old wouldn't necessarily know what growing up means without art, without any kind of those things that create problems or things like homophobia or racism or sexism. They don't exist because they've been kind of erased from history. It's in a new society where it's trying to become the utopia of life. So I think it's really interesting to see these kids navigating life with very minimal information because everybody within the world only knows so much and everybody knows the same kind of information."

Of course, the utopia isn't built to last. When Brooklyn 2 and other Exemplar contestants uncover a hidden archive of forbidden information, they find out that they've been missing out a whole bunch of humanity's history and culture, and their newfound knowledge that things aren't what they seem to be gives the show a "Truman Show"-style twist. Despite this intriguing setting, however, "Utopia Falls" didn't quite manage to stay afloat and couldn't make it past its first and only season. Still, very few people can say that they've been on a series where Snoop Dogg voices a historical archive, and Gonzáles will forever belong in this very small club. 

Universal Pictures

2021's "Nobody" takes the peculiar premise of putting Bob Odenkirk of "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" fame in a "Taken"-style scenario, and turns it into a surprisingly entertaining one man army story. Humberly González plays Lupita, one of the two people who first cause retired government assassin Hutch Mansell's (Odenkirk) old instincts to stir. She and Edsson Morales' Luis are a burglar couple who invade the Mansell household and cause Hutch's family to criticize him for being so meek and cowardly.

In reality, of course, Hutch is merely holding back to maintain his meek family man cover and to save everyone — not least the burglars — from unnecessary risk. Privately, he soon tracks Lupita and Luis down, only to let them off the hook when he finds out that they're just two young, broke parents who were acting out of sheer desperation. It's truly rare for a criminal to commit an evil deed against the protagonist's family in a "Taken" expy and live to tell the tale, but this particular confrontation proves that "Nobody" is its own beast — and González and Morales play their roles perfectly.

Netflix

Netflix's perfectly imperfect and messy drama-comedy "Ginny & Georgia" is an enjoyable hodgepodge of small town soap opera, high school drama, and surprisingly dark undertones. The main focus of the show is the mother-daughter duo of Georgia (Brianne Howey) and Ginny (Antonia Gentry), but as tends to be the case with shows like this, there's a robust supporting cast ... which includes Humberly González's prominent recurring character Sophie Sanchez.

Sophie is a cool and popular high school senior whose budding relationship with Ginny's friend Max (Sara Waisglass) is a major season 1 plot point, and she also appears in several season 2 episodes. In a 2021 interview with The List, González — who identifies as queer — spoke about how much she enjoyed playing her "Ginny & Georgia" role and the representation Sophie gave to the Latine LGBTQ+ community:

"I'm so grateful I got to play Sophie and the impact that it had on young people, specifically. Specifically, young, queer people and feeling represented. Being Latina as well, there were a lot of new ... I guess, just newness in the show that you don't often get to see a queer Latina on TV and feel seen. So for me, it was really special, and I think it was for other people, too."

Ubisoft

Humberly González's first screen credit dates back to 2015, and she's reliably appeared in multiple projects every year since 2017. Her current personal record year is 2021, when she worked on no less than 12 different projects, both in front of the camera and in a voice acting capacity.

Because of her extremely busy schedule, the roles mentioned above are just a scratch on the surface of González's CV. You can spot her in smaller roles on shows like "Orphan Black" (where she plays the season 5 character Ana), "Hudson & Rex" (as Brenda Mathis), and the short-lived Netflix superhero show "Jupiter's Legacy" (as the young supervillain Neutrino). She also has several movies in her résumé, from director Mark Raso's Netflix drama "Kodachrome" (where González appears with the likes of Ed Harris and Elizabeth Olsen), the 2018 horror comedy "Killer High" and the 2022 Jason Momoa fantasy adventure "Slumberland."

González is also a voice actor who has worked on animated titles such as "PAW Patrol: The Movie" (2021) and video games like "Far Cry 6" (2020). Her most prominent voice role to date is no doubt young Canto Bight thief Kay Vess, the main character of Ubisoft's 2024 "Star Wars" action-adventure game "Star Wars Outlaws." González also portrays the character via motion capture. As such, her turn as Melle makes González one of the few actors who has worked on both "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" projects.

"Star Trek: Section 31" is now streaming on Paramount+.